Kubernetes: The Future of Application Deployment?
Kubernetes is an open-source platform designed to automate the deployment, scaling and management of containerized applications. It was developed by google in 2014 and is now being maintained by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation(CNCF). The origin of kubernetes is based on an internal project of Google called Borg which they used to manage their workloads. In 2014 Google released a paper describing how Borg works and that inspired the creation of kubernetes
Kubernetes works by abstracting the underlying infrastructure into unified API’s that can be used for managing containerized applications. This gives the developer the power to deploy their applications across multiple nodes and manage them using API’s and other tools.
Where Kubernetes shines
Scalability: Kubernetes is capable of automatically scaling horizontally(pods within a node) and vertically(Adding more nodes) enabling it to handle workloads dynamically based on resource requirements without any manual intervention.
Resilience: Kubernetes has built in mechanisms to identify failures and restart the failed resources automatically making it highly available. This also comes into play when deploying a new release version. If the new release fails to startup the old version will continue to run and will only get removed once the new version runs.
Portability: Kubenrnetes is cloud agnostic and can be deployed on any cloud provider or even your own data centre. This does not apply to managed cluster(EKS, GKE, AKS etc)
Automation: A lot of things that the operations team does in a normal deployment like scaling, load balancing, rolling updates, etc can be automated when using kubernetes
Extensibility: Kubernetes has support the usage of custom plugins that can be used to meet specific business requirements and there are also so many prebuilt plugs that we can directly use
How Kubernetes Empowers Organizations
Kubernetes offers a fresh perspective on how we can deploy our workloads and applications. Major tech companies have all embraced kubernetes and are reaping its benefits in the form of reduced deployment time, reduced downtime, increased visibility, increased developer productivity , shorter release cycles and many other ways. I feel the major plus point of kubernetes is how it enables organisations to focus more on the product rather than the infrastructure. This helps organisations build better products at a much faster pace not having to worry about the infrastructure overhead.
The Good, the Bad, and the Kubernetes
Although kubernetes has so many advantages over traditional deployment methods it does have its own share of limitations and challenges like complexity, the need for specialised skills, compatibility when it comes to migrating old/legacy systems that are hard to containerize. On top of this kubernetes might be an overkill for smaller organisations running very few applications. In short, it’s not everyone’s cup of tea. However, with the growth of serverless technologies and an ever growing push towards cloud native applications the future prospects of kubernetes looks bright.
Conclusion
Kubernetes is a powerful tool for managing containerized applications, it’s the key player in the container orchestration space. Despite its limitations and challenges it is likely to continue to grow in popularity and play a significant role in the future of application deployment.
