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Kubernetes

What Is Kubernetes?

Kubernetes (often abbreviated as K8s) is an open-source platform for automating the deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications. Originally developed by Google, it is now maintained by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) and has become the industry standard for container orchestration.

Why Kubernetes Exists

As organizations moved from monolithic applications to microservices running in containers (like Docker), managing hundreds or thousands of containers manually became unmanageable. Kubernetes solves this by acting as an intelligent control plane—it monitors the health of your applications, scales them up or down based on demand, restarts failed containers, and rolls out updates without downtime.

Core Features

  • Automated Scheduling: Deploys containers to the best available nodes based on resource availability.
  • Self-Healing: Automatically restarts failed containers, replaces unresponsive instances, and ensures the desired state is maintained.
  • Horizontal Scaling: Dynamically scales applications up or down based on CPU/memory usage or custom metrics.
  • Load Balancing & Service Discovery: Routes traffic to the right container instances and makes services discoverable within the cluster.
  • Rolling Updates & Rollbacks: Safely updates applications without downtime and reverts to a previous state if something goes wrong.

How It Works

Kubernetes organizes containers into pods, the smallest deployable units. These pods run on nodes (virtual or physical machines), and the entire system is managed by a control plane that continuously monitors the health and performance of workloads. Developers interact with Kubernetes through a declarative API, describing the desired state, while Kubernetes takes care of enforcing it.

Why It Matters

Kubernetes is the backbone of modern cloud-native infrastructure. It enables teams to ship software faster, with more reliability, and at scale. Whether you’re deploying a few microservices or operating a global-scale SaaS platform, Kubernetes brings structure and automation to complex container environments.