An Introduction Into Kubernetes Networking – Part 1

Cisco Live Barcelona recently took place and there was a lot of focus on Kubernetes, including the launch of the Cisco Hyperflex Application Platform(HXAP). Cisco HXAP delivers an integrated container-as-a-service platform that simplifies provisioning and ongoing operations for Kubernetes across cloud, data center, and edge.

With every new technology comes a learning curve and Kubernetes is no exception.

1. Container to Container Communications

The smallest object we can deploy in Kubernetes is the pod, however within each pod you may want to run multiple containers. A common usecase for this is a helper where a secondary container helps a primary container with tasks such as pushing and pulling data.

Container to container communication within a K8s pod uses either the shared file system or the localhost network interface.

We can test this by using the K8s provided example, two-container-pod, and modifying it slightly.

https://k8s.io/examples/pods/two-container-pod.yaml

When we deploy this pod we can see two containers, “nginx-container” and “debian-container“. I’ve created two separate options to test, one with a shared volume, and one without a shared volume but using localhost instead.

Shared Volume Communication

When we use the shared volume, Kubernetes will create a volume in the pod which will be mapped to both containers. In the “nginx-container”, files from the shared volume will map to the “/usr/share/nginx/html” directory, while in the “debian-container” files will map to the “/pod-data” directory. When we update the “index.html” file from the Debian container, this change will also be reflected in our Nginx container, thereby providing a mechanism for our helper (Debian) to push and pull data to and from Nginx.

Localhost Communication

In the second scenario shared volume has been removed from the pod and a message has been written in the “index.html” file which only resides in the Nginx container. As previously mentioned, the other method for multiple containers to communicate within a pod is through the localhost interface and the port number to which they’re listening.

In this example Nginx is listening on port 80, therefore when we run the “curl https://localhost” command from the Debian container we can see that the “index.html“ page is served back to us from Nginx.

Here’s the “nginx-container” showing the contents of the “index.html” file.

Confirmation that we’re receiving the file when we Curl from the “debian-container”

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Ten Technologies to Consider for Contact Centers in 2017: Part 2

Hybrid Services – Integrating cloud services with existing on-premises customer care services is currently a hot topic, not just in the contact center domain but throughout Unified Collaboration and other IT groups.   Hybrid Services architectures allow our Cisco IT teams to deploy some of the latest cloud technology, while knowing the investment made in the present premise environment can be leveraged.  Currently here in Cisco IT we’re exploring several options for our internal contact centers.

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Ten Technologies to Consider for Contact Centers in 2017

The line made famous by the Rolling Stones, “Time waits for no one”, is especially true for technology. A little over two years ago I wrote a blog titled “Ten Things to Consider for a Better Contact Center”. While all of the items mentioned are still relevant, the Contact Center technology space has gained significant investment in new capabilities since that blog was published. Contact Centers have expanded their technology reach and with that comes the importance of understanding how new technology improves customer service. Properly understanding and implementing the various new offerings may help to greatly improve the widely held corporate goal of increasing customer service, both quality and satisfaction.

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Ten Things to Consider for a Better Contact Center

The contact center is the front line for handling customer inquiries. Corporations large and small understand that it’s important to respond to inquiries quickly and effectively. A lot of money is budgeted for customer care departments to meet this growing need and respond via one or more customer contact channels. As evidenced by many stories in the news recently, one small, wrong move and your company could end up on the wrong side of a social media story gone viral. How many times have you heard of someone tweeting about being stuck in a plane on the runway for a few hours? It can make the nightly news and stir up bad publicity for the airline, potentially resulting in customer service headaches for months or years to come.

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