Features
- Automated container deployment and scaling
- Self-healing with automatic restart and replacement
- Service discovery and load balancing built-in
- Declarative configuration with rolling updates
Pros
- Industry standard for running containers at scale
- Massive ecosystem of tools and operators
- Vendor-agnostic, runs on any cloud or on-premises
Cons
- Significant operational complexity
- Steep learning curve with many concepts
- Overkill for small applications
Overview
Kubernetes (K8s) is an open-source container orchestration platform originally developed by Google. It automates the deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications across clusters of machines. Kubernetes has become the industry standard for running containers in production.
Kubernetes provides declarative configuration: you describe the desired state of your application (replicas, resources, networking) in YAML manifests, and Kubernetes continuously works to make the actual state match the desired state. It handles rolling updates, automatic restarts of failed containers, horizontal scaling, and service discovery.
The Kubernetes ecosystem includes Helm for package management, Istio for service mesh, ArgoCD for GitOps, and hundreds of operators for running databases, message queues, and other infrastructure as Kubernetes-native resources.
When to Use
Choose Kubernetes when you are running multiple containerized services at scale and need automated orchestration, scaling, and self-healing. For simpler deployments, platforms like Fly.io, Railway, or Render provide a better developer experience.
Getting Started
# deployment.yaml
apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
name: my-app
spec:
replicas: 3
selector:
matchLabels:
app: my-app
template:
metadata:
labels:
app: my-app
spec:
containers:
- name: my-app
image: my-app:latest
ports:
- containerPort: 3000