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So you’ve decided to learn Kubernetes for yourself. Everyone seems to be talking about that buzzwordy package of techy goodies. Kubernetes is without a doubt the coolest kid in town! You’ve come to the right place if you want to comprehend the current term “The Kubernetes” and improve your interaction with engineers and developers.
The basic concepts of Kubernetes and its different features will be explained in this blog, as well as why it is so vital for modern deployment strategies.
What is Kubernetes?
First and foremost… Kubernetes is a Google-developed container orchestration system for managing Docker containers. Kubernetes aids in the management of applications that operate on hundreds or thousands of containers.
It can also manage applications running on a variety of platforms, including physical machines, virtual machines, and hybrid deployment environments. Kubernetes, a container orchestrator that recognizes different container runtime environments, including Docker, is one of the most popular solutions for this purpose. Load Balancer, Service Discovery, and Role-Based Access Control are some of the edge functions provided by Kubernetes (RBAC). Kubernetes are sometimes referred to as “K8s” in the industry.
Why did Kubernetes become necessary?
When it comes to hosting modern apps, monolithic systems present numerous issues. The use of monoliths has been overtaken by the rise of microservices architecture. Container technologies provide the ideal host for small independent applications, referred to as microservices, thanks to the adoption of microservices as the core architecture.
However, as applications increased in size and the number of containers climbed in the thousands, maintaining them with scripts became extremely difficult. It became extremely impossible to build a consistent process for maintaining these microservices because everyone was utilizing their own proprietary scripts.
Features of Kubernetes:
- Automated bin packing
This is one of Kubernetes’ most notable features. This is where Kubernetes comes in, assisting in the automatic placement of containers depending on their resource requirements, restrictions, and other constraints, all while maintaining availability. To manage usage and conserve more resources, mix essential and best-effort workloads. Kubernetes offers resource management capabilities, and it can automatically specify how each container in a pod consumes CPU, RAM, and other resources.
- Self-healing
This Kubernetes feature serves as a superhero. Containers that fail for any reason are restarted automatically. If one of the nodes fails, the containers in that node are reallocated. If unresponsive containers do not respond to user-defined health checks, Kubernetes immediately pauses them and restricts traffic until they are ready.
- Automated rollouts and rollbacks
Kubernetes gives developers a powerful toolkit for automating the deployment, scaling, and operation of containerized applications in production. This feature also has the power of automated rollouts and rollbacks, which allows Kubernetes developers to describe the state of deployed containers, methodically roll out changes with ease, and automatically roll back on failure or in the event of an emergency or alert.
- Load balancing and service discovery
Service discovery, to put it simply, is the process of determining how to connect to a service. Kubernetes service discovery uses two methods to locate services:
- Utilizing environment variables.
- DNS-based service discovery is used to resolve service names to IP addresses.
Load balancing uses the DNS name or even the IP address to identify containers and redistributes traffic from high-load to low-load locations based on traffic congestion.
- Management of secrets and configurations
This feature is significant from a security standpoint, as Kubernetes provides a built-in mechanism for storing private configuration information. Sensitive information, such as user names, encrypted passwords, and other credentials, can be kept private. Kubernetes may also manage app configurations by ensuring that a product’s functional, authentication, performance, and physical aspects are all consistent.
- Storage solutions
Kubernetes comes with certain built-in storage management features. This functionality allows you to mount any form of storage you choose, including local storage, public cloud providers like AWS, Azure, and GCP, and network storage systems.
Kubernetes is a container orchestrator with a lot of capability. Strong Stateful apps can be built simply by utilizing these essential capabilities.
- To communicate amongst the components, pods and services are used.
- The Kubernetes cluster uses Ingress to route traffic.
- ConfigMap and Secrets are used for external configuration.
- Data persistence is enabled by employing volume.
- Pod blueprints aid in replication during deployment.
These are the features that every developer working on Kubernetes or planning to work on Kubernetes should be aware of. Kubernetes has dominated the container orchestration game and has become one of the most widely used and well-known technologies in the DevOps field.
Companies are increasingly seeking developers with Kubernetes expertise and experience.