GitHub Actions Certification

Continuous Integration with GitHub Actions

Project Status Meeting 3

Welcome to the third Project Status Meeting. This update covers our recent workflow refactoring, deployment prerequisites, and a primer on Kubernetes fundamentals.

Workflow Refactoring: Jobs vs. Service Containers

By decoupling workloads into dedicated job and service containers, we have achieved:

  • Isolated processing: Batch tasks no longer compete with live services.
  • Reduced database load: Production database performance improved significantly.
  • Enhanced reliability: Scheduled jobs now complete without conflicts.

Note

Using separate containers for one-off jobs helps maintain consistent performance for core microservices.

Deployment Requirements

Before advancing to the staging and production phases, ensure the following components are in place:

RequirementDescriptionExample Command
Container RegistryCentralized storage for versioned Docker imagesdocker push registry.example.com/myapp:1.0.0
CI/CD PipelineAutomated build, test, and deployment workflowsGitHub Actions, GitLab CI, or Jenkins
Configuration FilesKubernetes manifests or Helm chartsdeployment.yaml, service.yaml, values.yaml
Cluster Accesskubeconfig and RBAC roles configuredkubectl config use-context staging-cluster

Warning

Verify your kubeconfig context before running kubectl apply to avoid unintended cluster changes.

Kubernetes Fundamentals

Understanding these core Kubernetes resources will streamline our deployment process:

Resource TypePurposeExample CLI
PodSmallest deployable unitkubectl run nginx --image=nginx
DeploymentDeclarative updates and scaling of podskubectl create deployment web --image=myapp
ServiceExposes pods internally or externallykubectl expose deployment web --port=80
JobRuns batch or one-time taskskubectl create job migrate-db --image=alpine

For a deeper dive, refer to Kubernetes Basics.

Next Steps

Alice’s team will finalize manifest files, conduct staging tests, and prepare for the production rollout. In our next meeting, we’ll review deployment logs, performance metrics, and plan the final cutover.

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