Kops stands for “Kubernetes Operations”. Kops is the easiest way to get a production grade Kubernetes cluster up and running.

kops helps you in the following for production-grade, highly available, Kubernetes clusters from the command line.

• Create Kubernetes clusters
• Ddestroy Kubernetes clusters
• Upgrade Kubernetes clusters and
• Maintain Kubernetes clusters

Here is the Kops supported platform as per the June 2018.

1. AWS (Amazon Web Services) – officially supported
2. GCE – beta support
3. VMware vSphere – alpha

Features of kops

Here are the list of features of kops

• Automates the provisioning of Kubernetes clusters in AWS, GCE & VMware vSphere
• Deploys Highly Available (HA) Kubernetes Masters
• Built on a state-sync model for dry-runs and automatic idempotency
• Ability to generate Terraform
• Supports custom Kubernetes add-ons
• Command line autocompletion
• YAML Manifest Based API Configuration
• Templating and dry-run modes for creating Manifests
• Choose from eight different CNI Networking providers out-of-the-box
• Supports upgrading from kube-up
• Capability to add containers, as hooks, and files to nodes via a cluster manifest

How to install kops in Mac using Homebrew?
$ brew update && brew install kops

How to install kops in Linux?
$ curl -LO https://github.com/kubernetes/kops/releases/download/$(curl -s https://api.github.com/repos/kubernetes/kops/releases/latest | grep tag_name | cut -d '"' -f 4)/kops-linux-amd64
$ chmod +x kops-linux-amd64
$ sudo mv kops-linux-amd64 /usr/local/bin/kops

How to verify kops installation?
$ kops