Kubernetes (K8s) is the industry-standard container orchestration platform. Originally designed by Google and maintained by the CNCF, it automates deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications. Over 96% of organizations surveyed by the CNCF in 2024 use or evaluate Kubernetes.
Architecture Overview
A Kubernetes cluster has a Control Plane (API server, scheduler, controller manager, etcd) and Worker Nodes (kubelet, kube-proxy, container runtime).
Pod — Smallest Deployable Unit
apiVersion: v1
kind: Pod
metadata:
name: myapp
spec:
containers:
- name: app
image: myapp:1.0
ports:
- containerPort: 80
resources:
requests:
memory: "128Mi"
cpu: "250m"
limits:
memory: "256Mi"
cpu: "500m"Deployment — Manages Replicas and Rolling Updates
apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
name: myapp
spec:
replicas: 3
selector:
matchLabels:
app: myapp
template:
metadata:
labels:
app: myapp
spec:
containers:
- name: app
image: myapp:1.0
ports:
- containerPort: 80
strategy:
type: RollingUpdate
rollingUpdate:
maxSurge: 1
maxUnavailable: 0Service — Stable Networking Endpoint
apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
name: myapp-service
spec:
selector:
app: myapp
ports:
- port: 80
targetPort: 80
type: ClusterIPKey Commands
kubectl apply -f deployment.yaml
kubectl get pods -w
kubectl logs -f deployment/myapp
kubectl scale deployment myapp --replicas=5
kubectl rollout undo deployment/myappKubernetes gives you self-healing, auto-scaling, and zero-downtime deployments out of the box.