Introduction

Kubernetes is an open source container management tool which automates container deployment, container scaling and load balancing
Kubernetes is "an open-source system for automating deployment, scaling and managing of containerized applications" https://kubernetes.io (opens in a new tab). The word Kubernetes comes from the Greek language, and means "pilot of the ship"
It schedules and manages isolated containers which are running on virtual/physical/cloud machines
All top cloud providers support kubernetes
Kubernetes is currently owned by Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF), an open-source foundation within the Linux Foundation
Kubernetes is an ecosystem, providing a core solution, with many third- party add-ons provided by approved projects, focusing on different areas -
- Networking
- Ingress
- Monitoring
- Packaging
- and much more

Understanding Kubernetes

Kubernetes implements a platform to run container-based applications in a Cloud Native Computing environment
In Cloud Native Computing, applications are hosted by the cloud, and have no direct relation to a server
As a result, all that is needed by the application needs to be stored in the cloud
To successfully run applications in a Cloud Native environment, specific properties must be provided
These properties are defined in Kubernetes Resources
Resources are defined in the Kubernetes APIs

Google developed an internal system called 'Borg' (later named as Omega) to deploy and manage thousand Google applications and services on their cluster (group of same type).
In 2014 Google introduced Kubernetes an open source platform written in GoLang, later donated to Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF).

There are three most popular kubernetes cloud service those are -

Orchestration (clustering of any number of containers running on different network)
Auto scaling (vertical and horizontal)
Load balancing
Perform independent
Fault tolerance (Pod failures / node)
Rollback (Going back to previous version)
Health monitoring
Batch execution (One time, sequential or parallel)

Kubernetes is open source, and as such available to everyone and any company
The open source nature of Kubernetes allows companies to use a very strong common code base and focus on features the specific company wants to add to that
For that reason, currently there is no significant competition to Kubernetes
There are Kubernetes distributions though
Docker Swarm can be considered a competing solution, but Kubernetes has made it less relevant

Vanilla Kubernetes is Kubernetes directly created from the source code hosted by CNCF
Kubernetes distributions are adding specific functionality and selection of solutions from the ecosystem
- Google Anthos
- Red Hat OpenShift
- SUSE Rancher
- Canonical Kubernetes

A new release of Kubernetes is published every 3 months!
When a new release is published, new versions of the APIs may become available, and old features may get deprecated
If a feature is deprecated, adopt the new method, as the feature will go away within the next 2 releases!