What Is Kubernetes? | IBM 153QH > 17DVS > 20D0F > 30AST"/> 153QH - Public Cloud Platform > 17DVS - Public Cloud PaaS > 20D0F - Cloud Native PaaS > 30AST - Cloud Containers"/> By Stephanie Susnjara and Ian Smalley Kubernetes defined Kubernetes, also known as k8s or kube, is an open source container orchestration platform for scheduling and automating the deployment, management and scaling of containerized applications. Today, Kubernetes and the broader ecosystem of container-related technologies have merged to form the building blocks of modern cloud infrastructure. This ecosystem enables organizations to deliver a highly productive hybrid multicloud computing environment to perform complex tasks surrounding infrastructure and operations. It also supports cloud-native development by enabling a build-once-and-deploy-anywhere approach to building applications. The word Kubernetes originates from Greek, meaning helmsman or pilot, hence the helm in the Kubernetes logo. Background: Containers, Docker and Kubernetes What are containers? Containers are lightweight, executable application components that combine source code with all the operating system (OS) libraries and dependencies required to run the code in any environment. Containers take advantage of a form of OS virtualization that allows multiple applications to share a single instance of an OS by isolating processes and controlling the amount of CPU, memory and disk those processes can access. Because they are smaller, more resource-efficient and more portable than virtual machines (VMs), containers have become the de facto compute units of modern cloud-native applications. Containers are also more resource-efficient. They allow you to run more applications on fewer machines (virtual servers and physical servers) with fewer OS instances. Since containers can run consistently anywhere, they have become critical to the underlying architecture that supports hybrid multicloud environments, the combination of on-premises, private cloud, public cloud and more than one cloud service from more than one cloud vendor. What is Docker? Docker is the most popular tool for creating and running Linux® containers. While early forms of containers were introduced decades ago (with technologies such as FreeBSD Jails and AIX Workload Partitions), containers were democratized in 2013 when Docker brought them to the masses with a new developer-friendly and cloud-friendly implementation. Docker began as an open source project, but today, it also refers to Docker Inc., the company that produces Docker—a commercial container toolkit that builds on the open source project and contributes those improvements back to the open source community. Docker was built on traditional Linux container technology but enables more granular virtualization of Linux kernel processes and adds features to make containers more accessible for developers to build, deploy, manage and secure. While alternative container runtime platforms exist today like Open Container Initiative (OCI), CoreOS and Canonical (Ubuntu) LXD, Docker is the dominant choice. Moreover, Docker has become synonymous with containers and is sometimes mistaken as a competitor to complimentary technologies like Kubernetes. Today, Docker and Kubernetes are the leading containerization tools, with Docker dominating 82% of the market and Kubernetes controlling 11.52% market share in 2024. Container orchestration with Kubernetes As containers proliferated, today, an organization might have hundreds or thousands of them. Operations teams are needed to schedule and automate container deployment, networking, scalability and availability. Enter container orchestration. Based on Borg, Google’s internal container orchestration platform, Kubernetes was introduced to the public as an open source tool in 2014, with Microsoft, Red Hat®, IBM and other major tech players signing on as early members of the Kubernetes community. In 2015, Google donated Kubernetes to the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF), the open source, vendor-neutral hub of cloud-native computing. Kubernetes became the CNCF’s first hosted project in March 2016. Since then, Kubernetes has become the most widely used container orchestration tool for running container-based workloads worldwide. In a CNCF report, Kubernetes is the second largest open source project in the world (after Linux) and the primary container orchestration tool for 71% of Fortune 100 companies. In 2018, Kubernetes was the CNCF’s first graduate project, becoming one of the fastest-growing open source projects in history. While other container orchestration options, most notably Docker Swarm and Apache Mesos, gained some traction early on, Kubernetes quickly became the most widely adopted. Since Kubernetes joined the CNCF in 2016, the number of contributors has grown to 8,012, a 996% increase. As of this writing, contributors have added over 123,000 commits to the Kubernetes repository on GitHub. The latest tech news, backed by expert insights Stay up to date on the most important—and intriguing—industry trends on AI, automation, data and beyond with the Think Newsletter, delivered twice weekly.