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First Steps

In this tutorial, we will interact with the Kubernetes cluster for the first time.

Warning

Please make sure you completed Setup before you continue with this tutorial.

Login

To login to the stepping stone cluster head over to the Stepping Stone Wiki. There you will find the login information for the cluster. Also you can copy the kubeconfig file from the wiki to your local machine. (e.g. ~/.kube/config)

Note

You can rename the context in the kubeconfig file to stepping-stone to make it easier to use. There are also some cli tools which improve the observability of the cluster context. (e.g. oh-my-zsh)

Warning

For this tutorial you can also use a local minikube cluster. But some parts of the tutorial will not work as expected. (e.g. the ingress, storage, etc.)

Namespaces

As a first step on the cluster, we are going to create a new Namespace.

A Namespace is a logical design used in Kubernetes to organize and separate your applications, Deployments, Pods, Ingresses, Services, etc. on a top-level basis. Take a look at the Kubernetes docs. Authorized users inside a namespace are able to manage those resources. Namespace names have to be unique in your cluster.

Task 1: Create a new Namespace

Create a new namespace in the tutorial environment. The kubectl help output can help you figure out the right command.

Note

Please choose an identifying name for your Namespace, e.g. your initials or name as a prefix.

We are going to use <namespace> as a placeholder for your created Namespace.

Solution 
kubectl create namespace <namespace>
# export it as an environment variable for later use (will be mentioned in the tutorial)
export NAMESPACE=<namespace>

Note

By using the following command, you can switch into another Namespace instead of specifying it for each kubectl command.

Linux/MacOS: 

kubectl config set-context $(kubectl config current-context) --namespace <namespace>

Windows: 

kubectl config current-context
SET KUBE_CONTEXT=[Insert output of the upper command]
kubectl config set-context %KUBE_CONTEXT% --namespace <namespace>

Some prefer to explicitly select the Namespace for each kubectl command by adding --namespace <namespace> or -n <namespace>. Others prefer helper tools like kubens.