Kubernetes
Also known as: K8s, kube
Kubernetes is an open-source platform for automating deployment, scaling, and operation of containerized applications across clusters of machines — the de facto standard for container orchestration.
Detailed explanation
Kubernetes (often abbreviated as K8s) provides a declarative API for describing application workloads, networking, and storage. A control plane reconciles the actual state of the cluster to match what is declared, handling scheduling, scaling, self-healing, and rolling updates.
Most teams consume Kubernetes through managed services (EKS on AWS, GKE on GCP, AKS on Azure) rather than running the control plane themselves. The complexity sits in the layers on top: ingress, service mesh, secrets management, autoscaling, multi-tenancy, and the operational practices that keep production stable.
Kubernetes is the right choice when you have multiple services that benefit from a unified deployment, scaling, and networking layer. For small teams with a handful of services, simpler platforms (managed PaaS, serverless, or plain VMs) often have a better total cost of ownership.