The Fundamentals of Kubernetes and Containers

As more organizations adopt agile development and modern (cloud-native) application architectures, the need for a platform that can deploy, scale, and provide reliable container services has become critical for many medium-sized and large companies. Kubernetes has become the de facto platform for hosting container workloads but can be complex to install, configure, and manage.

Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS) is a managed service that enables users of the AWS platform to focus on using a Kubernetes cluster rather than spending time on installation and maintenance.

In this chapter, we will review the basic building blocks of Kubernetes. Specifically, however, we will be covering the following topics:

• A brief history of Docker, containerd, and runc
• A deeper dive into containers
• What is container orchestration?
• What is Kubernetes?
• Understanding Kubernetes deployment architectures

For a deeper understanding of the chapter, it is recommended that you have some familiarity with Linux commands and architectures.

Important note

The content in this book is intended for IT professionals that have experience building and/or running Kubernetes on-premises or on other cloud platforms. We recognize that not everyone with the prerequisite experience is aware of the background of Kubernetes so this first chapter is included (but optional) to provide a consistent view of where Kubernetes has come from and the supporting technology it leverages. If you think you already have a clear understanding of the topics discussed in this chapter, feel free to skip this one and move on to the next chapter.