Summary. Kubernetes empowers businesses with efficient container management for microservices, scalability, high availability, streamlined updates, resource optimization, multi-cloud flexibility, and access to a vibrant ecosystem. By adopting Kubernetes, you can simplify application deployment, increase agility, improve resource utilization, and future-proof your infrastructure, cutting operation costs, and ultimately driving business success in the digital era.Kubernetes is a container orchestration tool, which means it enables developers to view, coordinate, and manage containerized workloads and services with the goal of running resilient distributed systems. According to the latest figures from the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF), published in February 2022, Kubernetes has been fully embraced by large enterprises and is even growing in emerging technology hubs, like Africa, where 73% of respondents use Kubernetes in production.
In the fast-paced and ever-evolving landscape of business and technology, organizations constantly seek solutions to streamline their operations, increase efficiency, and stay ahead of the competition. This is where Kubernetes, the powerful container orchestration system, emerges as a game-changer, enabling businesses to thrive in the digital age.
Our story begins with Bloomberg. Like many others, Bloomberg had been grappling with the challenges of scaling their applications, ensuring high availability, and managing complex infrastructure. Their monolithic architecture had a hard time processing hundreds of billions of financial data points every day, with 14,000 different applications powering its ubiquitous terminal product alone.
Frustrated with the limitations of their existing setup, the leaders of Bloomberg embarked on a quest to find a solution that would help them conquer these challenges in 2015. After extensive research and evaluation, they discovered Kubernetes — a technology that promised to revolutionize their approach to application deployment and management.
Excited by the possibilities, Bloomberg technical team dove headfirst into learning about Kubernetes. They soon realized that it offered a myriad of benefits for their business. Kubernetes provided a robust and scalable platform to manage their containerized applications, simplifying the deployment and orchestration process. Its declarative approach allowed them to define desired states, empowering the team to focus on application logic rather than low-level infrastructure details.
With Kubernetes, Bloomberg could deploy their applications seamlessly across different environments, whether on-premises or in the cloud. Its automatic scaling capabilities ensured that resources were efficiently utilized, enabling Bloomberg to handle increased traffic without service disruptions. Kubernetes’ inherent fault tolerance and self-healing mechanisms meant that even in the face of failures, their applications would remain resilient and available.
As Bloomberg began to adopt Kubernetes, they witnessed a significant transformation within their organization. Development cycles shortened, enabling rapid feature releases and faster time-to-market. The agility and scalability of Kubernetes allowed Bloomberg to respond swiftly to changing market demands, giving them a competitive edge.
“Thanks to Kubernetes, we are able to optimize hardware utilization to a remarkable extent, achieving utilization rates of up to 90 to 95 percent during periods of high demand,” stated Rybka in a CNCF case study.
The adoption of Kubernetes sparked a cultural shift within Bloomberg. Teams became more autonomous, with the ability to develop, test, and deploy their services independently. This empowered developers to take ownership of their applications, iterate quickly, and innovate at a rapid pace. The technology also facilitated collaboration between teams, promoting a DevOps culture where developers and operations personnel worked hand in hand, breaking down silos and fostering cross-functional expertise.
How Kubernetes actually work:
In a Kubernetes cluster, multiple nodes work together to host and run containers(the red boxes in the image). Each node has resources like CPU and memory that can be allocated to containers. The cluster is managed by a control plane that oversees the entire system.
Kubernetes uses a declarative approach, where you write the YAML files by defining the desired state of your application, and it takes care of maintaining that state. The control plane continuously monitors the cluster, making necessary adjustments to ensure that the current state matches the desired state automatically.
When you deploy an application on Kubernetes, you encapsulate it into a container. Kubernetes schedules these containers onto the cluster nodes based on available resources. It also ensures that the desired number of replicas for each container is maintained for fault tolerance and scalability. In addition to that, Kubernetes provides essential features like automatic scaling, load balancing, and service discovery. It can scale your application horizontally by adding or removing containers based on demand. It also balances the incoming traffic across containers and enables easy communication between them.
That’s all for today! I didn’t want to delve into the configuration details of setting up a Kubernetes cluster, because ChatGPT has truly excelled in providing comprehensive guidance for “how to” questions.
Books recommendation:
- The Kubernetes book by Nigel Poulton.
- Kubernetes in action by Marko Luksa.
