Kubernetes for a 5-year old

Its celebration time at Google as GKE (Google Kubernetes Engine) just turned five. But what does Kubernetes mean for a five year old? Megan Friedman, Features Editor for The Keyword at Google explains that in Greek, the word "kubernetes" means "helmsman." In tech words, it's a system that uses containers to help software work more efficiently with the server space it has. Just as someone helms a container ship, Kubernetes makes sure everything gets where it's supposed to be.

Companies build their products using containers so they’re standardized, whether it runs in the cloud or in a physical data center. Kubernetes manages the workloads and services associated with containers, so software efficiently uses server space. Going back to original topic, what does all this mean to a fiver? Three ladies who are GKE engineers—Michelle Au, Janet Kuo and Purvi Desai—explains Kubernetes and its importance.

For A Gamer

It helps many of your favorite games and websites run without problems, even when all your friends want to play at the same time. It makes sure that there are enough computers running to support everyone using them, they are restarted if they crash and that they update without problems.

For A Gardener

Think of containers as plants. To grow a plant, you need to first find some pots, and then fill the pots with seeds and compost. Let’s say you have all the plants in one pot and there’s not enough compost in that pot. Then you need to move them to other pots. Kubernetes is like a gardener that helps you take care of your plants, check the compost levels of each pot, check the health of your plants, remove dead plants or transplant them when needed. Kubernetes can also grow more or less of certain kinds of plants (“I want at least two roses and at most 10 roses at all times”) based on your preferences. 

For A Lego Player

Imagine building a huge city out of Legos. Deciding which Lego blocks needed would take significant time and hard work. Now imagine instead, the child vaguely describes the idea of the city, along with shapes and colors, to their mom. Mom buys Lego kits and builds them for the child. She also works with them every day to add more buildings, so the child can spend more time playing rather than working. Think of Kuberentes as the mom, applications that you use on your computer or tablet as the Legos and the child as the application developer.

Why Kubernetes is so important?

In a world where customers need access to software—regardless of their location—Kubernetes allows applications to run at global scale. Another benefit of Kubernetes is that it runs anywhere, so you can move your applications around.

It provides basic building blocks for scaling workloads, monitoring their health and updating them. This enables teams to develop, roll out and test their applications faster—making those applications more reliable and dynamically scalable. Kubernetes took off because it’s portable across any infrastructure provider and flexible to extend it with custom APIs.

It’s enabled developers and operators alike to run their test and production workloads in environments of their choice without needing to rewire the application.

As more businesses go digital, Kuberenetes is going to become an integral part of our life. It already has one of the biggest community on github.

So, folks be ready to ride the K-storm!!