Kubernetes

Kubernetes (often shortened to K8s) is an open-source ✕ Open source is software whose source code is public: anyone can view, use, modify and share it. It favours transparency and avoids depending on a single vendor. More in the glossary → system for orchestrating containers ✕ A container packages an application with everything it needs to run — code, libraries, dependencies — in an isolated bundle, so it behaves the same in any environment. More in the glossary → — that is, managing them automatically when there are many of them spread across several servers. Originally created by Google, it deploys the containers, spreads the load among them, scales them up or down with demand and automatically replaces the ones that fail, keeping the application available. Where Docker ✕ Docker is the most popular platform for building and running containers. It made the technology mainstream and makes it easy to package an app and move it, unchanged, to any environment. More in the glossary → builds and runs individual containers, Kubernetes coordinates whole fleets in production. It is the foundation on which many companies build large, resilient applications in the cloud ✕ "The cloud" refers to services and storage that run not on your device but on external servers on the internet. You can access them from anywhere. More in the glossary → , though its power comes with considerable complexity. It has become the de facto standard for running containerised applications at scale.