Kubernetes is a magical technology that can provide your applications scalability, high availability, and resource efficiency across cloud and local environments. In this article, you will learn how to deploy your own local Kubernetes cluster using Terraform and Ansible, mastering some common DevOps practices along the way.

But why learn about Kubernetes if you are in security? Beyond needing to secure containerized workloads and cloud infrastructure, learning the basics of Kubernetes empowers you to deploy your own custom tooling at scale, whether to the public or your local team. It also acts as a gateway to learning powerful automation technologies like Terraform and Ansible that will completely change how you deploy and configure infrastructure.

Let’s begin exploring the mystical arts of DevOps and Infrastructure as Code!

Kubernetes is an open-source container orchestration platform originally developed by Google and now maintained by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF). It is a popular tool used in cloud engineering and DevOps to automate the deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications.

• Containers: Containers are a way to package software along with its dependencies to run consistently across different computing environments. Modern applications are often deployed within containers so organizations can scale their products on cloud platforms like Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud (GCP), or another platform.
• Docker: Docker is the defacto tool for developing, packaging, deploying, and running containers. It allows you to package an application and its dependencies inside a container that can be run locally or in the cloud.

Kubernetes can be seen as a level-up from Docker. While Docker is primarily a containerization platform focused on building and running containers, Kubernetes is a container orchestration platform focused on automating the deployment and management of containers at scale. Kubernetes will typically be used to manage Docker containers alongside other container runtimes like containerd, CRI-O, rkt, and Garden.