Kubernetes is an open-source platform for automating the deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications. It has quickly become a key tool for businesses looking to scale their operations efficiently and effectively. Here are some ways in which Kubernetes can help a business scale.
What is Kubernetes?
Before we can get into how Kubernetes can help businesses scale we need to know what it is. Kubernetes was originally developed by Google as an open-source container orchestration platform. It was designed to address the challenges of managing large-scale distributed systems, such as those used by Google itself to power its online services.
Before Kubernetes, Google used a proprietary system called Borg to manage its large-scale distributed systems. However, in 2014, Google decided to open-source the core concepts of Borg and create Kubernetes as a standalone project. This allowed other organizations to
benefit from the lessons learned by Google in managing large-scale distributed systems, and also helped to drive innovation and collaboration within the wider community.
One of the key benefits of Kubernetes is that it allows developers to easily create and deploy consistent, reproducible environments for their applications. This can help to eliminate the "it works on my machine" problem, which can arise when applications behave differently depending on the specific development environment they are running in.
Kubernetes is Easy to Deploy & Manage
Kubernetes makes it easy to deploy and manage applications by providing a number of key features and capabilities.
Declarative Configuration
Kubernetes uses a declarative approach to configuration, meaning that users specify the desired state of their applications and infrastructure, and Kubernetes takes care of ensuring that the actual state matches the desired state. This makes it easy to deploy and manage applications, as users don't need to worry about the specific steps required to bring an application up or down.
Automated Rollouts and Rollbacks
Kubernetes can automatically rollout and rollback changes to applications, making it easy to deploy and manage applications without the need for manual intervention. This helps to ensure that applications are always running in a stable and reliable state.
Monitoring & Logging
Kubernetes provides built-in monitoring and logging capabilities, allowing users to easily track the performance and status of their applications. This makes it easy to identify and troubleshoot any issues that may arise.
The declarative configuration, automated rollouts and rollbacks, and monitoring and logging capabilities of Kubernetes make it easy for businesses to deploy and manage their applications consistently and reliably.
Kubernetes is Highly Available & Fault Tolerant
Self-healing
Kubernetes has the ability to automatically detect and recover from failures, ensuring that applications are always running and available to users. For example, if a node in a cluster fails, Kubernetes can automatically reschedule the affected pods (containers) to another node, ensuring that the application continues to function.
Rolling Updates
Kubernetes can perform rolling updates to applications, allowing users to update their applications without experiencing downtime. During a rolling update, Kubernetes updates the application in a sequential manner, ensuring that there is always a working version of the application available to users.
Automatic Replacement of Failed Nodes
If a node in a cluster fails, Kubernetes can
automatically replace it, ensuring that the cluster remains healthy and available.
Resource Limits and Quotas
Kubernetes allows users to set resource limits and quotas for their applications, helping to ensure that applications do not consume too many resources and potentially cause failures.
Kubernetes Provides Load Balancing & Resource Management
Kubernetes provides built-in load balancing and resource management capabilities to help businesses optimize the use of their resources and ensure that their applications perform optimally under load.
Load Balancing
Kubernetes uses a built-in load balancer to distribute incoming traffic across the available pods (containers) running an application. This helps to ensure that no single pod becomes overwhelmed with traffic, and that the application as a whole is able to handle the load.
Resource Management
Kubernetes allows users to specify resource limits and quotas for their applications, helping to ensure that applications do not consume too many resources
and potentially cause performance issues. Kubernetes also provides resource monitoring and autoscaling capabilities, allowing users to automatically scale their applications up or down based on demand. For companies that worry about infrastructure costs, the resource management capabilities of Kubernetes can be tuned to accommodate budgets.
Kubernetes Provides Improved Security
Kubernetes provides a number of security features to help businesses secure their applications and infrastructure as they scale:
Role-based Access Control (RBAC)
Kubernetes provides fine-grained control over who can access what resources within a cluster, using a role-based access control model. This helps to ensure that only authorized users can access sensitive resources.
Network Segmentation
Kubernetes provides network segmentation capabilities, allowing users to isolate their applications from one another and from the rest of the cluster. This helps to protect against unauthorized access and prevent malicious activity from spreading.
Secrets Management
Kubernetes provides a built-in secrets management system, allowing users to store sensitive information such as passwords and access keys in a secure manner. This helps to ensure that sensitive information is not exposed to unauthorized users.
Pod Security Policies
Kubernetes allows users to define security policies at the pod level, helping to ensure that only authorized pods are able to run in a cluster.
How Can Mentat Help Your Business Scale?
Mentat specializes in automating infrastructure. Kubernetes is just one of the many tools that we use to help scale businesses of all sizes. If you are interested in what Mentat and Kubernetes can do for you please feel free to reach out. We have extensive experience in AWS EKS, Azure AKS, RedHat OpenShift, and native Kubernetes.
-Written by Austin Jorgensen
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