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Brian Sunter

How to Use GPT-3 to Learn Kubernetes

Using AI to generate study materials and explain complex Kubernetes concepts.

Cover image for How to Use GPT-3 to Learn Kubernetes

GPT-3 is a powerful learning tool. I’ve been meaning to learn Kubernetes in depth, so I used my OpenAI GPT-3 Plugin to help generate study materials.

My process: ask GPT-3 to create high-level overviews, then ask follow-up questions to get more details. Prompts (in bold) are followed by GPT-3’s responses.

This guide assumes basic familiarity with GPT-3. Learn more about GPT-3 here.

OpenAI basics

From the OpenAI docs:

Prompt: What is an OpenAI completion?

Response: An OpenAI completion is a machine learning model that is trained to predict the next word in a sentence. It’s like “autocomplete” for everything.

Prompt design tips

Our models can do everything from generating original stories to performing complex text analysis. Because they can do so many things, you have to be explicit in describing what you want. Showing, not just telling, is often the secret to a good prompt.

Show and tell: Make it clear what you want through instructions, examples, or both. If you want the model to rank items alphabetically or classify sentiment, show it what you want.

Temperature settings:

  • Lower values: repeatable results with one right answer
  • Higher values: more diverse, creative results

Troubleshooting:

  • Is it clear what the intended generation should be?
  • Are there enough examples?
  • Did you check your examples for mistakes?

Example: Text generation

Prompt: Brainstorm some ideas combining VR and fitness

Response:

  1. A VR fitness game that simulates obstacle courses to make working out more engaging
  2. A VR system used with real fitness equipment for immersive workouts
  3. A VR fitness app with customized workout programs based on goals and ability
  4. A VR fitness game where users compete in virtual races
  5. Virtual reality environments for group fitness classes from anywhere

See the OpenAI docs for more.

Learning Kubernetes

Overview

Prompt: Explain what Kubernetes software is

Response: Kubernetes is a system for managing containerized applications across a cluster of servers. It provides a platform for automating deployment, scaling, and operation of application containers.

Prompt: What is a containerized software application in the context of Kubernetes?

Response: Applications in Kubernetes are typically packaged as Docker images, which can be run in Kubernetes pods.

Prompt: Why is Kubernetes important?

Response: Kubernetes is important because it is a portable, extensible system for managing containerized workloads and services that facilitates both declarative configuration and automation. It has a wide range of features including container orchestration, service discovery and load balancing, storage provisioning, and secrets and configuration management.

Prompt: What technologies are similar to Kubernetes?

Response: Apache Mesos and Docker Swarm.

Prompt: What are the top five most important things to know about Kubernetes?

Response:

  1. Kubernetes is a portable, extensible open-source platform for managing containerized workloads and services
  2. It has a large, rapidly growing ecosystem
  3. Kubernetes is hosted by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF)
  4. It is a production-ready platform that is constantly evolving
  5. Kubernetes is open source and contributions are welcome

Prompt: What are the components that make up Kubernetes?

Response: Pods, Replication Controllers, Services, Volumes, Secrets, Config Maps, Jobs, Daemon Sets, and Stateful Sets.

Understanding pods

Prompt: Explain Kubernetes pods to a programmer who is used to process-based containers

Response: In process-based containers, each container is isolated from the others and has its own process running inside it. This makes it easy to run multiple containers on a single host, as each container does not interfere with the others.

Kubernetes pods are different in that they allow multiple containers to run together in a single pod. This means that the containers in a pod can share data and communicate with each other. This can be useful for microservices that need to communicate with each other.

Advanced Kubernetes guide

Prompt: Write advanced guide to Kubernetes

Response: This guide covers:

  • Kubernetes Basics: Introduction to the toolset
  • Kubernetes Services: Exposing applications to the outside world
  • Kubernetes Storage: Persisting data with Storage Classes and Volumes
  • Kubernetes Networking: Connecting your applications
  • Kubernetes Security: Best practices for securing clusters
  • Kubernetes Monitoring: Recommendations for monitoring
  • Kubernetes Maintenance: Upgrading versions and backing up data

Kubernetes architecture

Prompt: Write guide to Kubernetes Basics

Response: Kubernetes is composed of these main modules:

  • kube-apiserver: REST API for Kubernetes, front-end for the control plane
  • kube-controller-manager: Runs the replication, endpoint, namespace, and service account controllers
  • kube-scheduler: Automatically schedules containers on nodes
  • kube-proxy: Provides network proxy services
  • etcd: Stores persistent cluster state

Supporting modules:

  • cAdvisor: Collects container performance data
  • kubelet: Runs containers on nodes
  • kube-dns: Provides DNS services

Deployment patterns

Deployments: Define replicas of your application. Kubernetes deploys across specified replicas and automatically updates when you change settings.

Jobs: Define tasks to run once. Create a Job resource, Kubernetes runs it, then deletes the resource. Use CronJob for scheduled jobs.

DaemonSets: Deploy applications that need to run on every node (useful for monitoring or logging).

Kubernetes Services

Prompt: Write advanced guide to Kubernetes Services

Response: Services expose your applications to the outside world. When a Service is created, Kubernetes automatically creates a DNS entry for it.

Create a Service:

bash
kubectl create -f service.yaml

View Service info:

bash
kubectl get service my-service
kubectl describe service my-service

Quick expose without a definition file:

bash
kubectl expose deployment my-app --port=80

Kubernetes Networking

Prompt: Write advanced guide to Kubernetes Networking

Response: Kubernetes networking is based on the Container Network Interface (CNI). Key services:

  • IP address management: Allocate IPs for containers from a single pool
  • DNS service: Resolve hostnames to IP addresses for service discovery
  • Load balancing: Distribute traffic using round-robin or least-connected

Connecting applications:

  • Service objects: Expose pods as a network service via DNS name or IP
  • Ingress objects: Route external traffic, provide SSL termination
  • Network policies: Control which pods can communicate (like firewalls)

Kubernetes Security

Prompt: Write advanced guide to Kubernetes Security

Response: Best practices for securing your cluster:

  1. Role-Based Access Control (RBAC): Control who accesses what resources using roles, subjects, and resources
  2. Network Segmentation: Isolate application traffic from database traffic to limit attack damage
  3. TLS/SSL: Encrypt communication between cluster components
  4. Firewalls: Control access based on IP addresses and ports
  5. Identity and Access Management (IAM): Control who can access the API server
  6. Security Policies: Define allowed and disallowed actions
  7. Security Groups: Allow/deny traffic from specific IPs or subnets
  8. VPN: Secure communication between cluster and external clients

Kubernetes Monitoring

Prompt: Write guide to Kubernetes Monitoring

Response: Recommendations:

  1. Use Prometheus: Open-source monitoring designed for Kubernetes, scrapes metrics from API objects, auto-discovers pods
  2. Collect component metrics: Monitor API server, scheduler, kubelet to understand cluster health
  3. Collect application metrics: Monitor your apps to troubleshoot issues
  4. Use Grafana: Visualize Prometheus metrics with Kubernetes-specific dashboards
  5. Set up alerts: Use Alertmanager to notify via email, Slack, or PagerDuty

Practical tutorials

Pod YAML example

Prompt: Write example of Kubernetes pod YAML files

Response:

yaml
apiVersion: v1
kind: Pod
metadata:
  name: mypod
  labels:
    app: myapp
spec:
  containers:
    - name: mycontainer
      image: busybox
      command: ["echo", "hello world"]

Deploy Node.js on Kubernetes

Prompt: Write tutorial on how to deploy Node.js application on Kubernetes

Response:

Prerequisites: Minikube, kubectl, Docker

  1. Create app.js:
javascript
console.log("Hello, world!");
  1. Create Dockerfile:
dockerfile
FROM node:10
WORKDIR /app
COPY app.js .
CMD ["node", "app.js"]
  1. Build and deploy:
bash
docker build -t my-node-app .
minikube start
kubectl run my-node-app --image=my-node-app --image-pull-policy=Never
kubectl expose pod my-node-app --type=NodePort
kubectl describe service my-node-app | grep NodePort
  1. Access at http://<Minikube IP>:<NodePort>

Production hosting

Prompt: How should I host Kubernetes in production?

Response: Options include:

  • Managed services: Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE), Amazon EKS, Azure AKS
  • On-premise: Install using Kubeadm

Setting up Kubernetes on AWS

Prompt: Write tutorial on how to set up Kubernetes on AWS

Response: Steps to set up a cluster on AWS:

  1. Create an AWS VPC with CIDR block 10.0.0.0/16
  2. Create a subnet with CIDR block 10.0.0.0/24
  3. Create a route table with route 0.0.0.0/0 to Internet Gateway
  4. Create a security group allowing SSH and Kubernetes traffic
  5. Launch EC2 instances
  6. Configure DNS and generate SSL certificates
  7. Deploy Kubernetes components

EKS CloudFormation example

Prompt: Write CloudFormation YAML file to set up AWS managed Kubernetes EKS cluster

Response:

yaml
Resources:
  EksCluster:
    Type: AWS::EKS::Cluster
    Properties:
      Name: eks-cluster
      RoleArn: !GetAtt EksServiceRole.Arn
      Version: "1.15"
      VpcConfig:
        SubnetIds:
          - !Ref PrivateSubnet1
          - !Ref PrivateSubnet2
        SecurityGroupIds:
          - !Ref EksSecurityGroup

Config files

Prompt: What config files are required to setup Kubernetes?

Response: Kubernetes config files are written in YAML or JSON and define:

  • Objects: Pods, services, deployments, replica sets
  • Parameters: CPU/memory limits, network settings, security policies

See the Kubernetes documentation for details.