Kubernetes (K8s) is an open-source container orchestration platform that automates the deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications. It provides a robust framework for running distributed systems resiliently.

Key Features

  • Container Orchestration: Manages containerized applications across clusters
  • Auto-scaling: Automatically scales applications based on demand
  • Self-healing: Restarts failed containers and replaces unhealthy nodes
  • Load Balancing: Distributes traffic across multiple instances
  • Rolling Updates: Updates applications without downtime

Core Kubernetes Concepts

# Basic Pod Definition
apiVersion: v1
kind: Pod
metadata:
  name: my-app
spec:
  containers:
  - name: app-container
    image: nginx:latest
    ports:
    - containerPort: 80

---
# Deployment Example
apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
  name: my-app-deployment
spec:
  replicas: 3
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      app: my-app
  template:
    metadata:
      labels:
        app: my-app
    spec:
      containers:
      - name: my-app
        image: my-app:v1.0
        ports:
        - containerPort: 8080

---
# Service Definition
apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
  name: my-app-service
spec:
  selector:
    app: my-app
  ports:
  - port: 80
    targetPort: 8080
  type: LoadBalancer

Kubernetes Architecture

Key Components:

  • Master Node: Control plane managing the cluster
  • Worker Nodes: Run application workloads
  • Pods: Smallest deployable units
  • Services: Network abstraction for pods
  • Deployments: Manage pod replicas and updates
  • ConfigMaps & Secrets: Configuration management

Career Impact

88%
of companies use K8s
$130K+
Average K8s engineer salary
5.6M
developers use K8s

Kubernetes expertise is highly valued in the job market, with organizations increasingly adopting cloud-native architectures. K8s skills can significantly boost your DevOps and cloud engineering career prospects.