Kubernetes — open source GitHub project

Kubernetes is an open source system for deploying, maintaining, and scaling containerized applications.

What Kubernetes is

Kubernetes, or K8s, manages containerized applications across multiple machines. It provides mechanisms for deployment, maintenance, scaling, and recovery of container-packaged apps.

The project builds on Google’s Borg experience and is hosted by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation. Kubernetes became a central cloud-native layer with operators, ingress controllers, Helm, service meshes, and cluster platforms around it.

What is inside and how it is used

Minimal Deployment object

This example shows the project shape and the usual way it is used.

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apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
  name: web
spec:
  replicas: 3
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      app: web
  template:
    metadata:
      labels:
        app: web
    spec:
      containers:
        - name: web
          image: nginx:stable

The repository contains Go code for the API server, scheduler, controllers, kubelet, tests, staging modules, and release infrastructure. `k8s.io/kubernetes` is not meant as a normal app library; separate components exist for that.

Strengths and limits

Its strength is a shared model for complex distributed apps. Its limit is operational complexity: networking, storage, security, observability, upgrades, and resource cost all need real expertise.