Kubernetes Basics

Learning essential components of Kubernetes

Manato Kuroda
14 min readJan 29

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Photo by Chirayu Sharma on Unsplash

In this article, we will have a look at the main components of Kubernetes and their usage through a simple example.

Scope of this article

This article does not attempt to give advanced instructions on how to use Kubernetes. Instead, it is designed to provide basic concepts and instructions for developers who want to play around with Kubernetes in their local environment and to get an overall picture of Kubernetes through practice.

Pre-requisites

In order to execute Kubernetes on your local machine, the Kubernetes option needs to be enabled in the Docker Desktop. (If you haven’t installed the Docker Desktop, go to the download page and install it.)

Go to the Docker Desktop > Preferences > Kubernetes and enable the option:

Docker Desktop

Kubernetes Architecture

The key idea behind Kubernetes is to keep your application in the desired state by continuously comparing the actual state with the desired state.

The key idea of Kubernetes

In a nutshell, what we need to do is to define the desired state in a YAML file and pass it to Kubernetes, then Kubernetes will manage and monitor your application. To achieve this, Kubernetes consists of a set of components below:

https://kubernetes.io/docs/concepts/overview/components/

Control Plane

Control Plane is responsible for managing your application in the desired state. The kube-apiserver exposes the Kubernetes API and allows you to send your desired state (YAML file) to the Control Plane. Once you send the desired state through the kube-apiserver , Kubernetes stores the state data into etcd.

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