What is Kubernetes?
Kubernetes is an open-source container orchestration platform. It was initially developed by Google in 2014 for the automation, deployment, scaling and management of containerized applications. This is backed up by major companies like Google, AWS, IBM, Intel, Microsoft and Cisco. Additionally, it has now established itself as the standard for the project run by Cloud Native Computing Foundation. It is an extensible, scalable platform designed for declarative configuration and automation processes. It has impacted and grown its ecosystem in the last decade, where Kubernetes services, support, and tools are mainly available. The name Kubernetes originates from a Greek word that means helmsman or pilot. It is also widely known as K8s, an abbreviation used to denote the eight letters between the K and the S.
Since the project first launched, there has been an enormous increase in the usage and popularity of Kubernetes architecture and services, and deservingly so. Kubernetes makes it easy to deploy, manage, automate and use applications in a cloud-native architecture. However, it is not limited to simply that. Over the years, let’s understand why the use of Kubernetes has gained a huge audience and clientele.
Complete Cloud Agnostic Platform:
K8s runs on complete cloud-native platforms, which means that the entire structure is easy to migrate, design and share the containerized applications within your organization. All of the processes are on-premise, and one no longer needs to completely re-think the infrastructure based on the changing requirements.
Service Discovery & Load Balancing:
Kubernetes can monitor and disclose a container using a DNS name or IP address. When traffic to the container is high, it can load the balance and distribute the network traffic to stabilize the deployment.
Automatic Rollouts & Rollbacks:
You can specify your used containers’ desired state through Kubernetes and automate it to change the actual status to the desired state with a controlled value with minimal effort.
Security & Healing:
K8s restart the failing containers, replace, or even kill containers that do not respond to your user-defined health tests. Set standards or automated regulations to ensure better efficiency and performance within these clusters and environments.
Privacy and Configuration management:
Kubernetes allows users to store, manage and secure sensitive information, such as passwords and SSH keys. One can use and update app secrets and configurations without re-creating your container images or revealing secrets in your stack configuration.
Cost-Effective:
K8s features easy resource allocation, management and scalability, and monitoring the usage to restrict overuse strictly. It also maximizes the use of hardware and resources to run your organization’s apps, allowing a proper utilization of the sources available, ultimately reducing the consumption and cost.
Faster Enhanced Performance:
The main idea of K8s is to deliver a PaaS that allows a hardware abstraction layer for all your development and host teams. With quick and efficient resource management, the developers can have easy access to scale and add their resources when required while also taking full advantage of the tools to automate, deploy, test and monitor each process.
How Does Kubernetes Architecture Work?
Before we understand the architecture and how the process works, here are some terminologies that will give you a clear picture of the major components of Kubernetes architecture.
Control plane: A set of control systems that control the Kubernetes nodes and the core where all the assigned tasks begin.
Nodes: These devices perform the requested functions assigned to the control aircraft.
Pod: A collection of containers embedded in one location. All containers in the pod feature an IP address, IPC, hostname, and other resources. Pods network and storage from the bottom container allow us to quickly move containers to clusters.
Repetition control: controls how many identical pod copies should work somewhere in the collection.
Service: This separates job descriptions from pods. Kubernetes’ service proxies automatically detect service requests from the right pod — regardless of where it goes in the collection or are modified.
Kubelet: This service works on nodes, reads the displayed containers and ensures that the specified containers are activated and running.
Kubectl: Kubernetes command-line setting tool.
The Kubernetes Process:
A cluster is a working Kubernetes deployment. You can categorize the Kubernetes clusters into two parts: a control plane and nodes. Each node is its environment and can be physical or completely virtual. Each node uses pods, usually built into containers. The control plane maintains the cluster’s desired state, controlling aspects like which applications to run and which container images to use. Kubernetes works on an operating system interacting and working with container pods. The Kubernetes control plane also takes instructions from the controller. Usually, the DevOps team and transmits those instructions to the computing machines. This process aligns with a wide range of resources to automatically determine which node best suits the task, then assign resources and pods to that node to accomplish the requested task.
From an infrastructure standpoint, there is little change in handling containers. Your container control is highly customizable, giving you better access to monitoring, maintaining, replicating and allocating the clusters without manually going through each separate container or node. You need to set up Kubernetes to define nodes, pods, and containers within them. One of Kubernetes’ key advantages is that it operates on a wide range of infrastructure, as we have mentioned before. So, where you run Kubernetes is up to you. Whether you prefer servers, virtual machines, public cloud providers, private clouds, and mixed cloud environments.
DevOps & Kubernetes
Developing, deploying and managing modern applications requires a different approach in contrast to the past methods. This is where DevOps came to be. Instead of manually taking care of each line of code, DevOps speeds up how the idea goes from development to implementation. At its core, DevOps relies on custom performance and positioning throughout the application life cycle.
Containers support an integrated development, delivery, and automation environment and make it easy to move applications between development, testing, and production areas. The primary element of DevOps is continuous integration and deployment (CI / CD). It allows one to deliver apps faster and more efficiently while ensuring high software quality through minimal human intervention. This reduces the ratio of human errors and increases the security and quality of the codes. Controlling the container life cycle with Kubernetes along the DevOps pathway helps synchronize software development and IT operations to support the CI / CD pipeline.
In Conclusion
Kubernetes clusters can span hosts across multiple cloud platforms, whether on-premise, public, private, or hybrid. It is an ideal platform for hosting cloud-native applications that require rapid scaling, like real-time data streaming. Kubernetes is not a standard PaaS system (Platform as a Service). Kubernetes operates at the container level instead of the computer hardware level.
Thus, it offers some of the most commonly used features of PaaS delivery. This includes feeds, scaling, load balancing and allows users to integrate their logging, monitoring, and warning solutions. Kubernetes provides building blocks for developer platforms but maintains user preferences and flexibility where necessary. This is exactly why it has been so impactful and will continue doing so in the foreseeable future.
