Kubernetes has been around for a while and it has made leaps and bounds in recent years. It was originally developed by Google as part of their internal infrastructure – and today Kubernetes has become the de-facto standard for container orchestration.

So what is this thing? And why should you care about using it? Let’s explore.

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Open Source System

Kubernetes is an open-source system that automates the process of building, deploying, and managing applications – especially microservices. If you ever did something with Docker then you know that two main things need to be configured: the containers themselves and how they get deployed on different machines. It can be tedious to manage all of this by hand. Kubernetes takes care of that for you, so you can focus on simply deploying your app.

Kubernetes is not just open-source software, but it’s also an open ecosystem. Many vendors are offering different services that integrate well with Kubernetes – and you can also find a lot of 3rd party tools that already work with it out-of-the-box.

Role-Based Access Control

Kubernetes has a built-in Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) mechanism which you can use to control who has access to what. Security is definitely something you should be concerned about when it comes to deploying your app on an open-source application. Kubernetes takes that into account and makes sure that only authorized requests, via role-based access control (RBAC), can be executed on the API server. This means that you can grant only the necessary permissions to the people who need them.

The RBAC mechanism also has a hierarchical structure, so you can define access rules both at the API server level and also for Kubernetes objects. You can control who can create and update API objects like pods, services, deployments, and replicas. You can define access to webhooks, for integrations with CI/CD systems. You can also define access to Kubernetes namespaces and manage user privileges at the namespace level.

Highly Scalable

Kubernetes was built from day one to be able to handle a large number of containers – and that is what it does best. It can be easily scaled on demand due to its declarative configuration, scaling out is just a matter of spinning up more containers, and scaling in is just a matter of removing some. You can also add or remove instances from the load balancer at any time.

On the other hand, scaling down is also important – especially if your app starts getting slow due to the increased load. With Kubernetes, you can easily scale down pods without having to wait for them to stop gracefully – which could take minutes or hours depending on how your app is coded. You can do that by simply changing the number of replicas in the Pod descriptor.

Declarative Configuration

Kubernetes was designed to be declarative, not imperative. This means that you define what you want to have instead of describing how something needs to be achieved. It is much more efficient in the long run because it does not require any additional code or scripts executed at specific times during the deployment process. It also makes it easier to visualize the whole process of deployment because everything can be described in one place – in a single file/s.

It is also easy to understand what needs to be done when you design your app in a declarative way, for example by splitting it into smaller pieces that are tightly coupled. Kubernetes can then be used to manage each piece independently, and the overall process of deployment will be much more straightforward.

Built-in Orchestration

Kubernetes has some built-in tools that help you with orchestration as well as automation. These tools include replication controllers, endpoints controllers, pods, and services. They are all lightweight controllers, which means you can run them without having to start any other processes on your machine. This way, Kubernetes can launch everything you need to deploy your app automatically – based on the configuration file that you provide.

All these controllers are designed for specific tasks and they work best together, but each of them can also be used separately. They can also be created by external contributors or vendors with specific needs, so you can find plenty of open-source controllers on Github.

In a Kubernetes cluster, you have master components and agent components. The master contains the main API server, scheduler, controller manager component, while the agent runs the kubelet service along with other helper daemons/controllers to handle tasks like logging or container management. Both master and agents are lightweight, so you can run multiple instances of them on the same machine.

Management and Flexibility

This is a management tool, and it can be used for deploying and managing your apps in the cloud or on-premises. Using Kubernetes, you can deploy any app regardless of its programming language or framework – as long as it follows the 12-factor guidelines, it will work with Kubernetes.

Kubernetes also leverages existing components, like Docker, to run your apps, so it is platform agnostic. You can choose the right hosting environment for your app (e.g. AWS, Google Cloud, Azure), and then use Kubernetes to deploy it there without having to worry about the hosting provider incompatibilities.

The way you manage containers is also a big advantage of using Kubernetes – you don’t have to run any other processes on the servers where your containers are deployed. You can deploy multiple containers per server, and they will all be managed by Kubernetes without any additional resources or overhead.

Kubernetes is also flexible, and it can be configured using multiple methods. You can either use the official configuration file (kubernetes/examples/config-rb.yml), or you can define your own descriptor that describes pods, containers, and other components in a more efficient way.

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Therefore, Kubernetes is an excellent solution if you need to manage containerized applications at scale, and it’s also a good option if you want to maintain agility and speed in your software delivery process. Kubernetes is also a good option if you want to maintain agility and speed in your software delivery process.

It’s easy to understand what needs to be done when you design your app in a declarative way, and Kubernetes has some built-in tools that help with orchestration as well as automation.

Source: Plato Data Intelligence: PlatoData.io