Kubernetes
Kubernetes is an open-source platform for automating the deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications. KCNA centers on Kubernetes fundamentals as its largest domain.
All KCNA Terms
Kubernetes
Kubernetes is an open-source platform for automating the deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications.
Pod
A Pod is the smallest deployable unit in Kubernetes, wrapping one or more containers that share storage and network.
Control plane
The control plane is the set of Kubernetes components — API server, scheduler, controller manager, and etcd — that manage the cluster's state.
Deployment
A Deployment is a Kubernetes resource that declaratively manages a replicated set of Pods and supports rolling updates.
Service
A Service is a Kubernetes resource that provides a stable network endpoint and load balancing for a set of Pods.
kubectl
kubectl is the command-line tool for interacting with the Kubernetes API to create, inspect, and manage cluster resources.
Container runtime
A container runtime is the software that runs containers on a node, integrated with Kubernetes through the Container Runtime Interface (CRI).
Container Network Interface
The Container Network Interface (CNI) is a specification and set of plugins for configuring network connectivity for containers.
Container Storage Interface
The Container Storage Interface (CSI) is a standard for exposing storage systems to containerized workloads in Kubernetes.
RBAC
RBAC (role-based access control) is the Kubernetes mechanism for granting permissions to users and workloads through roles and bindings.
Service mesh
A service mesh is an infrastructure layer that manages service-to-service communication, adding traffic control, security, and observability.
GitOps
GitOps is a practice of managing infrastructure and application delivery declaratively through Git as the single source of truth.
Helm
Helm is a package manager for Kubernetes that bundles application resources into reusable, versioned charts.
Observability
Observability is the ability to understand a system's internal state from its outputs — metrics, logs, and traces.
CNCF
The CNCF (Cloud Native Computing Foundation) is the open-source foundation that hosts Kubernetes and the broader cloud-native ecosystem.