Kubernetes Cloud Computing and What it Can Do for You
Updated: Jun 29th 2020
May 1st 2020
By Robert Kirchner JR
Kubernetes, What is It?
Cloud Computing
These are the days that data centers sit empty, and Amazon rules supreme
Cloud platforms like Google and Amazon offer scalable computing services, that in the log run, are cheaper than the cost of a real estate, hardware and continuing maintenance.
Compute providers offer just about any service your heat could desire. They charge by scale and actual use. Most of them even have offer free tier to experiment with
Virtualization
The days of main frame systems are nealy gone. Most operations consist of replaceable, maintainable and duplicatable server units.
A typical server unit will consist of a light bare metal operating system, that runs virtual machines for each application.
Virual Machine
A virtual machine is an entire emulated computer run on a host machine(server). A VM typically consist of emulated computer hardware(network, storage etc) and an operating system(typically a unix headless OS).
Containers
Docker
Containers are bare minimum virtual machines. They usually run one application, and emulate only the hardware/software needed to run that application.
Docker is the most popular container platform. With docker and the use of a docker file, you can build your application into a container image, and push it to a cloud docker image repository like AWS ECR
Enter Kubernetes
Kubernetes works of the concept of multiple server machines acting as one, the Kubernetes cluster.
Docker containers can be deployed by applying a single, and sometimes simple, yaml file.
A Kubernetes yaml file defines information about a container deployment, including allowed hardware resources and a repository to pull the image from.
The Kubernetes Difference
What is the feature that makes Kubernetes great you ask?
Scale
It is that in that yaml deployment file, you define conditions in which Kubernetes will scale your applications, and create multiple replicated load balanced instances of your application.
So no matter what kind of peak load conditions your environment experiences, your application will scale, and your users will always have a smooth and speedy experience.
kubectl CLI
Google provides the kubectl command line interface that allows you to easily use, maintain and scale your Kubernetes from a remote machine
Conclusion
To leverage the highly available cloud computing platforms, Kubernetes gives you the means to run reliable and scalable applications.
The easy to use kubectl CLI, along with the simple yaml container deployment and configuration, Kubernetes is hands down the best and most scalable cloud cluster computing platform.
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