Why use Kubernetes: Everything You Need To Know!

Quick Summary

Table of Contents

Why Use Kubernetes: Overview

Before discussing Kubernetes, let’s first explore what containers are all about!

Containers are a method of packaging software that can run reliably on different computers. They bundle an application with everything it needs, like code, libraries, and settings, into one lightweight unit. This ensures the application works similarly from a developer’s laptop to a data center or the cloud.

On the other hand, “Kubernetes is a platform for managing and orchestrating these containers, especially at scale.” It becomes necessary when you need to deploy, scale, and operate countless container instances and services, and this is where Kubernetes comes to your rescue. It automates the complexities of container orchestration, making your life easier and your deployments smoother.

Born at Google, now overseen by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF), Kubernetes is constantly evolving with the help of a vibrant community.

The State of Kubernetes Market

If you are still in a dilemma about why use Kubernetes, here are some compelling stats that justify its growing importance and widespread adoption.

• According to Skyquestt, Kubernetes is the second fastest-growing open-source project after Linux, with a market size of USD 1.46 billion in 2019. It’s projected to grow at 23.4% annually, reaching even higher by 2031.
• CNCF’s annual survey states that over 60% of enterprises use Kubernetes, and adoption has risen to 96%.
• Kubernetes is used by 5.6 million developers worldwide, according to SlashData.
• Kubernetes is employed as the cluster management solution by over 50,000 companies globally.

Kubernetes Market Analysis by Product

The global Kubernetes market is segmented into Cloud and On-premises products. The On-premises segment holds the largest share because it allows users to run Kubernetes clusters on various local infrastructures. Businesses can integrate Kubernetes with existing setups using virtual machines, physical servers with Linux (like Ubuntu, CentOS, or RHEL), or other on-premises IaaS environments like OpenStack. If you still want to know why use Kubernetes, its flexibility makes it easier to manage diverse on-premises environments.

Kubernetes Market Analysis by Vertical

The Kubernetes market spans various sectors, including Retail and Consumer Goods, IT and Telecommunications, Government, BFSI (Banking, Financial Services, and Insurance), Healthcare and Life Sciences, Manufacturing, and other industries. The IT and telecom sector leads in revenue because Kubernetes drives innovation and growth in this area. It simplifies developers’ work by accelerating app deployment and enhancing the value of platforms for end users.

Kubernetes Architecture

A Kubernetes cluster represents the architecture used to deploy Kubernetes.

Kubernetes Architecture consists of two main parts:
1. Control Plane: Manages the cluster.
2. Nodes: Compute machines where containers run.

Note: Nodes can be physical or virtual machines. Each node runs pods, which are groups of containers that work together.

Key Components

1. Control Plane

Imagine smart city
API Server: This server is the central hub for managing interactions within the Kubernetes cluster. It processes requests and manages application lifecycles.
Scheduler: Determines optimal locations for deploying new pods, considering resource availability and overall cluster health.
Controller Manager: This person maintains consistency between the cluster’s current and desired states by overseeing and adjusting pod and node configurations.
etcd: Serves as a reliable distributed storage system that stores essential configuration and state data for the Kubernetes cluster.

2. Nodes

Kubelet: Each node hosts a Kubelet agent that communicates with the control plane to oversee pod management and ensure proper execution of their containers.
Container Runtime Engine: Software tools, such as Docker, manage the execution and lifecycle of containers within Kubernetes.
Kube-proxy: Handles network communication and load balancing among pods in the Kubernetes cluster.

Core Concepts

• Pods: These are the fundamental units in Kubernetes where one or more containers share storage and network resources. They can be adjusted in scale, updated, or swapped out as necessary.
• Services: Kubernetes provides stable endpoints for accessing pods, enabling communication within the cluster and with external users.
• Replica Sets: This feature guarantees a designated number of pod duplicates are operational at all times, ensuring dependability and the ability to handle increased workload demands.

Benefits of Kubernetes

Here are the various reasons that answer your questions about why use Kubernetes and what makes it stand out!



Resource Efficiency

Kubernetes optimizes resource usage by letting users set resource requests (minimum required CPU, memory, etc.) and resource limits (maximum allowable resources) for their pods. These settings can be easily applied at the container, pod, or namespace level, ensuring applications have the needed resources. All of these factors prevent underutilization and over-allocation of resources, which simply reduces the operational costs and maximizes the efficiency of infrastructure investments.

Increased DevOps Efficiency for Microservices Architecture

Kubernetes streamlines development, testing, and deployment by simplifying container integration and storage access across cloud providers. Creating container images is always more efficient than creating virtual machine images, which leads to faster development and optimized release times. Early adoption of Kubernetes in the development lifecycle allows for early code testing, reducing costly errors later on.

For microservices-based applications, where each component functions independently and communicates via APIs, Kubernetes supports forming smaller, focused development teams and boosts IT operational efficiency. Additionally, Kubernetes namespaces create virtual sub-clusters within a single physical cluster, improving access control and operational efficiency.

Faster-Time To Market

Kubernetes supports a microservices approach, where development teams focus on smaller, specialized tasks. This setup speeds up development by reducing dependencies between teams. It also simplifies container management, ensuring communication between containers and storage services like AWS and Azure.

Scalability

One of Kubernetes’s most important selling points is its scale capability, allowing projects to adjust resource usage based on demand. The architecture is divided into four types of scaling:
1. Horizontal Scaling: Adjusts the quantity of pod replicas based on fluctuating workload demands.
2. Vertical Scaling: Allocates more memory and CPU to the running pods whenever required.
3. Cluster Scaling: Adjusts the number of cluster nodes based on their current usage
4. Multidimensional Scaling: Combines vertical and horizontal scaling methods for optimized performance across different aspects.

These capabilities help handle unpredictable growth by efficiently matching resource requirements. Kubernetes ensures operations remain cost-effective while maintaining optimal performance.

Automation

Kubernetes automates essential tasks like
1. Service discovery: Automatically finding and connecting applications or services within the cluster.
2. Load balancing: Automatically routes network traffic among several instances of an application or service to enhance operational efficiency.
3. Failover: Automatically redirect traffic to healthy instances or nodes when any failure occurs.

Automation reduces reliance on manual intervention and streamlines operations, allowing teams with limited staff and resources to focus on core activities.

Portability with Minimum Vendor Lock-In

Kubernetes enhances portability, allowing applications to run across different environments, including on-premise infrastructure, cloud providers, or a combination. It simplifies the software development life cycle(SDLC), making it easier to adapt to changing needs or choose different infrastructure options. With deployment flexibility, it avoids vendor lock-in and supports cost-effective solutions by allowing businesses to choose the best environments for their workloads.

IT Cost Optimization

So, why use Kubernetes? Does it have any cost-efficiency advantage? Well, yes, Kubernetes helps significantly reduce infrastructure costs, especially on a large scale. By efficiently packing and managing containers across your cloud hardware investment, Kubernetes optimizes the use of resources. Before Kubernetes, administrators often overprovisioned infrastructure to handle spikes. But Kubernetes automates scheduling and scaling, intelligently managing and freeing resources for more productive work.

Read More to learn how to reduce up to 40% of your Kubernetes costs.

Multi-cloud Flexibility

Kubernetes enables seamless operations across hybrid and multi-cloud environments, allowing enterprises to run applications effortlessly on any public cloud or a mix of public and private clouds. This flexibility ensures the right workloads are matched with the best, maximizing ROI using optimal cloud features and migration options.

High Availability

High availability ensures that all the systems remain operational even during resource shortages, maintenance, or updates, reducing downtime and boosting application performance. Kubernetes supports HA through clusters with multiple nodes linked to worker nodes via a load balancer. This step ensures that the control plane stays active even if one of the master modes fails, providing reliability and customer satisfaction.

Self Health Monitoring

Kubernetes ensures service health by continuously performing health checks on your applications. It restarts failing or stalled containers and only exposes services to users once they are confirmed to be running correctly, maintaining overall system reliability.

What is Kubernetes Used For: Kubernetes Use Cases

Here are various use cases that answer all your questions about what Kubernetes is used for!



1. Run AI, ML, and Big Data Workloads

Kubernetes is well suited for AI, Machine Learning, and big data workloads that require processing large amounts of data through complex pipelines. It provides the needed scalability for stable performance while keeping costs low.

2. Continuous Delivery(CI/CD)

Kubernetes seamlessly integrates with CI/CD tools such as Jenkins and Docker, improving automation and optimizing resource utilization. It effectively manages application deployment and updates in the final stages of the CI/CD pipeline.

3. Deploying Microservices

Kubernetes is well-suited for contemporary applications employing a microservices architecture. It simplifies microservices’ management, scaling, and deployment and provides tools for rolling updates, logging, and monitoring.

4. Multi-Tenant Applications

For apps serving multiple customers from a single instance, such as CRM or cloud storage services, Kubernetes ensures secure, isolated environments for each tenant, optimizing resource use and security.

5. Analytics and Big data

Many of us want to know why use Kubernetes and how it will help handle Analytics and Big Data. Well! Kubernetes efficiently handles large datasets by managing data pipelines and scaling workloads, making it valuable for analytics and big data projects.

6. High-Performance Computing (HPC)

Kubernetes is increasingly used in HPC to manage data clusters, support data-heavy workloads, and enable resource sharing, making it suitable for high-performing applications.

7. Cloud Migration

For organizations moving their on-premise data centers to the cloud using the ‘Lift and Shift’ method, starting with large Kubernetes pods for the entire app simplifies the migration process. They can break down the app into smaller fragments as they learn more about the cloud, making it easier and safer to get the most out of. Learn more about the different types of Cloud migration strategies that can best suit your business needs.

8. Serverless Architecture

Serverless architecture is becoming popular because it lets businesses focus on coding without managing infrastructure. Cloud providers allocate resources only when needed, reducing costs. However, it can lead to vendor lock-in, where code made for one platform may not work on others. Kubernetes can solve this by hiding infrastructure details and creating a serverless platform that works across different vendors. Kubeless is an example of such a framework.

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Container Orchestration Services Based on Kubernetes

Due to its growing popularity, major cloud providers now offer managed Kubernetes services. This kind of dependence shown by major cloud service providers makes the common question of why use Kubernetes irrelevant to an extent. This means you don’t have to set up or maintain your Kubernetes environment or control plane; the cloud provider handles it. Here are the three primary services

Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS)

Amazon EKS provides a robust, fully managed Kubernetes solution, reducing businesses’ operational overhead by automating container orchestration. It ensures high availability through distributed control planes and integrates seamlessly with AWS services, making it ideal for enterprises looking to scale containerized applications efficiently.

Google Kubernetes Service (GKS)

Azure AKS offers a secure and automated Kubernetes experience, leveraging Azure’s extensive cloud infrastructure. It simplifies container deployment and management with built-in security and monitoring tools. Businesses benefit from free cluster management and rapid scaling capabilities, making AKS a cost-effective, agile development and deployment solution.

Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)

Google GKE provides a mature and feature-rich Kubernetes service, ensuring high availability and up-to-date software. Its seamless integration with Google Cloud’s hybrid and multi-cloud tools allows businesses to flexibly deploy and manage containers across diverse environments. GKE’s free cluster management and robust autoscaling make it a compelling choice for enterprises aiming to optimize operations at scale.

When You Should Not Use Kubernetes

Until now, we have gathered much knowledge about “Why use Kubernetes,” but now it seems we also need to understand when not to use Kubernetes. It may offer multiple benefits but may only be the right choice for some scenarios. Here are some cases where Kubernetes may be unnecessary:

High Training and Management Costs

If your development team needs to gain experience with DevOps or Kubernetes, training expenses and ongoing effort to manage a Kubernetes cluster can outweigh its benefits. This makes Kubernetes a costly and complex choice for teams without sufficient expertise.

Best for Large Projects

Kubernetes is typically ideal for large, complex projects requiring significant scaling and management. Its advanced features can be unnecessary for smaller applications, adding complexity.

Resource Intensive Process

Setting up and running Kubernetes requires considerable resources, including hardware, time, and staff. This can slow down your project and divert resources from other critical areas, impacting overall efficiency and cost-effectiveness.

Management Overhead

Kubernetes can raise significant management overhead, particularly for projects requiring rapid development cycles. The additional complexity can slow down the process and deployment, making it less suitable for projects that require quick turnaround times.

Legacy Application Migration

Migrating legacy applications to Kubernetes has always been a complex and time-consuming process. Often, such applications are better managed with traditional infrastructure tools, which can effortlessly handle existing steps more effectively without requiring significant re-engineering.

Alternatives to Consider:

• Docker Swarm: A lighter-weight container orchestration platform that can be a good choice for smaller deployments or teams new to containerization.
• Nomad: A flexible platform that can manage containerized workloads across different environments, including on-premises and cloud.
• Serverless Functions: If your application consists of short-lived, event-driven tasks, serverless functions on cloud platforms can be a simpler and more scalable option.

Why use Kubernetes: K8 Trends In 2024

Here are five key trends that give you reasons to Why use Kubernetes for 2024:

AI and Machine Learning Integration in Kubernetes

Using Kubernetes to run AI and machine learning (ML) applications is becoming popular. Finance, healthcare, and e-commerce companies use Kubernetes to handle large datasets and complex computations. Tools like Kubeflow help manage AI/ML models easily on Kubernetes.

Cloud-Native Infrastructure Expansion

Cloud-native infrastructure continues to expand in 2024 as organizations seek to leverage Kubernetes for its flexibility and scalability across public, private, and hybrid cloud environments. This trend is particularly evident in industries like financial services, retail, and healthcare, where the agility provided by cloud-native practices is essential for innovation and efficiency. Technologies like Istio and Prometheus are central to managing microservices and ensuring high availability and fault tolerance.

Platform Engineering and Developer Experience in Kubernetes

In 2024, companies are enhancing Kubernetes to simplify developer usage, offering platforms that streamline app deployment and management and enabling developers to prioritize coding. Tools like Backstage and Argo CD are improving how developers interact with Kubernetes, speeding up the development process.

Cost Management and Efficiency in Kubernetes

Controlling costs in Kubernetes is a big focus in 2024. Businesses use tools like Kubecost to track and optimize how they use resources in Kubernetes, especially in sectors with large-scale deployments like e-commerce and tech. This helps balance innovation with cost control.

WebAssembly (WASM) Adoption in Kubernetes

WebAssembly will be becoming more popular in Kubernetes in 2024. It’s a technology that lets software run fast and efficiently on various devices and platforms & creates lightweight and fast applications, practical for industries like tech and gaming. Tools like Krustlet and WasmEdge make it easier to run these efficient apps on Kubernetes, leading to better performance and security.

Conclusion

Now that we have covered all the aspects of “Why use Kubernetes,” let us summarize in a few words! Kubernetes is crucial for businesses seeking to streamline infrastructure and improve operational efficiency. By automating container management and resource allocation, Kubernetes reduces costs associated with overprovisioning and boosts scalability and agility. This enables organizations to streamline deployment processes, accelerate time-to-market, and improve productivity. Opting for Kubernetes consulting services provides a competitive edge, using container orchestration capabilities to drive innovation and meet evolving market demands effectively. Plus, Kubernetes makes management easier by handling complex tasks and freeing resources for strategic use. As businesses increasingly embrace cloud-native technologies, Kubernetes remains indispensable for maintaining competitiveness and adapting swiftly to market demands.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

How does Kubernetes fit into our overall cloud migration strategy?

Kubernetes helps you smoothly move your applications to the cloud by managing and organizing them in containers. It makes deploying, scaling, and managing your applications more accessible and efficient.

Security is significant for our business data. Is Kubernetes secure enough?

Kubernetes has vital security tools like role-based access control (RBAC), network policies, and secrets management. However, its security depends on how well your team and cloud provider set up and maintain these features.

Our applications are complex and have intricate dependencies. Will Kubernetes still work for us?

Kubernetes is built to manage complicated applications with many parts by coordinating containers. It helps you define and control these parts, ensuring your applications work well and consistently in a cloud-based setup.