What is the equivalent for depends_on in kubernetes

That’s the beauty of Docker Compose and Docker Swarm… Their simplicity.

We came across this same Kubernetes shortcoming when deploying the ELK stack.
We solved it by using a side-car (initContainer), which is just another container in the same pod thats run first, and when it’s complete, kubernetes automatically starts the [main] container. We made it a simple shell script that is in loop until Elasticsearch is up and running, then it exits and Kibana’s container starts.

Below is an example of a side-car that waits until Grafana is ready.

Add this ‘initContainer’ block just above your other containers in the Pod:

spec:
      initContainers:
      - name: wait-for-grafana
        image: darthcabs/tiny-tools:1
        args:
        - /bin/bash
        - -c
        - >
          set -x;
          while [[ "$(curl -s -o /dev/null -w ''%{http_code}'' http://grafana:3000/login)" != "200" ]]; do 
            echo '.'
            sleep 15;
          done
      containers:
          .
          .
  (your other containers)
          .
          .