When containerizing a multi-component application for Google Kubernetes Engine, what is the best practice?

When containerizing a multi-component application for Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE), the best practice is to package every component in separate containers and implement health probes. This approach embraces the microservices architecture, where each component can be developed, deployed, and scaled independently.

By containing each component in its own container, you can leverage Kubernetes' powerful orchestration capabilities to manage the lifecycle of each microservice effectively. This separation allows for better resource allocation, as different components often have varying requirements for CPU and memory, and individual containers can be scaled independently based on demand.

Implementing health probes further enhances the reliability of the application. Kubernetes can automatically monitor the health of the containers through liveness and readiness probes, which ensures that unhealthy containers can be restarted and that traffic is only sent to containers that are ready to serve requests. This results in higher availability and resilience of the application.

In contrast, bundling the entire application in a single container may simplify initial deployment but leads to challenges in scaling, maintenance, and updating individual components. Similarly, using scripts to orchestrate launches within one container or creating a single container with a script as an entrypoint limits the benefits of Kubernetes’ orchestration capabilities, compromise the independent management of components, and could create a mon