Introduction
Due to their small size, portability and speed, containers are slowly becoming the standard format for deploying applications. Essentially, containers are executable units of software that contain the application code along with its dependencies and configurations. I have been using Kubernetes in production for over a year now. It has made deployment and managing containerized applications a breeze.
Well, containers are not all sunshine and rainbows. Clustering, networking, and deployment automation of containers aren’t that easy. For these, you need orchestration tools like Kubernetes (commonly known as K8S).
In this article, I will give you an overview of Kubernetes and all the things you can do with the software. Most importantly, I will discuss why you should use Kubernetes in production.
Let’s Start with The Overview
Developed by Google in 2014, Kubernetes is an open-source container orchestration software that automates deploying, managing and scaling containerized applications.
Why should I use Kubernetes in production, you might ask?
Containerized applications are often deployed across different machines. As a result, running containerized apps can be complicated. This is where Kubernetes comes into the picture.
Kubernetes allows you to build container-based apps in a portable, secure, and extensible way.
With Kubernetes, you can –
- Create application services that span multiple containers.
- Schedule containers across a cluster of servers.
- Efficiently scale containers.
- Monitor the health of your application containers.
- Self-heal your apps with auto restart, auto replication, auto replacement, and auto-scaling containers.
- Add storage capacity to stateful applications.
- Make the most of your hardware resources to run your apps better.
- Control and automatically deploy apps and their updates.
- Automatically manage service discovery.
- Incorporate load balancing, track how the resources are allocated, and scale based on computing utilization.
Other than these, you can include features like registry, networking, telemetry, and security, among others by using other open-source projects along with Kubernetes.
That’s Kubernetes in a nutshell.
Read more to learn my top three reasons to use Kubernetes in production.
3 Reasons You Should Use Kubernetes in Production
1. Easy Scaling of Containers
With Kubernetes, you can create complex containerized applications. You can also deploy these applications across a cluster of servers or multiple groups of server hosts. In short, you can scale Kubernetes as per your requirements. Most importantly, while you scale your app containers, Kubernetes automatically monitors and maintains the health of those containers.
2. Portable Applications
Container applications are independent of their infrastructure. This implies that these apps become transferable when running on Kubernetes.
As a result, you can move container apps from local machines to production- be it on-premises, hybrid, or multiple cloud settings. Moreover, moving container applications doesn’t harm its consistency; the consistency remains the same across environments.
3. Massive Community Support
Kubernetes is supported by a large open-source community. They actively build extensions and plugins that add more capabilities to the software. Whether it is security, monitoring, or management, there are extensions for everything.
Besides, thanks to the Certified Kubernetes Conformance Program, every Kubernetes version supports APIs. This API support makes it easier for you to use open-source extensions and plugins.
The Bottom Line
Containers are undoubtedly among the most efficient ways to build and deploy scalable applications.
However, when your applications grow, you span your apps to multiple containers and deploy them across different servers. This is when it becomes difficult to operate your containerized applications.
Kubernetes helps you to efficiently manage containerized apps. For this, they offer an open-source API that governs how and where application containers will be deployed.
Now that you know Kubernetes well, don’t hesitate to experiment with it.
Still skeptical?
Contact us about what problems you face while deploying or managing applications. I will try my best to explain how you can solve those problems using Kubernetes.