--- title: What is Kubernetes? url: https://www.vmware.com/topics/kubernetes description: Learn how Kubernetes automates deploying, scaling, and managing containerized apps across private cloud environments. --- # What is Kubernetes? Kubernetes (often abbreviated as K8s) is an open source platform for orchestrating [containerized applications](https://www.vmware.com/topics/containers) across clusters of physical or virtual infrastructure. Maintained by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF), Kubernetes provides a consistent way to deploy, manage, and scale applications regardless of where they run. At its core, Kubernetes automates many of the operational tasks involved in running modern applications, including workload scheduling, resource allocation, networking, scaling, health monitoring, and lifecycle management. By abstracting the underlying infrastructure, Kubernetes enables organizations to operate applications consistently across private cloud, public cloud, edge, and on-premises environments. ## Why Kubernetes Containers transformed modern application development by packaging applications and their dependencies into portable, consistent runtime environments. As organizations adopted containers at scale, however, managing hundreds or thousands of containerized workloads across distributed infrastructure quickly became a significant operational challenge. Key challenges include: - **Infrastructure coordination:** As applications scale, manually managing networking, storage, resource allocation, and infrastructure across large numbers of containers quickly becomes impractical. - **Application availability:** Monitoring application health, replacing failed containers, and maintaining availability across distributed infrastructure becomes increasingly difficult without automation. - **Application networking:** Modern applications require reliable service discovery, load balancing, and traffic routing. Managing these capabilities manually while supporting application updates and scaling introduces significant operational complexity. ### How Kubernetes simplifies operations Kubernetes addresses these challenges by providing a unified platform for orchestrating containerized applications. Rather than manually managing individual containers, administrators define the desired state of their applications (including resource requirements, scaling policies, networking configuration, and application updates) and Kubernetes continuously works to maintain that state. By automating workload scheduling, scaling, self-healing, networking, and lifecycle management, Kubernetes reduces manual operational effort while improving application resiliency and consistency. This enables organizations to operate modern application platforms more efficiently across private cloud, public cloud, edge, and on-premises environments. ## Kubernetes concepts Kubernetes manages applications through declarative resource definitions, allowing users to describe the desired state of their workloads while the platform continuously works to maintain that state. These resources define how applications are deployed, exposed, scaled, and managed throughout their lifecycle. - **Pod:** The smallest deployable unit in Kubernetes. A pod contains one or more containers that share networking and storage resources and are deployed together as a single application component. - **Service:** A Kubernetes resource that provides a stable network endpoint for a group of pods. Services enable reliable communication between applications by routing traffic to healthy pods as they are created, removed, or replaced. - **Deployment:** A workload resource that manages the lifecycle of stateless applications. Deployments automate application updates, scaling, and recovery while ensuring the desired number of pod replicas remain available. - **StatefulSet:** A workload resource designed for stateful applications that require stable network identities or persistent storage, such as databases and messaging systems. - **DaemonSet:** Ensures that a copy of a pod runs on selected worker nodes, making it well suited for infrastructure services such as logging, monitoring, and security agents. - **Persistent storage:** Kubernetes supports persistent storage for applications that need to retain data beyond the lifecycle of individual pods. PersistentVolumeClaims (PVCs) provide a standardized way for applications to request storage from the underlying infrastructure. ## Kubernetes architecture Kubernetes cluster consists of two distinct functional planes: the Control Plane (which executes cluster-wide orchestration logic) and Worker Nodes (which host and execute container workloads). ### The Control Plane Components - **kube-apiserver:** The centralized, horizontal-scaling REST front end that validates and processes all HTTP/gRPC requests, acting as the sole entry point to the cluster state. - **etcd:** A consistent, highly available, distributed key-value store used as Kubernetes’ single source of truth for all cluster configuration data and resource state. - **kube-scheduler:** Analyzes unassigned Pods and selects the optimal node for execution based on resource requests (CPU/RAM/GPU), affinity/anti-affinity rules, taints, tolerations, and data locality. - **kube-controller-manager:** Runs continuous control loops (e.g., NodeController, DeploymentController, JobController) that observe cluster state through the API server and execute reconciliation actions. - **cloud-controller-manager:** Links cluster operations to underlying cloud provider infrastructure, orchestrating cloud-native load balancers, storage volumes, and routing tables. ### Worker Node Components - **kubelet:** An agent running on every node that communicates with the control plane, inspects PodSpecs assigned to its host, and interacts with the container runtime to launch and monitor container health. - **Container Runtime:** The low-level software that executes containers. Kubernetes interacts with engines (e.g., containerd, CRI-O) via the Container Runtime Interface (CRI). - **kube-proxy:** Manages host network rules (via iptables or IPVS) and handles TCP/UDP/SCTP Layer 4 proxying to implement Kubernetes Service abstractions. ![kubernetes-architecture.png](https://www.vmware.com/media/blt8c9a8aaca0ffd4ac/blt807a1d19ccced0ab/6a875bc4bc1d3ab2687008eb/kubernetes-architecture.png) ## Enterprise Kubernetes use cases Organizations use Kubernetes to standardize application operations, accelerate software delivery, and support modern workloads across private cloud, public cloud, edge, and on-premises environments. - **Platform engineering and internal developer platforms (IDPs):** Platform engineering teams use Kubernetes as the foundation for Internal Developer Platforms (IDPs), providing developers with standardized, self-service application environments while maintaining enterprise governance, security, and operational consistency. - **AI and machine learning infrastructure:** Kubernetes helps organizations deploy, scale, and manage AI and machine learning workloads by orchestrating distributed compute resources, optimizing GPU and CPU utilization, and supporting both model training and inference at scale. - **Application modernization:** Organizations modernize existing applications by deploying containerized workloads on Kubernetes, enabling independent scaling, improved resiliency, and more efficient application lifecycle management. - **Private cloud and hybrid cloud operations:** Kubernetes provides a consistent operational model across private cloud, hybrid cloud, and edge environments, enabling organizations to standardize application deployment and management while improving workload portability and operational consistency. ## How organizations use Kubernetes Organizations use Kubernetes to build, deploy, and operate modern applications consistently across on-premises, cloud, and edge environments. Its flexibility and extensibility make it the foundation for a wide range of cloud-native and enterprise use cases. - **Platform engineering:** Kubernetes has become the foundation for many internal developer platforms (IDPs), enabling platform engineering teams to provide developers with standardized, self-service environments. By automating infrastructure provisioning, application deployment, and lifecycle management, organizations can improve developer productivity while maintaining governance, security, and operational consistency. - **AI and machine learning infrastructure:** Kubernetes provides the scalability and resource management needed to support AI and machine learning workloads. Organizations use it to orchestrate model training, inference, and supporting services across GPU- and CPU-based infrastructure, helping teams efficiently utilize compute resources while scaling AI applications. - **Application modernization:** Many organizations use Kubernetes to modernize existing applications by adopting containers and cloud-native development practices. This enables teams to incrementally modernize applications, improve portability across environments, and accelerate software delivery without requiring a complete application rewrite. - **Private and hybrid cloud consistency:** Kubernetes provides a consistent operational model across private and hybrid cloud environments, enabling organizations to apply the same deployment, scaling, and management practices regardless of where applications run. This consistency simplifies operations while bringing cloud-like automation and self-service capabilities to on-premises infrastructure. ## Kubernetes benefits Kubernetes simplifies application deployment, automates Day 2 operations, and helps organizations run containerized workloads consistently at scale. By automating routine operational tasks and continuously maintaining application health, it helps organizations improve operational efficiency while increasing application resiliency. ### Operational efficiency and resiliency - **Declarative automation:** Kubernetes uses a declarative management model where administrators define the desired state of applications and infrastructure. It continuously reconciles the current state with the desired state, automatically correcting drift and simplifying ongoing operations. - **Automated lifecycle management:** Teams can roll out new software versions, pause deployments, or roll back changes with minimal manual intervention, reducing operational complexity and the risk of human error during application updates. - **Continuous self-healing:** Kubernetes continuously monitors application health. If a container crashes or a node becomes unavailable, it automatically restarts, replaces, or reschedules workloads onto healthy infrastructure to help maintain application availability. - **Intelligent resource optimization:** Kubernetes maximizes infrastructure utilization by scheduling workloads based on CPU, memory, and other resource requirements, helping organizations make more efficient use of their infrastructure investments. ### Platform flexibility and control - **Operational consistency:** Standardized Kubernetes APIs and deployment models provide a consistent operational experience across infrastructure environments, enabling organizations to simplify operations while maintaining flexibility as infrastructure evolves. - **Enterprise extensibility:** Kubernetes integrates with a broad ecosystem of networking, storage, security, observability, and developer tools, allowing organizations to build platforms that align with their operational, security, and compliance requirements. - **Dynamic auto-scaling:** Kubernetes automatically scales application instances up or down based on application demand, enabling workloads to respond to changing usage patterns while optimizing infrastructure utilization. ## How VMware products can help Kubernetes provides the foundation for modern application platforms, but managing application connectivity, service discovery, and networking across production environments requires an enterprise-ready Kubernetes platform. ## Related Products and Solutions [VMware vSphere Kubernetes Service (VKS)](https://www.vmware.com/products/cloud-infrastructure/vsphere-kubernetes-service) is the CNCF-certified Kubernetes runtime built directly into [VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF)](https://www.vmware.com/products/cloud-infrastructure/vmware-cloud-foundation) to run all modern apps. VKS is among the first platforms certified under the new CNCF Kubernetes AI Conformance Program. VKS enables platform engineers to easily deploy, manage, and scale Kubernetes clusters while leveraging a comprehensive set of cloud services included in VCF, as well as CNCF-conformant third-party services. By integrating Kubernetes natively into VMware Cloud Foundation, VKS simplifies enterprise application connectivity through several key capabilities: - **Integrated service networking:** VKS integrates Kubernetes Services with the underlying networking infrastructure, simplifying service exposure, load balancing, and application connectivity while reducing operational complexity. - **Unified platform operations:** Platform engineering teams can manage Kubernetes clusters, networking, lifecycle operations, and traditional virtual machines through a consistent operational model, simplifying administration while maintaining enterprise governance and control. - **Enterprise-ready resiliency:** VKS combines standard Kubernetes networking capabilities with the resilient compute, storage, and networking services of VMware Cloud Foundation, helping organizations deliver highly available, secure, and scalable applications. By bringing Kubernetes together with a unified private cloud platform, VCF helps organizations simplify operations, modernize application delivery, and provide developers with a consistent platform for building and running modern applications. ## Recommended for You - [Kubernetes Cluster](https://www.vmware.com/topics/kubernetes-cluster) - [Kubernetes Deployment](https://www.vmware.com/topics/kubernetes-deployment) - [Kubernetes Architecture](https://www.vmware.com/topics/kubernetes-architecture) - [Kubernetes Networking](https://www.vmware.com/topics/kubernetes-networking) ## Related Products and Solutions - [VMware vSphere Kubernetes Service](https://www.vmware.com/products/cloud-infrastructure/vsphere-kubernetes-service) - [VMware Cloud Foundation](https://www.vmware.com/products/cloud-infrastructure/vmware-cloud-foundation) - [Kubernetes Ecosystem Partners](https://www.broadcom.com/how-to-buy/software-partners/kubernetes-partners) ## Also of Interest - [What is Platform Engineering?](https://www.vmware.com/topics/platform-engineering) - [What are Kubernetes Services?](https://www.vmware.com/topics/kubernetes-services) - [What are Kubernetes Pods?](https://www.vmware.com/topics/kubernetes-pods)