IBM Cloud Docs
Getting started with IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service

Getting started with IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service

IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service is a managed Kubernetes service to create your own cluster of compute hosts where you can deploy and manage containerized apps on IBM Cloud. Combined with an intuitive user experience, built-in security and isolation, and advanced tools to secure, manage, and monitor your cluster workloads, you can rapidly deliver highly available and secure containerized apps in the public cloud.

Complete the following steps to get familiar with the basics, understand the service components, create your first cluster, and deploy a starter app.

Review the basics

Get an overview of the service by reviewing the concepts, terms, and benefits. For more information, see Understanding IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service.

Already familiar with containers and IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service? Continue to the next step to prepare your account for creating clusters.

Prepare your account

To set up your IBM Cloud account so that you can create clusters, see Preparing your account to create clusters.

If you've already prepared your account and you're ready to create a cluster, continue to the next step.

Create a cluster environment strategy

Review the decision points in the Creating a cluster environment strategy doc to begin designing your setup.

Not sure where to start? Try following a tutorial in the next step.

Create a cluster

Follow a tutorial, or set up your own custom cluster environment. Review the following table for your deployment options.

Options for creating a cluster
Type Level Time Description
Tutorial Beginner 1 hour Follow the steps in this tutorial to create your own Virtual Private Cloud (VPC), then create an IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service cluster by using the CLI. For more information, see Create a cluster in your own Virtual Private Cloud.
Custom deployment Intermediate 1-3 hours Create a custom cluster on Classic infrastructure.
Custom deployment Intermediate 1-3 hours Create a custom cluster on VPC infrastructure.

Already have a cluster? Continue to the next step to deploy a sample app!

Deploy a sample app

After you create a cluster, deploy your first app. You can use a sample websphere-liberty Java application server that IBM provides and deploy the app to your cluster by using the Kubernetes dashboard.

  1. Select your cluster from the cluster list.

  2. Click Kubernetes dashboard.

  3. Click the Create new resource icon (+) and select the Create from form tab.

    1. Enter a name for your app, such as liberty.
    2. Enter websphere-liberty for your container image. Remember that your cluster's VPC subnet must have a public gateway so that the cluster can pull an image from DockerHub.
    3. Enter the number of pods for your app deployment, such as 1.
    4. From the Service drop-down menu, select External to create a LoadBalancer service that external users can use to access the app. Configure the external service as follows.
      • Port: 80
      • Target port: 9080
      • Protocol: TCP

  4. Click Deploy. During the deployment, the cluster downloads the websphere-liberty container image from Docker Hub and deploys the app in your cluster. Your app is exposed by a Layer 4, version 1.0 network load balancer (NLB) so that it can be accessed by other users internally or externally. For other ways to expose an app such as Ingress, see Planning in-cluster and external networking for apps.

  5. From the Pods menu, click your liberty pod and check that its status is Running.

  6. From the Services menu, click the External Endpoint of your liberty service. For example, 169.xx.xxx.xxx:80 for classic clusters or http://<hash>-<region>.lb.appdomain.cloud/ for VPC clusters. The Welcome to Liberty page is displayed.

Great job! You just deployed your first app in your Kubernetes cluster.

What's next?

Check out the curated learning paths