Key Benefits of Using Kubernetes
Kubernetes, also called K8s, has become the de facto standard for container orchestration. It’s an open-source project that can be used with a wide variety of cloud-native applications and services to automate deployment, scaling, and operations. It enables users to deploy and manage containers across multiple hosts in a cluster, providing load balancing and container management functionality from a single interface.
When you use K8s, you can build microservices-based applications that are more resilient, flexible, and scalable than traditional monolithic apps. The benefits of using K8s are so diverse and helpful that it has now become Google’s internal tool for managing infrastructure through its rise in popularity among developers and enterprise organizations today.
This article will examine the key benefits of using Kubernetes to automate and streamline workflows.
The de Facto Standard for Container Orchestration
In recent years, there has been an explosion of interest in distributed applications thanks to the rise of cloud computing. However, it can be difficult for developers to build these applications because they have no control over how the underlying infrastructure operates or where their code will run next: containers are ephemeral by nature. They have often shuffled around between machines as needed by their workload. That’s where Kubernetes comes in!
Rather than relying on a low-level API like Docker Compose or Swarm Mode, which gives developers insight into how each node works, K8s wraps this complexity up into a package that can be easily managed via its dashboard interface–allowing companies like yours more time to focus on what matters most: building software rather than managing servers themselves!
Automate Container Operations, Including Deployment and Scaling
K8s makes the deployment process easy by providing a declarative configuration file that describes the desired state of your application and infrastructure. This configuration can be versioned, shared between teams, or updated as needed to ensure you’re consistently deploying with minimal errors in production. You can save time on every deployment by eliminating manual steps required for container management and scaling up/down when needed without any downtime.
With K8s, you can also automate your container configuration parameters such as health checks, liveness probes, and runtimes. You’ll also automatically determine which nodes are healthy based on their availability from other cluster members’ responses to health checks—no need for manual monitoring!
K8s handles networking transparently, so none of these tasks is required anymore: no more worrying about configuring load balancers or managing firewall rules. Just let Kubernetes do this work for you!
When used with Docker, Kubernetes can further simplify the scaling process. Kubernetes enables managing containers. However, we need the containers in the first place. Docker is a containerization platform that allows segmenting different applications and codes into containers. You can then use Kubernetes to manage the containers created with Docker. However, Kubernetes is not the only containerization platform. So you can choose any platform and then allow K8s to do its work.
Allows for Multi-Cloud Application Deployments
Kubernetes is the most popular container orchestration tool. It’s used to manage and deploy containers across different environments. Kubernetes also supports multi-cloud application deployments, which allows you to deploy applications across various cloud providers. This is a massive benefit because it can help you reduce your operational costs by optimizing the use of each cloud service provider.
In addition to supporting multi-cloud deployments, Kubernetes also supports hybrid cloud deployments where you can run some components on one network while others run on another. For example, database servers might be located in an on-premises data center, while web servers are in a public cloud.
Designed for Microservice Applications
K8s is designed as a tool for managing large numbers of containers, allowing for horizontal scaling and deployment across multiple hosts. Kubernetes was built from the ground up to support microservices architectures, which are made up of components that can be independently deployed and scaled.
This makes it ideal for modern cloud-native applications with many moving parts—such as web apps or containerized microservices—where individual services may have their lifecycles and deployment process. With K8s, you can deploy all your application’s components at once or gradually add more capacity as needed.
Makes It Easier to Develop More Resilient Applications
Kubernetes is designed for high availability and resiliency. With Kubernetes, you can deploy your application in a highly available and fault-tolerant manner.
The main reason is that Kubernetes provides an abstraction of resources such as CPU, memory, disk storage, and network bandwidth. You will only have to manage these resources inside your cluster instead of managing them on each machine.
Kubernetes also makes it easier to recover from failures because it keeps track of all containers running in the cluster so that they can be restarted if they stop working correctly. If one container crashes or stops working properly, another container will automatically start up instead, so no downtime occurs when recovering from failure occurs!
Has a Strong Open Source Community
Kubernetes is open source and has a large open source community that develops it, supports it, and contributes to its ongoing success. The Kubernetes developer community is one of the largest in all open source software, with nearly 200 new monthly contributors. This happens because Kubernetes embraces various technologies that allow users to implement their own needs into their deployment as needed.
This means if you want your application hosted on AWS, GCP, or Microsoft Azure, you can use DevOps tools like Jenkins Pipelines or CircleCI 2.0 that integrate well with Kubernetes because they’re also open source software platforms themselves. This means there are no proprietary lock-ins when using these applications with Kubernetes, which makes this combination very appealing for developers looking for flexibility in how they deploy their applications across different environments without having to worry about vendor lock-ins or feature gaps between vendors’ offerings.
Provides a Platform for a Variety of Cloud-Native Technologies
K8s provides a platform for various cloud-native technologies and has become the standard for deploying microservices applications.
In addition to providing container orchestration, K8s also provide a platform for service meshes (a communication layer between your services), serverless computing platforms (libraries that abstract away the details of serverless infrastructure), and many other technologies.
These technologies often require their APIs or data models that must be integrated into your application’s architecture. For example, suppose you want to use Istio for service mesh functionality in your Kubernetes clusters. In that case, you’ll need to define an Istio sidecar in each pod and configure how these pods communicate with each other based on Istio’s rules.
Conclusion
In this article, we’ve explored some benefits of using Kubernetes (K8s) in your organization. K8s is a powerful tool that can help you to manage your containerized applications and services more efficiently. However, it’s important to note that K8s is not the right solution for every application. If you’re considering adopting K8s within your organization, we recommend working with an experienced partner who can help determine if this technology makes sense for your use case.
