Kubernetes Introduction Guide

A practical introduction to container orchestration and cloud-native deployment

What is Kubernetes?

Kubernetes is an open-source container orchestration system originally released by Google. It manages containerized applications across many machines and provides automation for scheduling, scaling, recovery, and updates.

Docker vs. Kubernetes

Tool	Description
Docker	packages and runs individual containers
Kubernetes	manages and schedules many containers across machines

Core architecture

Control Plane

The control plane receives requests and distributes work to worker nodes.

Component	Role
kube-apiserver	API entry point
etcd	cluster state storage
kube-scheduler	assigns Pods to nodes
kube-controller-manager	keeps cluster state in sync

Worker Nodes

Worker nodes actually run containers.

Component	Role
kubelet	node agent
kube-proxy	network rules and load balancing
Container runtime	runs containers

Pod

A Pod is the smallest deployable unit in Kubernetes. It can contain one or more containers that share network and storage context.

Storage and volumes

Kubernetes uses volumes and persistent storage to keep data available beyond a single container lifecycle.

volumes:
  - name: my-data
    persistentVolumeClaim:
      claimName: my-pvc

containers:
  - name: app
    volumeMounts:
      - name: my-data
        mountPath: /data

Summary

Kubernetes turns containerized applications into scalable, resilient, and manageable systems. It is the standard platform for cloud-native deployment.