Skip to main content
Welcome back! After completing your Google Cloud Platform setup, it’s time for a concise Kubernetes refresher. Kubernetes is the leading open-source container orchestration system that automates deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications. You build your application into a container image—often with Docker—and Kubernetes takes care of scheduling, running, and scaling those containers in your production environment.

​
What Is Kubernetes?

Kubernetes (or “K8s”) provides:
  • Automated container orchestration for microservices
  • Declarative configuration to define desired state
  • Self-healing to restart or replace failing containers
  • Built-in service discovery and load balancing
  • Secret and configuration management outside of code
By centralizing these capabilities, K8s helps teams adopt robust DevOps practices and infrastructure as code.

​
Key Features

​
Automated Rollouts & Rollbacks

Kubernetes lets you perform rolling updates with zero downtime. Suppose you have version 4.4.1 of your Docker image running across 2,000 pods. After building and tagging version 4.8, you trigger a rolling update. Kubernetes gradually replaces the old pods, monitors health checks, and ensures continuity. If a critical bug appears in 4.8, a single rollback command reverts your deployment back to 4.4.1—fast and reliable.
The image illustrates Kubernetes features, specifically focusing on automated rollouts and rollbacks, with a diagram showing version changes and production details.

​
Self-Healing, Service Discovery & Load Balancing, and Security

  • Self-Healing: Continuously monitors pod health. Crashed containers are automatically restarted or replaced.
  • Service Discovery & Load Balancing: Kubernetes DNS and Services route traffic evenly across healthy pods.
  • Security & Configuration Management: Use Secrets and ConfigMaps to store sensitive credentials and application configuration separately from your images.
These features work together to keep your cluster in the declared state and strengthen your security posture.
The image lists Kubernetes features, including self-healing, service discovery and load balancing, and security and configuration management, with corresponding icons.

​
Deployment Options

Kubernetes can be installed and managed in multiple environments:
EnvironmentDetailsExamples
Managed CloudProvider handles control plane upgrades, scaling, and patchesEKS, GKE, AKS
On-PremisesFull control over hardware and network, higher operational overheadkubeadm, Rancher, OpenShift
Managed services free you from infrastructure maintenance, while on-premises clusters let you meet specific compliance or latency requirements.
The image shows logos of three cloud service providers: AWS, GCP, and Microsoft Azure, labeled under "Cloud Options."
In this course, we’ll deploy and manage a Kubernetes cluster on Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE).

​
Next Steps on GCP

Now that you’ve reviewed Kubernetes fundamentals, let’s dive into GKE setup:
  1. Create a GKE cluster with gcloud container clusters create
  2. Configure kubectl to point to your new cluster
  3. Deploy sample workloads and explore scaling strategies
Happy container orchestration!

Watch Video