What is Kubernetes?
Kubernetes is a system that runs containers across many servers, restarting, scaling and connecting them automatically.
Drafted with AI from official documentation. Scripts were run in a test environment and repository links verified. Awaiting a human check. Did it work for you? Last edited Outdated?
Kubernetes (often written K8s) is an orchestrator for containers. You describe in YAML what you want running: three copies of this web image, connected to that database, reachable on this hostname. Kubernetes then makes reality match and keeps it that way, restarting crashed containers and moving them off failed machines. It is a very diligent stage manager who follows the script no matter what breaks.
Companies use it to run hundreds of small services on a shared pool of servers; cloud providers sell it as EKS, GKE and AKS; OpenShift is Red Hat’s enterprise version. You talk to it with kubectl. It is powerful but heavy, so a single app on one server is usually better off with plain Docker Compose.
kubectl get pods -A
kubectl apply -f deployment.yamlSee also: What is a pod? and What is a container?
Did this work for you?
No votes yet. Be the first.
If it did not work, the report form below tells the editors what went wrong.
See also
- 0131 Kubernetes architecture: control plane, nodes, kubelet and etcd A Kubernetes cluster is a control plane that stores and decides the desired state, plus worker nodes that run your containers. This… Beginner · Explains an idea · Linux Article Concepts 15 Oct 2026
- 0132 Pods, ReplicaSets and Deployments explained A Pod runs one or more containers together, a ReplicaSet keeps a fixed number of identical Pods alive, and a Deployment manages… Beginner · Explains an idea · Linux Article Concepts · Workloads & services 15 Oct 2026
- 0138 Kubernetes RBAC basics: least-privilege access for a service account RBAC controls who may do what in a cluster with Roles, ClusterRoles and bindings. This guide grants a CI service account deploy… Advanced · Step by step · Linux Article Concepts · Config, secrets & storage 15 Oct 2026
- 0140 kubectl cheat sheet: the commands you use every day A compact reference of everyday kubectl commands: contexts and namespaces, listing and inspecting objects, logs and exec, applying changes, rollouts, scaling and… Beginner · Cheat sheet · Any system Article Concepts · Troubleshooting 15 Oct 2026
- 0149 OpenShift vs Kubernetes vs OKD: what OpenShift adds OpenShift is Red Hat's Kubernetes platform and OKD is its community distribution. Both add projects, routes, builds, image streams, Operators and stricter… Beginner · Explains an idea · Linux Article Concepts · Concepts 15 Oct 2026
- 0251 Learn Kubernetes on your laptop with kind: from first cluster to Ingress Build a throwaway Kubernetes cluster in Docker with kind, deploy a web app with config, secrets and probes, scale it, roll out… Beginner · Guided project · Linux, macOS, Windows Article Concepts · Workloads & services 15 Oct 2026
Repos in the wild
- kubernetes/kubernetes kubernetes/kubernetes The main source repository of Kubernetes: the API server, scheduler, controller manager, kubelet, kube-proxy and kubectl, plus release notes and issue tracking. GitHub
- Falco: runtime security for Linux and Kubernetes falcosecurity/falco Falco watches system calls on Linux hosts and in containers and raises an alert when a process does something a rule flags as suspicious, such as a shell starting inside a container or a sensitive file being read. GitHub
History
Every saved edit is kept. The plot on the sleeve draws one line per edit. Open any edit to see exactly what changed.
- Dominik +819 chars