Kubernetes, or K8s as its often known, is an open source platform for deploying containerized applications in distributed systems, where computing resources are provided by multiple separate machines that are connected over a network to form a cluster. Having been designed for very large systems with automation as a key requirement, Kubernetes is able to continuously monitor deployments and address failures automatically.
With Kubernetes, the application youre deploying is packaged up using containers. Containers incorporate everything that the application needs in order to run. This ensures the separation of concerns and dependencies between the application and the host infrastructure, meaning that a containerized application can be deployed to any host with minimal configuration. Containers are ideal for deploying microservices as they facilitate releasing, scaling and updating the individual services. For more about the uses and benefits of Kubernetes, have a read of What is Kubernetes?
Lets look in more detail at the components that make up a Kubernetes cluster.
A Kubernetes cluster consists of worker nodes that run the containerized applications and the machines hosting the control plane components. While the control plane can be installed on any machine in the cluster, it is typically kept separate from worker nodes running the data planes.
The control plane is the brains of the Kubernetes operation. It is responsible for deploying containers to worker nodes using pods, monitoring the health of nodes and pods, and addressing any failures.
The control plane is made up of multiple components, which can be installed on a single machine or distributed and replicated for high availability.
A worker node is a physical or virtual machine running either Linux or Windows. This is where your containerized software runs. Kubernetes uses pods to hold containers. A pod usually only holds one container (although they can hold multiple if they are tightly coupled), so you can generally think of each individual pod as an instance of a particular microservice. Each node in the cluster can contain one or more pods.
The worker nodes require several Kubernetes components in order to receive instructions from the control plane and enable the application software to run:
A cluster must have at least one worker node and requires at least three to support high availability but will typically have many more. If you want to increase the capacity of your cluster, youll need to add more worker nodes.
Kubernetes can be run in a public cloud, private cloud, on-premise, or combinations thereof, using either physical or virtual machines. Worker nodes can run either Linux or Windows, whereas the control plane components only run on Linux. A physical cluster can be split into multiple virtual clusters using namespaces.
Kubernetes can also be run on a single computer such as a laptop for evaluation, development, and testing.
One of the many advantages of Kubernetes is the level of flexibility it offers. Once youve set up a Kubernetes cluster it is up to you to decide how you want to deploy your application. You define the desired state of the cluster via the Kubernetes API including constraints and requirements, and the components work to make it so. To learn more about deploying your application with Kubernetes, see What is a Kubernetes Deployment?
Kubernetes was designed for automated management of containers in a distributed system and supports high availability and dynamic scaling, making it ideal for deploying microservices and implementing DevOps practices.
Kubernetes architecture refers to the components required to deploy Kubernetes and the infrastructure on which they run. There are two main parts to the architecture: the worker nodes, which are the computers that run the containerized applications, and the control plane, which is responsible for deploying containers to worker nodes and managing failures.
The control plane includes the API server, scheduler, a key-value data store and controllers. These components allow you to configure your cluster and ensure that configuration is applied to the nodes. Worker nodes contain pods that hold your containers. They also include an agent to implement instructions from the control plane, a network proxy to enable communication with pods and the container runtime.
A cluster is a group of either physical or virtual machines that are connected over a network so that workloads can be shared between them.
A node is an individual machine in a cluster. Worker nodes host the pods that hold containers. A single node can host multiple pods (and therefore containers), depending on the available memory and CPU resource.
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