Minikube vs Docker Client vs Kops vs Kubeadm

Edward: I just showed you how to use minikube or the docker client to get a kubernetes cluster. Now let's talk a little bit about auto tools to run a production cluster. There are multiple tools to install a kubernetes cluster. I showed you how to use minikube and docker client. Those are for local installs. If you want a production cluster you will need different tooling. Minikube and docker client are great for local setups but not for real clusters. They spin up only a one-node cluster for development and testing. Kops and kubeadm are tools to spin up a production cluster. You don't need both tools, just one of them. On AWS, the best tools is kops. At some point AWS EKS, the host of Kubernetes, will also be available. At that point this will probably be the preferred option. With the hosted solution you don't need to maintain the masters. With kops you own all the infrastructure so you also need to maintain a masters. For other installs, or if you cannot get kops to work, you can use kubeadm. Kubeadm is an alternative approach, and kops is still recommended on AWS. You also have AWS integrations with kops automatically. Kubeadm is a more generic tool. So it's an alternative approach if you're not on AWS or if you cannot get it working, but I still recommend you to use lops of you are on AWS because you will get integrations with IAM and a load balancer as well. The kubeadm lectures can be found at the end of this course, and let you spin up a cluster on DigitalOcean. Because the focus on this course is really on minikube and kops I just put the lectures at the end because they provide you an alternative way of setting of a cluster. If you have AWS you should always try AWS first. If you're going to do bare metal or another cloud provider then kubeadm can be a good alternative.