As a technical writer, I often need to work with different operating systems and environments to test applications. It would be a nuisance if I needed a separate machine for every test case. Happily, it’s possible to run multiple operating systems on a single machine. In this tutorial, I’ll explain how to create a Linux virtual machine (VM), using two tools: VirtualBox and Vagrant. VirtualBox provides the virtualization and Vagrant automates the creation and configuration of virtual machines.

One of the many advantages of Helm is that it gives you a one-command installation method for many popular apps. It would take a while to create all the necessary Pods, Services, and ConfigMaps manually. In this tutorial, I’ll guide you through a three-step process for installing WordPress with Helm. Although this isn’t necessarily something you’d want to do in the real world, it’s good for understanding the basics. I was very excited when I first got this working.

So far in this series, we’ve created some very simple Kubernetes applications. If you built something more complicated, with dozens of manifests, it would be a faff to share it with other people. Those other people might also struggle to understand and tweak your configuration. With a Helm Chart, you can define, install, and upgrade even the most complex Kubernetes application. For instance, I currently work for a CI/CD company which offers a self-hosted Kubernetes-based version of its product.

Last time, we created a simple manifest to launch a Kubernetes deployment. Although we found a Pod lurking in minikube dashboard, we couldn’t actually see anything interesting. In this tutorial, we’ll extend that manifest to include a Service and make the app available through a web browser. As before, you’ll need minikube and associated tools, all of which are detailed in an earlier post. Exposing your Pod To make the Pod containing the app visible, you need to expose the container’s port.

In my previous post, I showed you how to create a Kubernetes deployment imperatively at the command line. Although this is a quick method, it’s not a good choice for real-world scenarios. You need code that’s properly documented and version controlled. Now we’re going to use a declarative approach. In this tutorial, I’ll show you how to create a simple Kubernetes deployment with a manifest file. As before, I’ll be using minikube on my local machine.

Although it only takes a minute to create a Jekyll site, you could easily spend a large chunk of your life installing the environment. A query on the Write the Docs forum prompted me to share an easier way. In this post, I’ll show you how to create a Jekyll site in three steps, using the free Docker Community Edition and Bret Fisher’s images. Step 1: Install Docker First, you’ll need Docker installed on your local machine.

One of my first tasks as a technical writer was to document a Kubernetes-based release orchestration tool. Not daunting at all. At that time, I could provide a vague description of Kubernetes, but hadn’t the foggiest idea what it actually looked like. There aren’t many opportunities in life to just play with a Kubernetes cluster - at least, not without spending thousands of dollars on AWS. Fortunately, I discovered minikube, a free solution for installing a single-node cluster Kubernetes on your local machine.

Introduction In the olden days, it would take hours to install and configure a web server on a local machine. It was especially fiddly if you wanted to recreate a specific environment for testing purposes. Happily, Docker has made our lives much easier. In this tutorial, we’ll package a simple website and nginx server as a Docker image. Anyone with Docker Desktop installed can then run that site in seconds without having to set up anything.

Introduction Jekyll is a beautifully simple way to build and deploy a static website. Well, it’s simple once you’ve got everything installed and configured. Unless you’re already confident with Ruby, it’ll probably take you most of a soggy weekend to get it running consistently. Although the local installation is working well for me, I’m nervous it’ll break. I’m already encountering a few Ruby conflicts with other projects. Resolving those issues isn’t my idea of fun.

In this demo, I’ll show you Hypothesis, a free Chrome extension for managing web snippets and annotations. It also syncs with Readwise.io, which means you can keep a wide range of content all in one place.