A bit of history

Traditional Deployment: In the beginning, all organizations ran applications on physical servers, this caused numerous problems regarding resource allocation, as there was no way to define how much resources to allocate for individual applications on the physical server. In fact, if multiple applications were run on the same physical server, there could be cases where one application consumed most of the resources forcing the others to not have the expected performance. One solution might have been to run each application on a different physical server, however, this is not the ideal choice as it was a very costly practice for organizations to maintain many physical servers.

Virtualized Deployment: Virtualization was introduced as a solution. allowed to run multiple virtual machines on a single physical CPU, this allowed to isolate applications in multiple virtual machines providing a higher level of security, since the information of one application was not accessible by another application. The virtual machine runs all components, including the operating system, on the virtualized hardware.

Container Deployment: Containers are similar to virtual machines but have a lighter isolation model and, by sharing the operating system, are lighter, more portable, and easier to manage.

Why we love it

One of the key features of Kubernetes is its ability to scale applications horizontally, which means that the number of containers running an application can be increased or decreased based on the current workload. This allows applications to seamlessly handle sudden spikes in traffic, ensuring that they remain highly available and responsive at all times.

Another important feature of Kubernetes is its support for rolling updates, which allows users to gradually roll out new versions of an application without downtime. This ensures that applications can be updated and maintained with minimal disruption to users.

Kubernetes’s tools and services

In addition to these core features, Kubernetes also provides a range of other tools and services that can help users to manage their applications, such as:

Service discovery: Kubernetes provides built-in support for service discovery, which allows containers to automatically discover and communicate with each other. This simplifies the process of building and deploying distributed applications, as it eliminates the need to manually configure network addresses and ports.

Load balancing: Kubernetes includes a built-in load balancer that automatically distributes incoming traffic across multiple containers. This ensures that applications can handle a large number of concurrent requests without becoming overwhelmed.

Storage management: Kubernetes allows users to easily attach and manage external storage systems, such as network-attached storage (NAS) or storage area networks (SANs), making it easy to store and retrieve data from containers.

Is Kubernetes the right choice?

When to use Kubernetes:

If you are aware of how to make applications with the right approach, in fact it can speed up your work.

As part of a package of services from a public cloud provider.

If you try to switch between providers.

When not to use Kubernetes:

It shouldn't be used if you want to use it as an on-premises solution in the data center.

If your application doesn't support microservices-based architecture.

If the team is not ready and/or does not have the necessary skills.

Overall, Kubernetes is a powerful tool for managing and deploying applications in a distributed environment. Its support for horizontal scaling, rolling updates, and other key features make it an essential part of any modern DevOps toolkit.