August 2018 Summaries

Minikube is a popular tool for setting up local Kubernetes clusters on Windows, Linux, or Mac environments. It provides a standalone solution with many features useful for managing a local Kubernetes cluster. Minikube can be installed using the Windows Package Manager, and it requires a third-party hypervisor like VirtualBox to deploy a Kubernetes cluster. After installation, users can spin up a single-node Kubernetes cluster using the `minikube start` command, specifying custom options such as resource usage and network connectivity. Users can also create multi-node clusters by adding more nodes to the existing cluster. Minikube provides an option to mount host directories to the Kubernetes cluster, allowing users to access files on the host machine within the container. With its ease of use and customization capabilities, Minikube simplifies local Kubernetes configurations and enables developers to easily test and deploy containerized applications in Kubernetes.

Distributed tracing is increasingly seen as an essential component for observing microservice-based applications, with many modern frameworks providing support for tracing implementations such as Open Zipkin, Jaeger, OpenCensus, and LightStep xPM. Google's use of distributed tracing was highlighted in a paper discussing their Dapper implementation, which concluded that ubiquitous deployment of the tracing system is crucial to avoid severe impact on its usefulness. The Edge Stack API Gateway has added distributed tracing support based on the Envoy Proxy at its core, supporting Open Zipkin and Zipkin-compatible backends like Jaeger and commercial xPM offering from LightStep. An example application called MicroDonuts was created using the OpenTracing Java SDK to demonstrate tracing concepts, which is now being used as a sample application for demonstrating distributed tracing with Ambassador Edge Stack API Gateway. The application has been packaged in Docker and deployed on Kubernetes, allowing users to order donuts and view the trace data in Zipkin dashboard. With this setup, any Zipkin-compatible application can be traced with minimal hassle by injecting the Zipkin headers into upstream requests via Ambassador.