Kubernetes: Advantages and Disadvantages in an Organisation

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Container generation struck the public’s interest with the advent of Docker in 2013. The performance and price blessings containerization can provide quickly made it one of the most up-to-date subjects in cloud computing. Shortly after Docker’s release, there was a flood of the latest box control platforms, aiming to lessen the complexity of coping with containerized applications. One of those platforms, the open supply undertaking Kubernetes, is by way of means now the de facto general for box control.

To recognize the strength of Kubernetes, you have to have some fundamental know-how. In our preceding blog posts, we defined the fundamentals of box generation, mentioned the blessings of boxes, grew to become surveys approximately box adoption right into a Docker infographic, and more. In case you missed it, let’s begin with a quick reminder of what boxes genuinely are.

What is Kubernetes?

Kubernetes is a container management system that was originally developed by Google. In 2015, Google published Kubernetes as an open-source project. Soon after, it was donated to the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF). The CNCF, which was created by Google in cooperation with the Linux Foundation, aims to promote container technology.

What does Kubernetes actually do?

In short, Kubernetes enables you to turn the potential of container technology into operational reality by automating and simplifying your daily container workflow. It automates the provisioning, scaling, and management of containerized applications across a group (cluster) of servers (bare metal or virtual). Kubernetes also allows you to automatically manage networks, storage, software, logs, alerts, and more for all your containers. To avoid throwing tech lingo at you, we will try to explain the strengths, main functions, and benefits of Kubernetes in plain English.

Benefits and advantages of using Kubernetes

There are many options when it comes to container management, both open source, and commercial. However, Kubernetes is the most widely used solution and has gained popularity in recent years. Let’s find out why:

Impressive heritage: It has a mature and proven underlying architecture. The design draws on more than 10 years of operating experience from Google engineers who helped build and maintain the world’s largest container platform.

Outstanding community and industry support: Its’ widespread adoption, growth, support, and popularity sets it apart from any other container orchestration solution. The project garnered a large active open source community for users and developers as well as support from global companies, IT market leaders, and large cloud providers.

The rich feature set and application support: Compared to other content management systems, Kubernetes has a wide range of functions. It supports a wide range of workloads, programming languages, and frameworks, and enables compute, stateless and stateful workloads, and makes Kubernetes flexible enough to meet the needs of a wide variety of users and use cases.

Ongoing development: Soon after its first release, it gained a very large and active community. With about 2000 Github contributors at the moment, varying from engineers working at fortune 500 companies to individual developers and engineers, new features are being released constantly. The large and diverse user community also steps in to answer questions and foster collaboration.

On the other hand, there are some reasons why you may not want to use managed Kubernetes:

Less control: this is the main disadvantage. With a managed approach, you are limited to the infrastructure options and integrations that the platform supports. In an unmanaged environment, you have complete freedom to design your clusters exactly the way you want.

Cost: Managed Kubernetes generally costs more than doing it yourself, at least in terms of direct costs. Of course, you must consider the indirect labor and time costs associated with managing clusters on their own to determine which approach will produce the best cost results.

Solutions for enterprises:

Let’s say you’ve done your research and want to use Kubernetes as your content management system. What are your options?

Do it yourself:

It is possible to build your own Kubernetes cluster from scratch, but as mentioned above, successfully building and maintaining a highly available and secure cluster is a lot of work. The process is complex and time-consuming. There are many companies that can offer you Kubernetes advice, training, or workshops to get you started. However, if you use Kubernetes in production, you still need a team of at least three people with expensive Kubernetes knowledge who are always available in case something goes wrong. In most cases and for most organizations, this is simply not feasible.

Managed Kubernetes platforms (SaaS-solutions):

There is no shortage of commercial Kubernetes-based offerings. New solutions emerge every day. Most of these solutions are offerings from companies building their own product on Kubernetes. The downside to many of these Kubernetes platforms is that they make administration easy to use and are primarily focused on providing a simplified user interface (UI) rather than addressing the fundamental challenges of working with containerized applications and creating an environment. ready for production. There are some good options, but keep in mind that most of them will limit your degree of customization and link you to a specific product.

Fully Managed Kubernetes (IT outsourcing)

As a third option, you can hire specialists to implement and/or maintain your Kubernetes infrastructure without commercial tools. Some vendors offer advice and implementation to get you on the right track. Other service providers also offer daily management and support. This is similar to traditional managed services and IT outsourcing.