About Kubernetes Basics

Pods, deployments, services, YAML, when to reach for k8s. Part of the DevTools Surf developer suite. Browse more tools in the Info / Guides collection.

Use Cases

• Backend developers evaluating whether their project needs Kubernetes
• DevOps engineers learning Pod and Deployment fundamentals
• Platform teams understanding Services and networking basics
• CTOs assessing Kubernetes adoption costs vs simpler alternatives

Tips

• Read the 'when to reach for k8s' section before adopting it
• Study the Pod-Deployment-Service hierarchy in order
• Check the YAML examples to understand required fields and labels

Fun Facts

• Kubernetes (Greek for 'helmsman') was created by Google engineers Joe Beda, Brendan Burns, and Craig McLuckie, open-sourced in June 2014.
• Kubernetes was inspired by Google's internal system Borg, which had been managing billions of containers per week inside Google since 2003.
• The abbreviation K8s replaces the 8 letters between K and s — a convention called a numeronym, also used in i18n (internationalization) and a11y (accessibility).

FAQ

What are pods, deployments, services?

Pod: one or more containers scheduled together. Deployment: desired state + rollouts for a pod. Service: stable network address for pods (which come and go).

When do I NOT need Kubernetes?

Small apps with 1-2 services. The ops overhead is huge. Start with Docker Compose or a PaaS (Render, Fly.io, Railway). Graduate to K8s when you have 5+ services and dedicated ops.

ConfigMap vs Secret?

ConfigMap for plain config (feature flags, URLs). Secret for sensitive (DB passwords, API keys). Secrets are base64-encoded, not encrypted — use a KMS-backed solution for real security.

How do I start locally?

kind (Kubernetes in Docker) or minikube. Both run a full cluster on your laptop for development. For managed production use EKS, GKE, AKS, or DigitalOcean Kubernetes.