How to Integrate Podman with Kubernetes

Podman is a daemonless container engine that manages and runs OCI containers on a Linux host. Podman Desktop provides developers with a graphical user interface for effortlessly managing and interacting with containers running Windows, macOS, and Linux.

What is Podman?

Podman is an open-source graphical application, you can easily manage Kubernetes and containers from within your local environment. Podman is a container engine and tool for creating, organizing, and executing containers and container images. Containers are standardized, self-contained software packages that include application code and supporting libraries, together with all other components needed to run anywhere without requiring customization.

Why Use Podman with Kubernetes?

• Podman does not have a container orchestration management tool, such as Docker Swarm.
• In a more advanced deployment situation, when high availability, scalability, and fault tolerance are required and numerous hosts are involved.
• Podman users can employ an orchestrator like Kubernetes to manage the complexity of their workloads.
• Kubernetes manifests, specify the desired state of your cluster. It describes the pods, volumes, and other resources that Kubernetes must generate and manage.

Step-by-Step Guide to Integrating Podman with Kubernetes

Below is the step-by-step implementation of integrating Podman with Kubernetes:

Setting up Podman for Kubernetes

Step 1: Install Podman

First, you must install pdman, a daemonless container engine that you may use on your Linux system to create, manage, and execute OCI containers.

$ sudo apt-get -y install podman

Output:

Step 2: Configure Podman to Work with Kubernetes

To utilize Podman's security capabilities in a local Kubernetes cluster, use Podman as the container runtime.

$ sudo apt install podman-docker 

Output:

Using Podman to Build and Push Container Images to a Kubernetes-Compatible Registry

Step 1: Build a Container Image with Podman

Next, you need to create a Container Image with Podman

podman build -t my-image:latest

Output:

Step 2: Tag the Image for a Kubernetes-Compatible Registry

To get ready to push your image to a registry, tag it.

podman tag my-image:latest my-registry/my-image:latest

Output:

Step 3: Push the Image to the Registry

Then you can upload your tagged image to the registry.

podman push my-registry/my-image:latest

Output:

Deploying and Managing Kubernetes Workloads Using Podman

Step 1: Create Kubernetes Deployment YAML

By specifying the desired state via a deployment file, a Kubernetes deployment controls a replicated application as Kubernetes automates the high availability and scaling of your application.

apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
  name: nginx-deployment
spec:
  replicas: 2
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      app: nginx
  template:
    metadata:
      labels:
        app: nginx
    spec:
      containers:
      - name: nginx
        image: nginx:latest
        ports:
        - containerPort: 80

Step 2: Apply the Deployment to Kubernetes

Apply -f deployment when executing kubectl.yaml, Kubernetes distributes the resources indicated in the YAML file after processing it.

kubectl apply -f deployment.yaml

Output:

Step 3: Check the deployment status

Now you need to check for the the deployment status by typing the below command.

kubectl get deployments

Output:

Best Practices of Integrate Podman with Kubernetes

• Build Kubernetes YAML Files with Podman: Podman makes it possible to run containers without needing root access, improving security—particularly in environments used for development.
• Image Security: Use tools such as Podman or other third-party solutions to regularly check your photos for vulnerabilities.
• Monitoring and Logging: To improve the monitoring of containerized applications, set up Podman to record container output to files or external logging services like Fluentd or ELK Stack.
• Use Podman for Local Development: Security is improved, particularly in development environments, by using Podman to execute containers without having root capabilities.
• Efficient Image Management: By reusing layers from earlier builds, you may take advantage of Podman's caching technique to accelerate the build and deployment process.

Conclusion

In this article, we have learned about how to integrate Podman with Kubernetes. Podman intends to make it easier to migrate to and from Kubernetes by providing commands for converting existing workloads to Kubernetes-compatible YAML files (manifests). Furthermore, users can import current Kubernetes manifests into Podman, which will parse and run these workloads locally.