Kubernetes

Kubernetes (often abbreviated K8s) is a platform for automating the deployment, scaling, and operation of containerized applications. Google designed it based on over a decade of internal experience running production workloads with the Borg system, and open-sourced version 1.0 in July 2015. Google then donated the project to the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF), where it became the first graduated project.

The current stable release is Kubernetes 1.33. The system organizes containers into pods (the smallest deployable unit) and manages them through a declarative configuration model — operators describe the desired state in YAML manifests, and Kubernetes continuously reconciles actual state to match. Services handle internal load balancing and discovery, Ingress manages external traffic, and persistent volume claims abstract storage. The Helm package manager and the Operator pattern extend Kubernetes to manage complex, stateful applications.

The official documentation includes tutorials, concept guides, and API references. The source code is on GitHub under the Apache 2.0 license.