High Availability

One of the ways to have a highly available service is to use a ReplicaSet.

Create ReplicaSet

In the following example, we are going to create a ReplicaSet

1. First, delete the pod we previously created

    kubectl delete pod nginx
   

2. Try to refresh the page at EXTERNAL IP of the loadbalancer service. It should fail because the pod has already been deleted.

3. Create a replicaset. Save the following yaml as nginxreplica.yaml, and create it using kubectl apply -f nginxreplica.yaml

    apiVersion: apps/v1
    kind: ReplicaSet
    metadata:
      name: nginx
      labels:
        app: nginx
    spec:
      replicas: 2
      selector:
        matchLabels:
          run: nginx
      template:
        metadata:
          labels:
            run: nginx
        spec:
          containers:
          - name: nginx
            image: nginx
   

4. This should create a replicaset of 2 identical pods. Show the pods

    $ kubectl get pods
    NAME          READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
    nginx-qxch4   1/1     Running   0          20m
    nginx-wjxmm   1/1     Running   0          20m
   

5. Browse to the page at EXTERNAL IP of the loadbalancer service. It should now be working. As we created pods in the replicaset with the same label as the previous single pod (run=nginx), the loadbalancer knows how to find them.

Delete a pod

1. Select a pod to be deleted and show the pods again.

    $ kubectl delete pod nginx-qxch4
    pod "nginx-qxch4" deleted
    $ kubectl get pods
    NAME          READY   STATUS              RESTARTS   AGE
    nginx-vdhrn   0/1     ContainerCreating   0          5s
    nginx-wjxmm   1/1     Running             0          48m
   

   You can see that Kubernetes will recreate a pod to ensure the number of replicas stay the same as what was defined.

2. The nginx web page should continue working with one pod down.

Scaling up pods

You can also scale up the number of pods by editing the replicaset config file.

1. Edit nginxreplica.yaml and change replicas from 2 to 3

2. Submit the new config

    kubectl apply -f nginxreplica.yaml
   

3. Show the pods. You should see a new container being created. E.g.

    $ kubectl get pods
    NAME          READY   STATUS              RESTARTS   AGE
    nginx-6d7xj   1/1     Running             0          4m15s
    nginx-hz4dx   0/1     ContainerCreating   0          2s
    nginx-sj6f5   1/1     Running             0          4m15s
   

More information

For more information, refer to:

• ReplicaSet