What exactly is Kubernetes?

Kubernetes is an extensible, portable, open-source platform that manages containerized workloads and other services that allow for both automated and declarative configuration. It is a vast rapidly expanding community. Kubernetes Services, services, support, and tools are available for all to use.

The term Kubernetes comes from Greek which means helmsman or pilot. K8s, an abbreviation, comes from counting the 8 letters that lie between”K” and “s” “K” in addition to”s” “s”. Google opened-sourced its Kubernetes initiative in the year 2014. Kubernetes brings together more than 15 years of experience in Google managing production workloads on a large scale, with the best ideas and practices of the community.

Time travel

Let’s examine the reason Kubernetes is so valuable by going back.

Traditional deployment era In the beginning, companies operated applications on physical servers. There was no method to define the boundaries of resources for applications on the physical server. This was why this resulted in resource allocation issues. For instance, if several applications are running on a physical server, there could be instances when one application could consume the majority of resources and consequently, the other applications would perform poorly. The solution is to have each application run on a separate physical server. However, this was not scalable since resources were not utilized and it was costly for companies to manage many physical servers.

The era of virtualized deployment In order to solve this issue to this issue, virtualization was created. It lets you use many Virtual Machines (VMs) on the same computer’s processor. Virtualization permits applications to be separated from VMs and offers a certain level of security because the data of one application can’t be accessible by other applications.

Virtualization allows for better utilization of resources within physical servers and permits more scalability as applications can be updated or added quickly, reducing hardware costs and more. Through virtualization, you can display a group of physical resources in an array of virtual machines.

Each VM is a full machine that runs all components that make up its operating system, which is on the top of the hardware virtualized.

In the era of container deployment, Containers are like VMs however, they possess loose isolation properties that allow them for sharing the Operating System (OS) among the apps. So, they are to be light. Much like the VM, it has its own filesystem, shares of memory, CPU, processing space, and so on. Because they are separated from the infrastructure that they are built on they can be used across cloud platforms or OS distributions.

Containers are becoming popular due to the fact that they can provide additional benefits for example:

• Rapid application creation and deployment enhanced the ease and efficiency of creating images in containers when compared to VM image usage.
• Continuous development integration, development, and deployment. It allows the ability to ensure a consistent and reliable image creation and deployment that is quick and effective rollbacks (due to the immutability of images).
• Dev and Ops separation of interests Create images for application containers at the time of release or build, not deployment time, thus separating applications from the infrastructure.
• Observability: Not only surface OS-specific information and metrics but also the health of applications and other indicators.
• The same environmental consistency is maintained throughout development testing, development and production: It runs exactly the same on a laptop, just as you would in the cloud.
• Portability of OS and cloud distribution OS distribution portability: It runs with Ubuntu, RHEL, CoreOS, and on-premises, as well as using major cloud services and on any other cloud.
• Application-centric management raises the abstraction level from running an OS on hardware virtualized and running the application using an OS by using the logical resources.
• Distributed, loosely coupled flexible, and liberated micro-services: Applications are broken down into smaller, separate pieces that can be deployed and managed in a dynamic manner – not as a single stack running on a large one-purpose machine.
• Resource isolation: predictability of application performance.
• Utilization of resources Efficiency and density: high.

What are the reasons you should use Kubernetes and how it could accomplish

Containers are an excellent option to bundle and run your apps. In an environment that is in production, you must manage the containers running the applications, and make sure there’s no downtime. For instance, if the container is down and another one needs to be launched. It would be much easier to handle this situation by the system?

A company must have more than three CKA before it can be a KCSP. When you earn the CKAD and, in turn, the CKA, you can increase your company’s value and become more important to your superiors. A significant salary and a high likelihood of getting a job and the foundation to earn the CKA Certification are excellent motives to get the CKAD.

Kubernetes is the one to come to your rescue! Kubernetes offers you the framework needed for running distributed systems that are resilient. It manages the scaling and failover of your application provides deployment patterns, and much more. For instance, Kubernetes can easily manage the deployment of a canary on your machine.

Kubernetes gives you:

• service discovery and load balance Kubernetes can expose containers using their DNS name or an IP address of its own. If the amount of traffic flowing to a container is very high, Kubernetes is able to distribute and balance the network traffic to ensure that the network is secure.
• Storage orchestration Kubernetes lets you effortlessly mount a storage device that you prefer for local storage and cloud providers that are public and many more.
• Automated rollbacks and rollouts You can define the desired state of the containers you have deployed with Kubernetes and alter the current state to achieve the preferred state with a set frequency. For instance, you can automate Kubernetes to build new containers for deployment, or remove existing containers, and then transfer all their resources into that new one.
• Automated bin packing You offer Kubernetes with an array of nodes it can use to execute containerized tasks. You inform Kubernetes what amount of memory and CPU (RAM) the container requires. Kubernetes is able to fit containers onto your servers to maximize the use of the resources you have.
• self-healing Kubernetes starts containers when they fail. It replaces 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’re ready to serve.
• Security and management of configuration Kubernetes allow you to keep and manage sensitive information including passwords, OAuth tokens, and SSH keys. It is possible to deploy and update secrets and configurations of applications without building your container image, and also without exposing secrets within the stack configuration.

What is it that Kubernetes isn’t

Kubernetes isn’t a typical comprehensive, complete PaaS (Platform as a Service) system. Because Kubernetes is operated at the container level instead of at its hardware layer, it has the same features that are generally available to PaaS services, like deployment scale, load balancing, and scaling and letting users connect their monitoring, logging, and alerting tools. It is important to note that Kubernetes doesn’t have a single, unified platform and the solutions that are provided are applicable and can be integrated. Kubernetes offers the foundational elements for developing developer platforms however it allows for user choice and flexibility in areas that are crucial.

Kubernetes:

• Do not restrict the kinds of applications that are supported. Kubernetes intends to support the most diverse range of workloads, including stateless, stateful, and data-processing tasks. If an application is capable of running in a container, then it will run flawlessly on Kubernetes.
• It does not distribute source code and does not create the application. Continuous Integration, Delivery, and Deployment (CI/CD) procedures are influenced by the culture and preferences of an organization and technical demands.
• It does not provide services for applications that are not application-specific, like middleware (for instance, message buses) or data processing frameworks (for instance, Spark), databases (for instance, MySQL), caches or the cluster-based storage system (for instance, Ceph) as built-in services. These components are able to be run on Kubernetes or be accessed by programs that run on Kubernetes by using portable mechanisms, for example, Open Service Broker. Service Broker, which is an open Service Broker.
• Do not set the rules for any logging, monitoring, or alerting options. It does provide a few integrations for demonstration of concept, as well as ways to capture and export the metrics.
• Does not include or mandate any configuration language or system (for instance, Jsonnet). It is an API that can be targeted by various kinds of explicit specifications.
• Do not offer nor implement any machine configuration that is comprehensive or management or self-healing technology.
• Furthermore, Kubernetes is not a simple orchestration system. In reality, it does away with the requirement for orchestration. Orchestration, as a technical term, is the execution of a predetermined process: first, do A followed by B and then C. Contrarily, Kubernetes comprises a set of autonomous, composable control procedures that constantly move the current state toward the desired state. It is not important the method you use to move from A to. Control centralization is not necessary. This creates an easier system to operate, and is also more robust, powerful, and flexible.

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