1. Kubernetes Architecture
Kubernetes is a container orchestration platform built around a master/worker node model. The control plane (API server, scheduler, etcd, controller manager) manages the desired state of the cluster, while worker nodes run the actual workloads inside Pods.
2. Core Objects
The fundamental building blocks are: Pod (the smallest deployable unit), Deployment (declarative rolling updates), Service (stable network endpoint), and Namespace (logical isolation between teams or environments).
3. Networking and Storage
Kubernetes networking follows a flat IP model — every Pod can reach every other Pod without NAT. Services expose Pods via stable ClusterIP, NodePort, or LoadBalancer. Ingress handles HTTP routing at Layer 7. Persistent data lives in PersistentVolumes provisioned by StorageClasses.
4. Configuration and Security
ConfigMaps store non-sensitive configuration; Secrets store credentials (base64-encoded, optionally encrypted at rest). RBAC (Role-Based Access Control) restricts what users and service accounts can do. Pod Security Admission enforces security profiles at namespace level.
5. Observability and Maintenance
Use kubectl logs, kubectl describe, and kubectl top for day-to-day debugging. For production, integrate Prometheus + Grafana for metrics and Loki for log aggregation. Rolling updates with kubectl rollout enable zero-downtime deployments.
6. Advanced Ecosystem
Helm packages Kubernetes manifests into reusable charts. Kustomize applies environment-specific patches without templating. Operators extend the Kubernetes API to manage stateful applications (databases, queues) with domain-specific logic.
7. Best Practices
- Define resource
requestsandlimitson every container. - Use
livenessProbeandreadinessProbeto let Kubernetes manage restarts safely. - Prefer
Deploymentover rawPodfor any stateless workload. - Keep images small and pin their digest, not just a tag.
- Separate concerns with Namespaces and RBAC from day one.