Glossary Term

Kubernetes

Updated · 1 min read

Kubernetes (K8s) is an open-source system originally designed by Google, now maintained by the CNCF. It groups containers into logical units called Pods for easy management and service discovery.

Core Architecture

A cluster consists of a control plane (API server, scheduler, etcd, controller manager) and worker nodes that run Pods via the kubelet agent. The control plane continuously reconciles desired state — declared in YAML manifests — against actual cluster state.

Key Primitives

  • Pod — Smallest deployable unit; one or more containers sharing network and storage
  • Deployment — Manages replica sets and rolling updates with zero downtime
  • Service — Stable virtual IP that load-balances across a set of Pods
  • Ingress — HTTP/S routing rules from external traffic into services
  • ConfigMap / Secret — Configuration and credential injection at runtime

Why It Matters

Kubernetes handles self-healing (restarting failed containers), horizontal auto-scaling, and rolling deployments — giving teams a consistent operational platform across every major cloud provider and on-premises environments.

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