Over the last has become central to how modern computing is orchestrated. You won't see it, but there's very little you can do today with any sophisticated website or cloud service that doesn't have managing background work. So, what is it and why does it matter so much? The story started when easy to run applications in containers.
Before that, companies ran most of their applications on (VMs) on servers, data centers, and the cloud. Containers meant businesses could run programs with far fewer resources, making them much cheaper. Containers also enabled companies to move their applications easily from one platform to another.
Before this shift, programs were usually locked into their original foundations. With containers, they suddenly became portable. But this portability, as useful as it was, led to another problem -- managing all those containers and the services they needed.
The solution was an orchestration program. There were many orchestration programs and a handful are still around. But Kubernetes proved so successful and popular that all is now essentially built on Kubernetes.
What is Kubernetes? Kubernetes coordinates the running of all the parts in an application for maximum efficiency and smooth performance. In cloud-native computing, these parts are often distributed widely among several locations. An orchestrator assembles all the resources that applications require to perform.
That definition might make you think Kubernetes is a scaled-up operating system. It.