Brief overview of Kubernetes and its role in managing containers at scale.
While Docker and Docker Compose are excellent for managing containers on a single host, they fall short when it comes to running applications in production across a cluster of multiple machines. This is where container orchestration platforms come in. The dominant and de-facto standard orchestrator today is Kubernetes (often abbreviated as K8s). Kubernetes automates the deployment, scaling, healing, and management of containerized applications at a massive scale. It allows you to describe your desired application state declaratively using YAML files, and Kubernetes's control plane works continuously to ensure the cluster's actual state matches your desired state. Key features of Kubernetes include service discovery and load balancing, automated rollouts and rollbacks, self-healing (restarting failed containers), and secret and configuration management. It abstracts away the underlying infrastructure, allowing you to treat an entire cluster of servers as a single, unified deployment target. While learning Kubernetes is a significant undertaking in itself, understanding its purpose is the logical next step after mastering Docker. It answers the question, 'How do I run and manage my containers reliably in a large, distributed production environment?'