Namespaces are a way to divide cluster resources between multiple users, teams, or projects. They provide a scope for Kubernetes objects, such as pods, services, and replication controllers, within a cluster.
Namespaces are useful for organizing and isolating resources, allowing different teams or projects to operate independently within the same Kubernetes cluster without interfering with each other. They help in avoiding naming collisions and provide a level of resource isolation and security.
By default, Kubernetes has a ‘default’ namespace, but you can create multiple namespaces to logically segregate and manage your resources more effectively. Each namespace operates as a separate virtual cluster within the larger Kubernetes cluster, enabling teams to work in their dedicated space without conflicting with others.
To explore namespaces run the following:
kubectl get namespaces
$ kubectl get namespaces
NAME STATUS AGE
default Active 17h
kube-node-lease Active 17h
kube-public Active 17h
kube-system Active 17h
Notice that there is a default namespace. This is where we created all of our resources so far.
Run the following command to view all resources in the default namespace:
kubectl get all -n default
There are many ways for us to use namespaces, we can specify the namespace inside YAML configuration file itself under metadata:
apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
name: backend-mongodb-deployment
namespace: my-awesome-namespace
labels:
app: backend-mongodb
Or we can pass the namespace as a parameter when we apply a configuration file: kubectl apply -f <file.yaml> --namespace my-awesome-namespace.
For our example, we will use Namespaces to deploy two versions of our application. a Blue one and a Green one. Assuming that we will use deployment piplines to deploy these, it makes sense for us to use the command line option.
Let us first clean up the previous deployments we have:
kubectl delete -f example1-mongoApp/backend-mongo-db.yaml
kubectl delete -f example1-mongoApp/mongodb-configmap.yaml
kubectl delete -f example1-mongoApp/frontend-mongo-express.yaml
kubectl delete secret mongodb-secret
Verify your work by running:
kubectl get all
Now that we have a clean slate, let us create our two namespaces:
kubectl create namespace blue
kubectl create namespace green
Let us deploy our Blue deployment first:
deployment=blue
kubectl create secret generic mongodb-secret --from-literal=mongo-username=mongouser --from-literal=mongo-password=mongopass --namespace $deployment
kubectl apply -f example1-mongoApp/backend-mongo-db.yaml --namespace $deployment
kubectl apply -f example1-mongoApp/mongodb-configmap.yaml --namespace $deployment
kubectl apply -f example1-mongoApp/frontend-mongo-express.yaml --namespace $deployment
Notice that we are using the $deployment variable to simulate what we would do in a deployment pipeline.
Let us check out our work:
kubectl get all
The above command should not show our resources. But the next one should:
kubectl get all -n blue
Let us expose that. If we run minikube service frontend-mongo-express, we should see the following error:
$ minikube service frontend-mongo-express
❌ Exiting due to SVC_NOT_FOUND: Service 'frontend-mongo-express' was not found in 'default' namespace.
You may select another namespace by using 'minikube service frontend-mongo-express -n <namespace>'. Or list out all the services using 'minikube service list'
So let us specify the namespace:
minikube service frontend-mongo-express -n blue
Great! We have our blue deployment up and running! Let us create the green deployment:
deployment=green
kubectl create secret generic mongodb-secret --from-literal=mongo-username=mongouser --from-literal=mongo-password=mongopass --namespace $deployment
kubectl apply -f example1-mongoApp/backend-mongo-db.yaml --namespace $deployment
kubectl apply -f example1-mongoApp/mongodb-configmap.yaml --namespace $deployment
kubectl apply -f example1-mongoApp/frontend-mongo-express.yaml --namespace $deployment
sleep 60
minikube service frontend-mongo-express -n $deployment
OOPS! We need to change the port!
The Service "frontend-mongo-express" is invalid: spec.ports[0].nodePort: Invalid value: 30000: provided port is already allocated
❌ Exiting due to SVC_NOT_FOUND: Service 'frontend-mongo-express' was not found in 'green' namespace.
You may select another namespace by using 'minikube service frontend-mongo-express -n <namespace>'. Or list out all the services using 'minikube service list'
To fix that, we can create another version of example1-mongoApp/frontend-mongo-express.yaml with a different port. We have created one that has nodePort: 3001 located in example1-mongoApp/frontend-mongo-express-green.yaml. Let us try again using the green version:
deployment=green
kubectl create secret generic mongodb-secret --from-literal=mongo-username=mongouser --from-literal=mongo-password=mongopass --namespace $deployment
kubectl apply -f example1-mongoApp/backend-mongo-db.yaml --namespace $deployment
kubectl apply -f example1-mongoApp/mongodb-configmap.yaml --namespace $deployment
kubectl apply -f example1-mongoApp/frontend-mongo-express-green.yaml --namespace $deployment
sleep 60
minikube service frontend-mongo-express -n $deployment
To verify your work, you can use your browser to view the application. You can get the DNS names or IP addresses but looking at the services:
kubectl get services -n blue
kubectl get services -n green
$ kubectl get services -n blue
NAME TYPE CLUSTER-IP EXTERNAL-IP PORT(S) AGE
backend-mongodb ClusterIP 10.104.133.115 <none> 27017/TCP 19h
frontend-mongo-express LoadBalancer 10.102.67.181 <pending> 8081:30000/TCP 19h
$ kubectl get services -n green
NAME TYPE CLUSTER-IP EXTERNAL-IP PORT(S) AGE
backend-mongodb ClusterIP 10.96.81.254 <none> 27017/TCP 19h
frontend-mongo-express LoadBalancer 10.111.153.234 <pending> 8081:30001/TCP 8m16s
Nice! Now you have two versions running on different ports! But that is not the best way to do that! A better way would be to use a placeholder with sed to dynamically set the nodePort. The other option is to use HELM Charts. We will cover HELM in a later task.
deployment=blue
kubectl create secret generic mongodb-secret --from-literal=mongo-username=mongouser --from-literal=mongo-password=mongopass --namespace $deployment
kubectl delete -f example1-mongoApp/backend-mongo-db.yaml --namespace $deployment
kubectl delete -f example1-mongoApp/mongodb-configmap.yaml --namespace $deployment
kubectl delete -f example1-mongoApp/frontend-mongo-express.yaml --namespace $deployment
deployment=green
kubectl create secret generic mongodb-secret --from-literal=mongo-username=mongouser --from-literal=mongo-password=mongopass --namespace $deployment
kubectl delete -f example1-mongoApp/backend-mongo-db.yaml --namespace $deployment
kubectl delete -f example1-mongoApp/mongodb-configmap.yaml --namespace $deployment
kubectl delete -f example1-mongoApp/frontend-mongo-express.yaml --namespace $deployment