The cluster can be interacted with using the kubectl CLI. This is the main approach used for managing Kubernetes and the applications running on top of the cluster.

Details of the cluster and it's health status can be discovered via kubectl cluster-info

To view the nodes in the cluster using kubectl get nodes

This command shows all nodes that can be used to host our applications. Now we have only one node, and we can see that it’s status is ready (it is ready to accept applications for deployment).

With a running Kubernetes cluster, containers can now be deployed.

Using kubectl run, it's allows containers to be deployed onto the cluster - kubectl run first-deployment --image=katacoda/docker-http-server --port=80

The status of the deployment can be discovered via the running Pods - kubectl get pods

Once the container is running it can be exposed via different networking options, depending on requirements. On possible solution is NodePort, that provides a dynamic port to a container.

kubectl expose deployment first-deployment --port=80 --type=NodePort

The command below finds the allocated port and executes a HTTP request.

export PORT=$(kubectl get svc first-deployment -o go-template='{{range.spec.ports}}{{if .nodePort}}{{.nodePort}}{{"\n"}}{{end}}{{end}}') curl host01:$PORT

The results is the container that processed the request.

The Kubernetes dashboard allows you to view your applications in a UI. In this deployment, the dashboard has been made available on port 8080.

The URL to the dashboard is https://[[HOST_SUBDOMAIN]]-8080-[[KATACODA_HOST]].environments.katacoda.com/ui/