Kubernetes helps DevOps teams to scale, automate and build resiliency into applications while reducing the infrastructure burden.
The business benefits of digital transformation and software innovation are immense, but the IT capabilities needed to deliver these benefits are still evolving. In this quest, Kubernetes is becoming a must-have in the IT architecture as organisations leverage containers for complex applications, micro-services and even cloud-native applications.
This container storage solution appeals to DevOps teams looking to manage, operate and configure containerised microservices at scale. Kubernetes’ orchestration engine handles the manual tasks of scaling, building and deploying more resiliency into the apps, which helps DevOps teams respond to customer demands without worrying about the underlying infrastructure.
Nearly all IT projects, including those that involve DevOps, require a definable business case, where ROI compares to company standards for project returns. The percentage of projects that make the business case is a valuable metric to gauge DevOps effectiveness.
And Kubernetes comes into play as it is cost-saving, minimising the management overhead and risk of errors.
Making it easier for developers
Moreover, Kubernetes makes it easier for developers to move from development to production, making applications more portable. Kubernetes manages applications with precision based on metrics, enabling developers to concentrate on new services.
With predictable, repeatable, and faster development and deployments, Kubernetes changes the way applications are being designed, developed, packaged, delivered, and managed, paving the way to better application delivery and experience.
Earlier, development and operations teams operated in silos, which led to inefficiencies.
DevOps, to a large extent, helped teams understand each other’s processes by bringing in cultural changes that force processes and workflows to overlap and run in tandem. However, the changes are not enough when it comes to tooling and infrastructure in siloed teams
To address these technical issues, DevOps teams use pipelines enabling developers to seamlessly submit, test and revise code. Pipelines create visibility into the entire software development life cycle (SDLC) making it easier for teams to identify and address issues early on. While Kubernetes helps DevOps in transitioning infrastructure to public clouds, it also comes to rescue when a variety of toolchains need to be replaced or updated in the pipeline.
DevOps teams can break their toolchains down into microservices, with containerisation. Each tool, or individual functionality of a tool, can be separated, enabling modifications without interrupting the rest of the pipeline.
Many capabilities that come with Kubernetes make it useful for building, deploying, and scaling enterprise-grade DevOps pipelines. For example, if a specific host configuration is needed for a testing tool, teams are not limited to that same configuration for all tools, DevOps teams can choose the tools best suited for their needs.
These potentialities that Kubernetes offers enable DevOps teams to automate, increasing productivity, or more importantly, quality.
Controlling the scale and deployment of pipeline resources enables an organisation to ensure that budgets are maintained and can help reduce security risks. Also, Kubernetes provides a self-service catalogue functionality that enables developers to create infrastructure on-demand. This includes cloud services that are exposed via open service and API standards.
Also, Kubernetes’ automated rollback features enables organisations to deploy new releases with zero downtime, as it can update one cluster at a time, rather than having to take down production environments.
These functions not only enable DevOps teams to smoothly achieve blue/green deployments but also easily prioritise new features for customers and conduct A/B testing to ensure that product features are needed
DevOps seeks to improve the entire SDLC and to achieve this goal pipelines are reliant on collaboration, communication, integration and automation, and Kubernetes helps to speed up development by enabling modifications, ensuring software update is done with minimal downtime.
DevOps teams don’t have to build resiliency, scale into the application, since Kubernetes provides the mechanisms and the ecosystem for organisations to deploy applications and services to customers quickly.
Perhaps, the next phase could be to integrate the large ecosystem surrounding Kubernetes, building a platform that is highly secure and flexible to allow organisations to serve their customers faster and at greater scale.
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