DevOps Dictionary

Kubernetes is an open-source platform for orchestrating containers, meaning it coordinates how containerised applications are deployed, run, updated, and scaled across a cluster of machines. It addresses the operational problem of keeping many moving parts healthy and available by scheduling containers onto nodes, monitoring them, restarting failed instances, rolling out changes safely, and exposing services for reliable networking and discovery. With Kubernetes, teams can treat infrastructure as a managed pool and let the system enforce the desired state (for example, “run three copies of this service”), whereas without it, engineers often rely on ad hoc scripts and manual intervention, leading to slower releases, inconsistent environments, and higher outage risk. This gap exists because Kubernetes continuously reconciles what’s running with what you declared should be running.