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Top 10 Kubernetes and storage stories of 2024

In this 2024 review, Computer Weekly looks at Kubernetes’ evolution from stateless application runtime to enterprise-ready environment for cloud-native with persistent storage and data protection

Antony Adshead
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Published: 18 Dec 2024 9:00

“Not everyone runs Kubernetes in production, but everyone has a Kubernetes proof-of-concept project” – that’s the kind of thing you hear from IT industry analysts.

Kubernetes is the application virtualisation standard for containers in the cloud-native era. It offers rapid builds, scalability and flexibility in application deployment in hybrid cloud environments.

All business applications need storage and Kubernetes environments are no exception. But there hasn’t been a smooth path to achieve that. Kubernetes started out as a lightweight method of providing application runtime that was stateless, with storage and data protection capabilities that were limited.

Here, Computer Weekly looks at how Kubernetes handles persistent data storage and data protection, and how that functionality evolved especially via the development of Operators and StatefulSets.

1. Storage technology explained: Kubernetes, containers and persistent storage

In this guide, we look at the market-leading container platform Kubernetes, how it works, the challenges with persistent storage and backup, and how they have been overcome.

2. Kubernetes and storage in the enterprise: What the analysts say

We talk to analysts about Kubernetes adoption in the enterprise, how mature it is, deployment challenges and key obstacles to enterprises that want to go cloud-native with containers..

3. Kubernetes disaster recovery: Five key questions

We look at disaster recovery for Kubernetes environments, the key challenges to deployment of K8s DR, the risks we aim to mitigate, how to build a plan and the key infrastructure requirements.

4. Kubernetes at 10: Persistent storage matures, helped by Operators

Google engineer Saad Ali remembers the early days of Kubernetes, the storage challenges faced and overcome, and the revolution in application awareness that comes from Operators.

5. Kubernetes at 10: Building stateful app storage and data protection

Google engineer Michelle Au was involved in Kubernetes storage early, as the container orchestration platform was developed to support data protection operations such as snapshots.

6. Kubernetes at 10: When K8s ‘won’ and life now as a ‘surly teenager’

We talk to Datastax’s Patrick McFadin about Kubernetes’ success against competitors and how StatefulSet and operators solved key challenges, but why there are still obstacles to clear.

7. Kubernetes at 10: From stateless also-ran to ‘platform to build platforms’

Sergey Pronin of Percona was all for “Kubernetes for stateless” at a time when it was hard to provision storage and day-two services – then Operators and Stateful Sets came along.

8. Kubernetes at 10: The long road to mastery of persistent storage

Jan Safranek of Red Hat saw containers emerge as an exciting new way of deploying applications, but it took several additions to make it the mature enterprise platform it is today.

9. Kubernetes at 10: CRDs at core of extensible, modular storage in K8s

We talk to VMware engineer Xing Yang, who saw Kubernetes storage evolve from the early days where its modular, extensible origins translated to Operators for storage and backup.

10. How does Kubernetes use etcd?

Etcd is a lightweight, highly available key-value store accessible to each node in a Kubernetes cluster. Find out how etcd works and learn how to use it inside Kubernetes.

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