Kubernetes is an open, flexible, and portable open-source platform to manage containerized workloads and other services that allows for both automation and configuration in a declarative manner. It is a vast and rapidly expanding community. Kubernetes supports, services, and tools are available for all to use.
The term Kubernetes is derived from Greek which means helmsman or pilot. K8s, an abbreviation, comes from the counting of the eight letters that lie between “K” and “s”. Google open-sourced Kubernetes in 2014. Kubernetes program in 2014. Kubernetes is a combination of more than 15 years of experience with Google managing production workloads on a large scale, with the best ideas and techniques of the local community.
Moving back in time
Let’s examine the reason Kubernetes is so beneficial by going back to.
The traditional deployment era: In the beginning, companies operated applications on physical servers. There was no method to establish the boundaries of resource usage for applications running on physical servers, which resulted in resource allocation issues. For instance, if several applications are running on the same physically-based server, it could be instances when one application could consume the majority of resources, which means that other applications would perform poorly. One solution to this issue is to have each application run on a separate physical server. However, this was not scalable because resources were not being utilized, and it was costly for companies to keep several physical servers.
A time of deployment that is virtualized: In order to solve this issue to this issue, virtualization was created. It lets you operate many Virtual Machines (VMs) on one processor on a physical server. Virtualization lets applications are separated from VMs and also provides a degree of security because the data of one application can’t be accessible by another program.
Virtualization allows for better utilization of the resources on physical servers and permits greater scalability since applications can be updated or added quickly, which reduces the cost of hardware and more. Virtualization lets you present a collection of physical resources in an array of virtual machines.
Each VM is a full machine with all components including its own operating system, which is on top of the hardware virtualized.
The era of container deployment: Containers are like VMs however, they possess loose isolation properties that allow them to share their Operating System (OS) among the apps. So, they are to be light. Much like the VM, the container comes with its own filesystem and share of memory, CPU, process space, and so on. Since they are not tied to the infrastructure that they are built on and are able to be moved between cloud services or OS distributions.
Containers are becoming popular due to the fact that they can provide additional benefits for example:
- The rapid creation and deployment of applications improved the ease and effectiveness of the creation of images for containers when compared to VM image usage.
- Continuous development integration, development, and deployment allow the ability to ensure a consistent and reliable container image creation and deployment that is quick and reliable rollbacks (due to the image’s immutability).
- Dev and Ops separation of Concerns Create images for application containers during the build/release process, rather than deployment time, which allows you to separate applications from the infrastructure.
- Observability: not just surfaces OS-specific metrics and information, but also the health of the application and other indicators.
- Consistency in the environment throughout development testing, testing, and production: It runs identically on a laptop, just as you would in the cloud.
- Portability of OS and cloud distribution OS distribution portability: It runs with Ubuntu, RHEL, and CoreOS on-premises, using major cloud services and on any other cloud.
- Application-centric management: Increases the abstraction level from running an OS on hardware virtualized in order to run an app using an OS by using virtual resources.
- Distributed, loosely coupled flexible, free micro-services Applications are split into smaller, separate pieces and are able to be managed and deployed dynamically rather than a monolithic stack that is running on a mono-purpose machine.
- Resource isolation: predictability of application performance.
- Resources Utilization: Efficiency and density are high.
What are the reasons you should use Kubernetes in IT?
Containers can be an excellent method of combining and running your application. You must manage the containers that run your applications in production environments and ensure no downtime. If the container is down, another must be started. Would it be much easier to handle this situation with an automated system?
This is how Kubernetes comes to your rescue! Kubernetes offers you the framework needed to run distributed systems with high resilience. It manages the scaling and failover of your application and provides deployment patterns, and much more. For instance, Kubernetes can easily manage the deployment of a canary on your machine. To start using the Kubernetes service, you will need to download the code from GitHub. It is recommended to take Kubernetes Course before you start using it.
Kubernetes offers:
- Services discovery and load balance Kubernetes allow you to display to a container by using their DNS name or the IP addresses of their individual. If the amount of traffic flowing to the container is very high, Kubernetes is able to load balance and distribute network traffic to ensure that the system is secure.
- Storage orchestration Kubernetes permits you to instantly mount a storage system that you prefer for local storage and cloud providers that are public and many more.
- Automatic rollbacks and rollouts You can define the desired state of the containers you have deployed with Kubernetes which can alter the current state to achieve the intended state in a scheduled speed. For instance, you can automate Kubernetes to build new containers for deployment, or remove existing containers, and then transfer all their resources into this new instance.
- Automated bin packing You offer Kubernetes with the cluster of nodes it can utilize to run containerized tasks. You inform Kubernetes of the amount of processor and memory (RAM) the container requires. Kubernetes will fit containers on your servers to make the most efficient use of your resources.
- self-healing Kubernetes starts containers when they fail. It substitutes containers, shuts down containers that aren’t responding to the health check you’ve set for yourself, and does not advertise the containers to customers until they are ready to be used.
- Security and management of configuration Kubernetes allow you to keep and manage sensitive information like passwords, OAuth tokens, and SSH keys. It is possible to deploy and update secrets and application configurations without having to rebuild your container images and without divulging secrets in the stack configuration.
What Kubernetes is not
Kubernetes isn’t a typical all-encompassing PaaS (Platform as a Service) system. Because Kubernetes is a container-based system that operates at the level, rather than a hardware level, it has the same features that are generally available to PaaS offerings, including deployment and scaling, load balancing, and allows users to incorporate their logging, monitoring, and alerting tools. It is important to note that Kubernetes does not come with a monolithic architecture and these solutions are applicable and can be integrated. Kubernetes gives the necessary building blocks to create developer platforms however it allows for user choice and flexibility when it’s crucial.
Kubernetes:
- It does not restrict the types of applications that are supported. Kubernetes intends to support an extensive array of workloads, such as stateless, stateful, as well as data processing workloads. If an application is able to run within a container, it will run flawlessly on Kubernetes.
- It does not distribute source code and does not create your application. Continuous Integration, Delivery, and Deployment (CI/CD) procedures are influenced by the culture and preferences of an organization along with technical demands.
- It does not offer application-level services like middleware (for example, message bus) and data-processing frameworks (for instance, Spark), databases (for instance, MySQL), caches, or Cluster storage platforms (for instance, Ceph) as built-in services. These components are able to be run on Kubernetes and/or be used by programs that run on Kubernetes by using portable mechanisms like Open Service Broker. Service Broker, which is an open Service Broker.
- Does not set the rules for the logging, monitoring, or alerting systems. It offers a few integrations as proof of concept and methods to gather and export data.
- Does not include or mandate any configuration language or system (for instance, Jsonnet). It offers an API for declarative use that could be used to target arbitrary types of explicit specifications.
- It does not offer or adopt any machine configuration that is comprehensive or management or self-healing technology.
- In addition, Kubernetes is not simply an orchestration tool. It actually removes the requirement for orchestration. As a technical term, orchestration is the execution of a predetermined process: first, do A first, then B, and finally C. However, Kubernetes comprises a set of independent, reusable control mechanisms that continually push the current state towards the desired state. It is not important the method you use to move from A to. A centralized system of control is not necessary. This creates an environment that is simpler to use, and also more robust, powerful, and flexible.