Kubernetes cluster upgrades without disruption

Project description

Over the past few years, Kubernetes has established itself as the leading container orchestration platform, empowering organizations to manage and scale their containerized applications efficiently. As its popularity grows, it undergoes more rapid development, incorporating different user demands, better security practices, and bug fixes with each new version. Upgrading a Kubernetes cluster has become increasingly important for maintaining organization operations and providing consistent services.
Manual cluster upgrades can be complex, time-consuming, and error-prone, requiring meticulous planning, coordination, and human intervention. To address these challenges, there is a growing need to explore automated approaches for upgrading Kubernetes clusters. Automation provides numerous benefits, including reduced operational burden, faster deployment of new features, increased reliability, and minimized downtime.
To achieve these objectives, this research paper will analyze existing literature, examine use cases, and conduct experiments to evaluate the effectiveness and feasibility of automated Kubernetes cluster upgrades.

Context

Sue wants to create a platform for migrating, hosting, and supporting cloud infrastructure, as migration to the cloud is a popular trend nowadays. At some point, a Kubernetes cluster should be upgraded while keeping the microservices available during this process. There are various strategies and tools, which can help with that and our task is to analyze all the posibilities and come up with an optimal solution.

Results

Throughout our research and implementation, our group has evaluated tools and upgrade methods, which would allow for no downtime while upgrading the Kubernetes cluster. The results of our project consist of research results, analysis and evaluation of tools and upgrade strategies, and a technical guide on performing a Kubernetes cluster upgrade with no downtime.

About the project group

Our group consists of 4 people, with a background in learning and following the infrastructure path at Fontys. Each person has passed the internship, where he worked on setting up and configuring infrastructure on-premises or in the cloud. We are motivated and passionate about solving problems of our clients and expanding our skillsets in the process.