Init containers in Kubernetes: examples and use cases
Hey friends! Today, I want to talk about init containers in Kubernetes. These special containers run before standard containers and help preconfigure the environment or set up dependencies. Init containers establish a contract between developers and deployers, ensuring smooth collaboration. They're commonly used to check for dependent services or databases before starting a container. One great use case is fetching secrets or certificates required for the application to start. By using init containers, we can centralise this logic, making it easier to manage and update.
I want to share a specific use case where I found init containers to be extremely useful. It's when you need to fetch secrets or certificates that are essential for your application to start. In the past, before all the vault integration, I used init containers to fetch secrets from Vault and share them on a shared volume.
By doing this, we can centralize the logic within the init container, making it easier to manage and reuse across different deployments. If there's ever a need to change or update the logic around secrets, we can simply swap the container and apply it to all our deployments. It saves us from coordinating with multiple teams and ensures a smooth workflow.
I also want to highlight a useful trick when working with secrets: using a shared volume of type "emptyDir" with the medium set to memory. This creates a volume stored completely in memory, providing an additional layer of security by avoiding disk storage. Moreover, accessing data from memory is much faster than accessing it from a disk attached to the machine.
Don't forget to subscribe to my channel for more helpful content. Thanks for watching!
WHO AM I:
Hey friends, welcome to my YouTube channel @outofdevops . If you're new my name is Anto, here I talk about software engineering and software engineers. Don't forget to comment like and subscribe 👍🏻.
YOUTUBE GEAR:
🎥 My YouTube Camera Gear - https://kit.co/outofdevops
MY SOCIAL LINKs:
🐦 Twitter - / outofdevops
📘 Facebook - / outofdevops
📰 My blog - https://amasucci.com
📸 Instagram - / outofdevops
GET IN TOUCH:
If you’d like to talk, I’d love to hear from you. Tweeting @OutOfDevOps directly will be the quickest way to get a response, but if your question is very long, feel free to email me at [email protected].
PS: Some of the links in this description are affiliate links that I get a kickback from 😜
