What is Kubernetes?
Kubernetes, told as a story about the most widely used real software behind the auto-assign badge.
Badges that auto-assign desk spots (orchestration) come from many different companies.Each badge has its own shape and its own way of being used.
With every badge different, a tenant can't tell which one to trust.It'd help if there were one badge everyone uses, like a standard.
Kubernetes is the best-known real open-source software behind the auto-assign badge (orchestration).Many buildings (clouds) use this same Kubernetes as a shared standard.
Kubernetes has its own set of terms, like Pod and Node.The five you'll see most: Pod, Node, Deployment, Service, Namespace.
Kubernetes takes real effort to learn and run.For a small team with just 1-2 offices, Kubernetes is overkill.
Kubernetes is the best-known open-source software implementing the auto-assign-badge concept — orchestration. It has its own vocabulary: Pod, Node, Deployment, and more.
Kubernetes, which Google open-sourced in 2014, is the de facto standard platform for container orchestration. It's built from Pods (groups of one or more containers), Nodes (the servers pods run on), Deployments (declaring how many pod replicas you want), Services (a fixed entry point even as pod locations change), and Namespaces (logical partitions of resources). The general concept — "restart automatically and place things for you" — exists in other platforms too, but Kubernetes is its leading brand.
When grown-ups say it
- Kubernetes
- The best-known auto-assign-badge software. The de facto standard for container orchestration.
- Pod
- The smallest bundle — one or more partitioned desks. The smallest unit Kubernetes manages.
- Node
- The floor slab (one server) a pod stands on. Many nodes together form one building — a cluster.
- Deployment
- The rule for how many spots to always keep running. Change the pod count, and Kubernetes adds or removes pods to match.
- Service
- The front desk that stays put even if the spot moves. The way in stays the same even as pods move around.
- Namespace
- The way floors are split into zones. Splits resources by team within the same building.
- Orchestration
- The general concept of auto-assignment itself. Kubernetes is the flagship software for that concept — the concept itself is covered in the SRE field. → the operations center that decides how many to run
- VM / Container
- The private office and the partitioned desk. The partitioned desks (containers) are exactly what Kubernetes places automatically. → the private office and the partitioned desk