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Introduction to ConfigMaps

Explore how ConfigMaps in Kubernetes separate application code from configurations, allowing easier management across development, testing, and production environments. Understand how this decoupling simplifies updates, enhances reuse, and improves security by applying configurations dynamically at runtime.

Most business applications have two components:

  • The application

  • The configuration

Simple examples include web servers such as NGINX or httpd (Apache). Neither is much use without a configuration. However, as soon as we add a configuration, they become very useful.

In the past, we packaged the application and the configuration into a single easy-to-deploy unit. We brought this pattern with us as we moved into the early days of cloud-native microservices. However, it’s an anti-pattern, and modern applications should be decoupled from their configurations. Doing this brings the following benefits:

  • Reuse

  • Simpler development and testing

  • Simpler and less disruptive changes ...