Product Overview: Kubernetes
Kubernetes, often abbreviated as K8s, is an open-source system designed to automate the deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications. Developed by Google and now maintained by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF), Kubernetes leverages 15 years of Google’s experience in running production workloads, combined with community-driven best practices.
What Kubernetes Does
Kubernetes groups containers that make up an application into logical units called Pods, making it easier to manage and discover these applications. It operates on a distributed cluster of nodes, managing the entire lifecycle of containerized applications, from deployment and scaling to maintenance and monitoring.
Key Features and Functionality
Automated Rollouts and Rollbacks
Kubernetes automates the rollout of changes to your application or its configuration, ensuring that the application remains healthy during the process. If any issues arise, Kubernetes can automatically rollback the changes to a previous stable state.
Service Discovery and Load Balancing
Kubernetes provides service discovery by assigning IP addresses and DNS names to Pods, enabling easy communication between them. It also handles load balancing, distributing network traffic to ensure stable deployments.
Storage Orchestration
Kubernetes allows you to automatically mount and manage various storage systems, including local storage, public cloud providers, and network storage systems like iSCSI or NFS.
Self-Healing
The platform ensures the health of your application by restarting failed containers, replacing and rescheduling containers when nodes die, and killing containers that do not respond to user-defined health checks. It also ensures that containers are not advertised to clients until they are ready to serve.
Secret and Configuration Management
Kubernetes enables the secure deployment and update of Secrets (such as passwords, OAuth tokens, and SSH keys) and application configurations without the need to rebuild container images or expose sensitive information in the stack configuration.
Horizontal Scaling
You can scale your application up or down using simple commands, a UI, or automatically based on CPU usage. This flexibility allows for efficient resource utilization and easy adaptation to changing demands.
Automatic Bin Packing
Kubernetes optimizes resource usage by automatically placing containers on nodes based on their resource requirements, ensuring high utilization and availability.
Batch Execution
In addition to managing services, Kubernetes can handle batch and Continuous Integration (CI) workloads, replacing failed containers as needed.
IPv4/IPv6 Dual-Stack
Kubernetes supports the allocation of both IPv4 and IPv6 addresses to Pods and Services, enhancing network flexibility.
Designed for Extensibility
The platform is highly extensible, allowing you to add features to your Kubernetes cluster without modifying the upstream source code.
Additional Benefits
- Planet Scale: Designed to scale without increasing your operations team, making it suitable for both local testing and global enterprise deployments.
- Run K8s Anywhere: Kubernetes is portable and can run on various infrastructures, including on-premises, hybrid, or public cloud environments, giving you the freedom to move workloads as needed.
- Interoperability: Kubernetes interacts with multiple groups of containers and provides additional services such as security, networking, and storage.
Overall, Kubernetes is a powerful tool for managing containerized applications, offering a robust set of features that automate many manual processes, ensure high availability, and provide scalable and flexible deployment options.