In your search for the ideal cloud backup service provider, you’ll no doubt come across offers for managed Kubernetes. And naturally, you may wonder what the term refers to and what you, as the client, are being offered here, exactly. In order to understand how this service works, we first need to delve into a bit of data protection history. In this article, we’ll look at what Kubernetes is, how it works, and what it means if a cloud company is offering it.
What is Kubernetes?
Kubernetes is a program originally designed by Google that has, in the meantime, become open-source. Nowadays, it is hosted by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation, which was started by Linux, in partnership with Google.
It is quite a complex project that aims to provide a solid platform for multiple services, such as…
● Computer application deployment – basically, all the activities involved in setting up an application and making it ready for use;
● Scaling – the process of growing an application, software or even business;
● Management – and of course, you’ll need someone to manage your data!
But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. How did Kubernetes come to be?
Kubernetes history
The term “Kubernetes” originally comes from the Greek word for “pilot” or “helmsman”, κυβερνήτης, and it was heavily inspired by Google’s Borg system. Indeed, many of the developers involved in creating Kubernetes also worked on that project, as well.
While it might sound a little bit presumptuous at first, Kubernetes played an important role in the development of cloud backup. This open-source project first started all the way back in 2013, which, as pretty much any software engineer can tell you, was a very different time. We’re talking about different technologies and very different possibilities in terms of cloud storage, from the ones we have now.
The concept of orchestration as it exists today (and as it is used by Kubernetes) was then known by only a handful of companies. So this small team of Google engineers was working on very new, very exciting ground.
Kubernetes’ inception was also heavily influenced by Docker, an open-source program that creates containers and facilitates software development. As one might expect, Kubernetes continues to work with Docker to this day as one of its main containers for deployment.
How can you use Kubernetes?
So we’ve talked quite heavily about Kubernetes’ history, how it came to be, and what it entails. But what can you do with that? In itself, using Kubernetes for your business is a highly complex process, one that will probably require another article, for further discussion.
Basically, what Kubernetes does is allow you to deploy containers to clusters (think of a network of machines), and automate this container deployment. In time, this can take quite a workload off your shoulders, in order to give you more time to devote to doing what you do best.
Kubernetes can help you do many things, which is why when selecting your cloud storage provider, you should look for one that uses Kubernetes!
