Dec 10, 2024 · 6 min read
Kubernetes has become the de facto standard for container orchestration, and learning it has been one of the most valuable investments in my infrastructure journey. At its core, Kubernetes abstracts away the complexity of managing containers across multiple hosts, providing a declarative API for defining desired state.
Understanding the fundamental building blocks—Pods, Deployments, Services, and ConfigMaps—was my first step. Pods are the smallest deployable units, but Deployments are what we typically work with, providing declarative updates, rollbacks, and scaling capabilities. Services abstract network access to pods, enabling stable endpoints regardless of pod lifecycle.
The control plane components—API server, etcd, scheduler, and controller manager—work together to maintain cluster state. Watching how the reconciliation loop continuously works to match actual state with desired state helped me understand the self-healing nature of Kubernetes.
Networking in Kubernetes was initially challenging. Concepts like ClusterIP, NodePort, and LoadBalancer services, along with Ingress controllers, require understanding how traffic flows through the cluster. Implementing network policies for security added another layer of complexity but is essential for production environments.
I have found that combining Kubernetes with GitOps tools like ArgoCD creates a powerful deployment pipeline. Defining applications declaratively in Git and having them automatically sync to the cluster provides auditability, easy rollbacks, and a clear source of truth for what is running in production.
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