On June 6, 2014, some Google engineers decided to make it open source and donate to the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) a project, then unknown, called Kubernetes.
Ten years after its first publication on a Github repository, with full and legitimate right, the Kubernetes project is one of the most dominant tools in the IT sector linked to applications delivered from containers.
The reason? Applications are becoming increasingly complex and the demand for ever more rapid and automatic development is constantly increasing, consequently changing the ways in which organizations design, build and implement applications.
Kuberntes and its use are in fact constantly growing and in this article we discover together the potential and applications of this technology.
What is Kubernetes and why should I use it?
For those who don't know it, Kubernetes, often abbreviated as k8s, is an open-source platform designed to automate the management, deployment, and scaling of containerized applications. In a nutshell, it's a tool that allows businesses to manage large scale container clusters, offering a stable and highly available environment for running modern applications.
Its name comes from Greek and is translated as Helmsman or Pilot, a concept that is also recalled by the platform's logo.
As mentioned earlier, Kubernetes was born as a Google project, on which its infrastructure was based, which then made it open source in 2014. In ten years, other open solutions have been created to meet the same needs, but k8s remains by far the most appreciated, used and developed by the community.
What opportunities do you get with Kubernetes?
- Orchestration of containers on multiple cloud infrastructures, both public and private;
- Hardware optimization to maximize the resources needed to manage your business applications;
- Control and automation of application deployments and updates;
- Freedom to mount and add storage to run stateful apps;
- Fast management of the scalability of containerized applications and their resources;
- Open management of services, ensuring the deployment of applications according to the deployment methods established by you;
- Check the health of applications and manage corrections with automatic positioning, restart, replication, and scaling.
In short, although the use of Kubernetes presupposes a change in the way in which it is designed, the data collected between surveys and reports confirm its continuous and growing fame. Among these, in the 2023 annual report of the CNCF an estimated 83 million developers use the technology globally.
In support of these numbers, more than 200,000 releases are registered on GitHub, meetups dedicated to Kubernetes are held regularly around the world and the search for job positions that include “Kubernetes” shows a growing trend in recent years.
Is Kubernetes a Cloud Native technology?
Yes, Kubernetes is considered a key technology in the cloud native landscape. The Reasons?
- Container Orchestration: Kubernetes manages containers on public and private cloud infrastructures, optimizing the use of hardware resources and improving operational efficiency.
- Automation: Kubernetes offers automation capabilities for deploying, scaling, and managing applications, reducing the need for manual intervention and increasing reliability.
- Resilience and Scalability: Kubernetes is designed to offer high availability and scalability, automatically managing load balancing and container recovery in the event of failure.
- Integration with Other Cloud Native Technologies: Kubernetes easily integrates with other cloud native tools and technologies, such as CI/CD (Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment), monitoring and logging systems, and security solutions.
Now that we've introduced what Kubernetes is and if it's a Cloud Native technology, let's explore the benefits it offers and the main use cases.
Kubernetes Services applications, optimization, and use cases
More and more businesses of all sizes are adopting Kubernetes to modernize their applications and scale efficiently. Its advanced orchestration, scalability, and automation capabilities make it ideal for a variety of use cases.
Le Kubernetes applications are typically composed of microservices, each running in independent containers. This approach makes it easy to update and maintain individual components without impacting the entire system. In fact, Kubernetes makes it possible to easily deploy these applications on clusters of nodes, ensuring high availability and fault tolerance.
Optimizing applications on Kubernetes can take place through various tools and practices including:
- Horizontal Pod Autoscaling (HPA): functionality through which Kubernetes automatically scales the number of pods based on the workload, ensuring that resources are used efficiently.
- Resource Quotas and Limits: functionality where administrators can define resource limits to prevent a single application from consuming all available resources.
- Namespace: Separating resources into namespaces allows for more granular and secure management of cluster applications and resources.
The main use cases for Kubernetes are:
- Web applications that must scale dynamically in response to user demand. For example, large e-commerce platforms and social networks use Kubernetes to handle traffic peaks.
- Automation Of the integration and continuous distribution process (CI/CD). Tools such as Jenkins, GitLab CI/CD and Argo CD can be run on Kubernetes to automate code testing and deployment.
- Compute cluster orchestration for workloads of Big Data and facilitating the management and scaling of the resources necessary for data analysis.
- Microservice-based architectures that, thanks to the ability of Kubernetes, cpmp manages interdependencies between services, balancing the load and ensuring the availability of services.
- Orchestration of Candidatures on edge devices, improving the latency and resilience of applications that must operate in distributed environments.
KubeCon: the Kubernetes summit
We talked about what Kubernetes is, its importance in the Cloud Native landscape and its applications and use cases. What we have not yet dwelt on, however, is his lifeblood: the Community.
The Kubernetes community is increasingly active and growing, with contributions from developers from all over the world. This is demonstrated by the continuous events organized on a regular basis such as KubeCon!
We have already participated in several such as Paris 2024, Amsterdam 2023 , North America 2022 And Valencia 2022 and each time it is more and more illuminating.
How and where does CloudFire apply Kubernetes technology?
In conclusion, Kubernetes has been confirmed as the predominant technology in the Cloud Native sector for 10 years. In fact, its use leads to the creation of increasingly extraordinary solutions.
In CloudFire, Kubernetes is one of the engines of some solutions that we propose, such as:
- Internal Developer Platform: the tool capable of standardizing the design and configuration of a scalable, secure cloud environment available through a self-service interface for each user;
- Composable Stack Platform: the Cloud Native technology stack that frees applications in a fully managed and multi-platform environment;
- Multicloud: the approach through which you can increase resilience and reliability for your mission-critical applications
- Disaster Recovery: the solution thanks to which you guarantee business continuity for your Kubernetes clusters.
In 10 more years, we are sure that Kubernetes will evolve more and more and its applications will be even more disruptive than they are today. If you would like to learn more about this technology with us, I recommend that you write to us Hither Or to participate in our Cloud Expert Meetup!
