Staring Your DevOps Journey Part 3: Kubernetes

Zohaib Bashir
4 min readNov 30, 2022

This blog is part 3 of a 3-part series where I tell you about the basics of starting your foray into DevOps. Part 1 can be found here where the concept of virtualization is discussed and how it differs from containerization, Part 2 can be found here where I talk about reducing the image size of containers.

In this blog, I talk about Kubernetes, what they are, how they are being used in the industry and why you should keep an eye on them in the future.

The table of contents can be seen below.

1. What are Kubernetes

2. Distributions of Kubernetes

3. Why you should keep an eye on Kubernetes

4. References

1. What are Kubernetes?

Kubernetes is an open-source platform created by Google that helps to automate Linux Container operations (such as those of Docker, Kyverno etc.). It helps in reducing the manual process of deploying and scaling containerized applications. In easier words, Kubernetes helps run a cluster (group of containers). It also efficiently manages those cluster(s). Kubernetes have many advantages such as

  • IT cost optimization
  • Improved Availability
  • Improved Scalability
  • Multi-cloud and also hybrid cloud flexibility
  • Easier migration to the cloud

The architecture of a normal Kubernetes can be seen below

Architectural overview of Kubernetes

2. Distributions of Kubernetes

Kubernetes is also known by another name K8S. One of the many reasons K8s became popular is due to its micro-service architecture. This microservice architecture helped in

  • Independently creating/developing and deploying applications by breaking them into small scalable modules.

Due to this, many companies were inspired to move on from monolith development to microservices development. Each container could be its microservice. Due to the ever-increasing amount of containers, it became hard to handle them. This is why Kubernetes became popular as a container orchestration tool.

But as time went on, some issues regarding K8s started to pop up those being

  • K8s is more useful for more heavy-duty stuff
  • It is very resource intensive

Due to some of the reasons stated above some distributions were created by a few groups as K8s is an open-source platform. K3s and K9s are among the most popular of these distributions. K3s is a lightweight product based on k8s and k9s is a UI tool based on k8s.

3. Why you should keep an eye on Kubernetes

Kubernetes has many advantages as stated above. If you are in the IT field you should keep an eye out for k8s. The data shared by Sumo Logic’s Continuous Intelligence Report on “The State of Modern Applications and DevSecOps in the Cloud” shows more and more people/organizations opting for Kubernetes technology. From their data, 1 in 3 organizations in the AWS cloud uses Kubernetes as their key orchestration solution.

According to Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF), 2021 survey here are some statistics regarding

  • 96%: The percent of respondents that reported using or evaluating Kubernetes in a 2021 survey by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF).
  • 69%: The percent of respondents from the same CNCF survey reported using Kubernetes in production.
  • 3.9 million: The number of Kubernetes developers worldwide, according to the same CNCF survey. This represents a 67% increase from the previous year.
  • 31%: The proportion of backend developers globally that use Kubernetes.

Conclusion:

This was the last part of my guide on starting your journey into the field of DevOps. I hope this series of blogs help you in understanding your journey from understanding what is virtualization to what is currently in the now (that being Kubernetes). If you want more updates on Kubernetes and similar technology follow CNCF on their socials. I hope my guide helps you in your journey.

4. References

--

--