Kubernetes (K8s)

Solution Offered

Kubernetes is designed to take care of the issues associated with managing and deploying containerised applications at scale. It is known to automate a host of factors relevant to container management. This includes networking, scaling, and scheduling. As a result, developers can better emphasise the deploying and building of applications and not the management of infrastructure. 

How Kubernetes work? 

The function of Kubernetes is to organise containers into logical units. These are known as pods and are Kubernetes’ smallest deployable units. The pods are organised onto nodes in a cluster. Here, every node is considered as either a physical or virtual machine. Kubernetes continuously monitors the state of these nodes and pods, adjusting the deployment to keep the required state. 

Essential components of Kubernetes

There are a host of important components of Kubernetes. One of these is the Kubernetes master, which properly coordinates the nodes and the cluster, where the containers are being deployed. Some other essential components are the kubelet agent running on every nod, kube-proxy for handling network communication, and the etcd for storing cluster state. 

How Kubernetes handles scaling? 

Kubernetes is known to offer both vertical and horizontal scaling capabilities. In vertical scaling or scaling up, resources are adjusted to be allocated to individual containers. With horizontal scaling or scaling out, instances of an application are removed or included to match demand. It is in the nature of Kubernetes to scale applications depending on a host of pre-defined metrics. These are custom metrics or CPU usage.  

Kubernetes deployment

This is a resource object that describes how to update and deploy a containerised application. It states an application’s desired state, and this includes the update strategy, amount of replicas, and the container image. Kubernetes deployments allow declarative updates, which let users specify the desired state without needing to manually manage the deployment process. 

How Kubernetes guarantee high availability? 

This is done through a host of features such as self-healing capabilities, automatic failover, and replication. By running each application’s various replicas, Kubernetes tolerates node failures, thereby making sure that an application is kept available. Furthermore, Kubernetes effectively monitors the health of nodes and pods. Here, it automatically reschedules or restarts them as required to sustain availability. 

Alternatives to Kubernetes

Today, Kubernetes is one of the most famous container orchestration platforms. Still, it is known to have a host of alternatives. These are Nomad, Apache Mesos, and Docker Swarm. These platforms present similar functionality for managing and deploying containerised applications but could differ with regard to feature set, scalability, and architecture.