Kubernetes is a solution specifically designed to automate container orchestration while ensuring maximum efficiency, agility, and flexibility. It enables businesses to manage and move their containerized applications across different cloud providers and on-premise infrastructure without extensive retooling.
What is Kubernetes?
Kubernetes is an open-source container orchestration platform. In this context, container orchestration is the process of automating containerized applications’ deployment, management, scaling, and networking.
The platform, originally developed by Google and now maintained by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF), is designed to manage and orchestrate containers, which are lightweight, portable units of software that can be run consistently across different environments.
It offers a range of features that help automate and manage the deployment of containerized applications, including automatic scaling, load balancing, self-healing, and rolling updates. Additionally, the platform provides a modular architecture that allows it to be extended and customized with plugins and add-ons, such as Docker, Prometheus, and Istio.
Besides its technical capabilities, Kubernetes boasts a vibrant and growing ecosystem of users, contributors, and vendors that support its development and adoption. These contributions include tools and services like Helm and Kubectl and managed services providers like Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Platform (GCP), and Microsoft Azure.
Why Use Kubernetes?
With Kubernetes, businesses can streamline their application deployment and management processes, leading to greater efficiency and agility across their IT operations. Other notable benefits include:
- Scalability: Kubernetes helps you to scale your applications both ways depending on the changes in demand. The automated features can handle sudden traffic spikes and other workload changes without manual intervention.
- Flexibility: Besides automation, it features tools for monitoring, logging, security, and other native-level features, which makes it adaptable to business-specific needs. It also supports a wide array of container runtimes, operating systems, and programming languages.
- Portability: This aspect enables businesses to run their applications consistently across different environments, such as on-premise data centers, public clouds, and hybrid clouds. Beyond making it easy for companies to move applications between different infrastructure providers, they can also switch service providers without additional redesigning or restructuring efforts.
- Robust Ecosystem: Thanks to its open-source model, the platform has an ever-growing ecosystem of tools, plugins, and services that enhance and extend the possibilities and business use cases.
- Integrations: It supports integrations with popular CI/CD tools like Jenkins, GitLab, and Travis CI, logging and monitoring tools like Prometheus and Grafana, and storage solutions like NAS and block storage.