{"id":4777,"date":"2026-05-02T21:25:39","date_gmt":"2026-05-02T15:55:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/itsupportwale.com\/blog\/what-is-kubernetes-the-ultimate-guide-to-k8s-for-beginners\/"},"modified":"2026-05-02T21:25:39","modified_gmt":"2026-05-02T15:55:39","slug":"what-is-kubernetes-the-ultimate-guide-to-k8s-for-beginners","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/itsupportwale.com\/blog\/what-is-kubernetes-the-ultimate-guide-to-k8s-for-beginners\/","title":{"rendered":"What is Kubernetes? The Ultimate Guide to K8s for Beginners"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>The sound isn&#8217;t even a sound anymore. It\u2019s a physical weight pressing against my temples. 3:14 AM. The blue light of my monitor is the only thing keeping my retinas from fusing shut. I\u2019ve been on rotation for 72 hours because Dave decided to &#8220;optimize&#8221; the etcd maintenance script and then promptly went on a hiking trip in a dead zone. <\/p>\n<p>The cluster is screaming. I\u2019m staring at a terminal window where the logs are scrolling so fast they look like static. My coffee is cold, my soul is leaking out of my ears, and the CEO just Slack-messaged me asking, &#8220;Hey, I&#8217;m at this conference, <strong>what is<\/strong> Kubernetes exactly? Is it why the site is down?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Listen close, you suit-wearing vulture. I\u2019m going to tell you exactly what this monster is, but I\u2019m not going to use any of those glossy slide-deck metaphors. There are no captains, no ships, and no &#8220;seamless&#8221; transitions here. There is only technical debt, leaky abstractions, and the slow, grinding decay of my mental health.<\/p>\n<p>Welcome to the post-mortem of my sanity.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<div id=\"ez-toc-container\" class=\"ez-toc-v2_0_80 counter-hierarchy ez-toc-counter ez-toc-grey ez-toc-container-direction\">\n<p class=\"ez-toc-title\" style=\"cursor:inherit\">Table of Contents<\/p>\n<label for=\"ez-toc-cssicon-toggle-item-6a04e3d04288a\" class=\"ez-toc-cssicon-toggle-label\"><span class=\"\"><span class=\"eztoc-hide\" style=\"display:none;\">Toggle<\/span><span class=\"ez-toc-icon-toggle-span\"><svg style=\"fill: #999;color:#999\" xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" class=\"list-377408\" width=\"20px\" height=\"20px\" viewBox=\"0 0 24 24\" fill=\"none\"><path d=\"M6 6H4v2h2V6zm14 0H8v2h12V6zM4 11h2v2H4v-2zm16 0H8v2h12v-2zM4 16h2v2H4v-2zm16 0H8v2h12v-2z\" fill=\"currentColor\"><\/path><\/svg><svg style=\"fill: #999;color:#999\" class=\"arrow-unsorted-368013\" xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" width=\"10px\" height=\"10px\" viewBox=\"0 0 24 24\" version=\"1.2\" baseProfile=\"tiny\"><path d=\"M18.2 9.3l-6.2-6.3-6.2 6.3c-.2.2-.3.4-.3.7s.1.5.3.7c.2.2.4.3.7.3h11c.3 0 .5-.1.7-.3.2-.2.3-.5.3-.7s-.1-.5-.3-.7zM5.8 14.7l6.2 6.3 6.2-6.3c.2-.2.3-.5.3-.7s-.1-.5-.3-.7c-.2-.2-.4-.3-.7-.3h-11c-.3 0-.5.1-.7.3-.2.2-.3.5-.3.7s.1.5.3.7z\"\/><\/svg><\/span><\/span><\/label><input type=\"checkbox\"  id=\"ez-toc-cssicon-toggle-item-6a04e3d04288a\"  aria-label=\"Toggle\" \/><nav><ul class='ez-toc-list ez-toc-list-level-1 ' ><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-2'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-1\" href=\"https:\/\/itsupportwale.com\/blog\/what-is-kubernetes-the-ultimate-guide-to-k8s-for-beginners\/#1_Denial_Its_Just_a_Container_Right\" >1. Denial: It\u2019s Just a Container, Right?<\/a><\/li><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-2'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-2\" href=\"https:\/\/itsupportwale.com\/blog\/what-is-kubernetes-the-ultimate-guide-to-k8s-for-beginners\/#2_Anger_The_YAML_Indentation_That_Broke_the_Camels_Back\" >2. Anger: The YAML Indentation That Broke the Camel&#8217;s Back<\/a><\/li><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-2'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-3\" href=\"https:\/\/itsupportwale.com\/blog\/what-is-kubernetes-the-ultimate-guide-to-k8s-for-beginners\/#3_Bargaining_Trying_to_Replicate_the_Control_Plane_with_Bash_and_Hope\" >3. Bargaining: Trying to Replicate the Control Plane with Bash and Hope<\/a><\/li><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-2'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-4\" href=\"https:\/\/itsupportwale.com\/blog\/what-is-kubernetes-the-ultimate-guide-to-k8s-for-beginners\/#4_Depression_Staring_into_the_Abyssal_Void_of_the_Kube-Proxy\" >4. Depression: Staring into the Abyssal Void of the Kube-Proxy<\/a><\/li><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-2'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-5\" href=\"https:\/\/itsupportwale.com\/blog\/what-is-kubernetes-the-ultimate-guide-to-k8s-for-beginners\/#5_Acceptance_Embracing_the_Distributed_State_Machine\" >5. Acceptance: Embracing the Distributed State Machine<\/a><\/li><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-2'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-6\" href=\"https:\/\/itsupportwale.com\/blog\/what-is-kubernetes-the-ultimate-guide-to-k8s-for-beginners\/#6_The_Final_Bill_Why_We_Suffer_Through_It_Anyway\" >6. The Final Bill: Why We Suffer Through It Anyway<\/a><\/li><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-2'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-7\" href=\"https:\/\/itsupportwale.com\/blog\/what-is-kubernetes-the-ultimate-guide-to-k8s-for-beginners\/#Related_Articles\" >Related Articles<\/a><\/li><\/ul><\/nav><\/div>\n<h2><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"1_Denial_Its_Just_a_Container_Right\"><\/span>1. Denial: It\u2019s Just a Container, Right?<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h2>\n<p>When you ask <strong>what is<\/strong> Kubernetes, you\u2019re usually looking for a nice, clean definition. You want to hear that it\u2019s a &#8220;platform for automating deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications.&#8221; That\u2019s the lie they tell you so you\u2019ll sign the cloud bill.<\/p>\n<p>In reality, Kubernetes is a distributed state machine designed to hide the fact that Linux is hard. Back in v1.18, we thought we had a handle on it. We thought, &#8220;Oh, it\u2019s just Docker with a brain.&#8221; We were wrong. It is a massive, bloated API server sitting on top of a fragile consensus algorithm, pretending that your hardware doesn&#8217;t exist.<\/p>\n<p>At its core, Kubernetes is an abstraction layer for Linux primitives. It takes things like <code>namespaces<\/code> (which isolate what a process can see) and <code>cgroups<\/code> (which limit what a process can consume) and wraps them in a layer of YAML so thick you can\u2019t see the kernel anymore. When you &#8220;run a pod,&#8221; you aren&#8217;t running a magical cloud entity. You are asking the <code>kubelet<\/code>\u2014a binary running on a physical or virtual node\u2014to talk to a Container Runtime Interface (CRI), like <code>containerd<\/code> or <code>CRI-O<\/code>, to set up a series of Linux namespaces.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s denial. We deny that the underlying hardware matters. We deny that networking is hard. We pretend that if we just describe our &#8220;desired state&#8221; in a text file, the universe will conspire to make it so.<\/p>\n<pre class=\"codehilite\"><code class=\"language-bash\">$ kubectl get events --all-namespaces --sort-by='.lastTimestamp'\nNAMESPACE     LAST SEEN   TYPE      REASON             OBJECT                                 MESSAGE\ndefault       12s         Warning   FailedScheduling   pod\/api-gateway-7f5d69g                0\/3 nodes are available: 3 Insufficient cpu.\nkube-system   8s          Warning   Unhealthy          pod\/etcd-main-node                     Liveness probe failed: HTTP probe failed with statuscode: 500\nprod          5s          Warning   BackOff            pod\/db-migration-v2                    Back-off restarting failed container\ndefault       2s          Normal    Scheduled          pod\/nginx-666                          Successfully assigned default\/nginx-666 to node-03\nprod          1s          Warning   FailedMount        pod\/legacy-app                         MountVolume.SetUp failed for volume &quot;data&quot; : rpc error: code = Internal desc = target not found\n<\/code><\/pre>\n<p>Look at that. That\u2019s the heartbeat of denial. <code>Insufficient cpu<\/code>. <code>Liveness probe failed<\/code>. This is the system telling you that your abstraction is crashing into the brick wall of reality.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<h2><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"2_Anger_The_YAML_Indentation_That_Broke_the_Camels_Back\"><\/span>2. Anger: The YAML Indentation That Broke the Camel&#8217;s Back<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h2>\n<p>You want to talk about anger? Let\u2019s talk about YAML. Kubernetes is governed by the &#8220;Declarative Model.&#8221; This means instead of telling the computer <em>how<\/em> to do something, you tell it <em>what<\/em> you want, and then you pray to the gods of the reconciliation loop that it actually happens.<\/p>\n<p>The reconciliation loop is the infinite &#8220;while&#8221; loop at the heart of the <code>kube-controller-manager<\/code>. It looks at the &#8220;Current State&#8221; (which is usually &#8220;on fire&#8221;) and compares it to the &#8220;Desired State&#8221; (the YAML you wrote). If they don&#8217;t match, it tries to fix it. <\/p>\n<p>But here\u2019s the catch: the &#8220;fix&#8221; often involves more YAML. You end up with manifests that are 400 lines long just to run a simple Go binary. If you miss two spaces in your indentation on line 247, the whole thing fails with an error message that looks like it was written by a cryptographer on acid.<\/p>\n<p>Here is a &#8220;simple&#8221; deployment manifest I\u2019m currently staring at. It\u2019s a monument to our collective failure as a species:<\/p>\n<pre class=\"codehilite\"><code class=\"language-yaml\">apiVersion: apps\/v1\nkind: Deployment\nmetadata:\n  name: over-engineered-microservice\n  namespace: prod-west-2\n  labels:\n    app: nightmare\n    tier: backend\n    version: v1.30.1\nspec:\n  replicas: 3\n  selector:\n    matchLabels:\n      app: nightmare\n  template:\n    metadata:\n      labels:\n        app: nightmare\n    spec:\n      affinity:\n        podAntiAffinity:\n          requiredDuringSchedulingIgnoredDuringExecution:\n          - labelSelector:\n              matchExpressions:\n              - key: app\n                operator: In\n                values:\n                - nightmare\n            topologyKey: &quot;kubernetes.io\/hostname&quot;\n      containers:\n      - name: app-container\n        image: our-registry.io\/bloated-image:latest@sha256:deadbeef1234567890\n        resources:\n          limits:\n            cpu: &quot;500m&quot;\n            memory: &quot;1024Mi&quot;\n          requests:\n            cpu: &quot;250m&quot;\n            memory: &quot;512Mi&quot;\n        livenessProbe:\n          httpGet:\n            path: \/healthz\n            port: 8080\n          initialDelaySeconds: 15\n          periodSeconds: 20\n          timeoutSeconds: 5\n          failureThreshold: 3\n        readinessProbe:\n          exec:\n            command:\n            - \/bin\/sh\n            - -c\n            - &quot;ps aux | grep app&quot;\n        env:\n        - name: DB_PASSWORD\n          valueFrom:\n            secretKeyRef:\n              name: db-creds\n              key: password\n<\/code><\/pre>\n<p>Look at the <code>affinity<\/code> section. We have to spend twenty lines of code just to tell the cluster: &#8220;Please don&#8217;t put all the pods on the same machine so that when the machine dies, the whole site doesn&#8217;t go dark.&#8221; This is what we call &#8220;cloud-native resilience.&#8221; I call it &#8220;babysitting a temperamental toddler.&#8221;<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<h2><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"3_Bargaining_Trying_to_Replicate_the_Control_Plane_with_Bash_and_Hope\"><\/span>3. Bargaining: Trying to Replicate the Control Plane with Bash and Hope<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h2>\n<p>At 3:45 AM, you start bargaining. You think, &#8220;Maybe I don&#8217;t need this. Maybe I could have just used a bash script and some <code>systemd<\/code> units.&#8221; But you can&#8217;t. Because you need the Control Plane.<\/p>\n<p>The Control Plane is the brain. It consists of the <code>kube-apiserver<\/code>, <code>kube-scheduler<\/code>, <code>kube-controller-manager<\/code>, and the dark heart: <code>etcd<\/code>. <\/p>\n<p><code>etcd<\/code> is a distributed key-value store. It uses the Raft consensus algorithm. To understand <strong>what is<\/strong> Kubernetes, you have to understand Raft. Raft is a way for a group of computers to agree on a single state, even if some of them are lying or dead. It relies on a &#8220;Leader.&#8221; If the leader dies, the &#8220;Followers&#8221; hold an election. <\/p>\n<p>The problem? Elections take time. And in the world of CAP theorem (Consistency, Availability, Partition Tolerance), <code>etcd<\/code> chooses Consistency and Partition Tolerance. It will happily sacrifice Availability. If your network has a hiccup and the nodes can&#8217;t talk to each other, <code>etcd<\/code> stops accepting writes. The cluster freezes. The API server starts returning 500 errors. <\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m currently bargaining with a three-node etcd cluster that has lost quorum. <\/p>\n<pre class=\"codehilite\"><code class=\"language-bash\"># etcdctl endpoint status --write-out=table\n+-------------------------+------------------+---------+---------+-----------+------------+-----------+------------+--------------------+--------+\n|        ENDPOINT         |        ID        | VERSION | DB SIZE | IS LEADER | IS LEARNER | RAFT TERM | RAFT INDEX | RAFT APPLIED INDEX | ERRORS |\n+-------------------------+------------------+---------+---------+-----------+------------+-----------+------------+--------------------+--------+\n| http:\/\/10.0.1.10:2379   | 8e9e05b5a640dd01 |  3.5.13 |  156 MB |     false |      false |        12 |    1004567 |            1004560 |        |\n| http:\/\/10.0.1.11:2379   | 7d4e05b5a640ee02 |  3.5.13 |  156 MB |     false |      false |        12 |    1004568 |            1004560 |        |\n| http:\/\/10.0.1.12:2379   |                  |         |         |           |            |           |            |                    |  Error |\n+-------------------------+------------------+---------+---------+-----------+------------+-----------+------------+--------------------+--------+\n<\/code><\/pre>\n<p>Node 3 is gone. It\u2019s not just &#8220;off.&#8221; It\u2019s corrupted. The WAL (Write-Ahead Log) is mangled. I\u2019m trying to restore from a snapshot taken four hours ago, knowing full well that any &#8220;desired state&#8221; changes made since then are vaporized. This is the &#8220;bargain.&#8221; We get high availability for our apps, but we pay for it with the extreme fragility of the state store.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<h2><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"4_Depression_Staring_into_the_Abyssal_Void_of_the_Kube-Proxy\"><\/span>4. Depression: Staring into the Abyssal Void of the Kube-Proxy<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h2>\n<p>If the Control Plane is the brain, the networking is the nervous system, and it\u2019s currently suffering from multiple sclerosis. <\/p>\n<p>When people ask <strong>what is<\/strong> Kubernetes, they rarely want to hear about the Container Network Interface (CNI). But the CNI is where the real pain lives. Kubernetes doesn&#8217;t actually have a built-in networking solution. It just has a specification. You have to choose a plugin: Calico, Flannel, Cilium, Weave. Each one is a different flavor of hell.<\/p>\n<p>Let\u2019s talk about <code>kube-proxy<\/code>. This is the component that manages the &#8220;Service&#8221; abstraction. When you hit a Service IP, <code>kube-proxy<\/code> uses <code>iptables<\/code> or <code>IPVS<\/code> to mangle your packets and redirect them to a pod IP. <\/p>\n<p>Have you ever looked at an <code>iptables<\/code> dump on a node with 500 services? It\u2019s a 10,000-line scroll of doom. Every packet that enters the node has to be evaluated against these rules. It\u2019s a linear search. It\u2019s inefficient. It\u2019s 1990s technology trying to support 2024 scale.<\/p>\n<p>And then there\u2019s the CNI plugin itself. Let\u2019s take Calico. It uses BGP (Border Gateway Protocol)\u2014the same protocol that runs the actual Internet\u2014to distribute routes between your nodes. Think about that. You are running a mini-Internet inside your rack just so <code>Pod A<\/code> can talk to <code>Pod B<\/code>. <\/p>\n<p>If the CNI fails, you get the dreaded <code>ContainerCreating<\/code> status. You check the logs, and you see:<br \/>\n<code>NetworkPlugin cni failed to set up pod \"nginx-666_default\" network: failed to delegate: failed to set up bridge: \"cni0\" already has an IP address<\/code><\/p>\n<p>You spend four hours debugging a bridge interface that shouldn&#8217;t exist, only to realize that a stale <code>veth<\/code> pair is hanging around from a pod that died three days ago. You start to wonder if the &#8220;Abyssal Void&#8221; is actually just a <code>10.0.0.0\/8<\/code> subnet that no one bothered to document.<\/p>\n<p>The complexity of CNI is staggering. You have to worry about MTU (Maximum Transmission Unit) sizes. If your CNI uses VXLAN encapsulation, it adds overhead to every packet. If your MTU is set to 1500 but your underlying network only supports 1450 because of the encapsulation, your packets will be fragmented or dropped. Your database connections will hang. Your API calls will time out. And you will sit there, at 4:15 AM, wondering why <code>curl<\/code> works but your application doesn&#8217;t. It\u2019s because of a 50-byte header. That is the depth of the depression.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<h2><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"5_Acceptance_Embracing_the_Distributed_State_Machine\"><\/span>5. Acceptance: Embracing the Distributed State Machine<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h2>\n<p>I\u2019ve reached acceptance. Not because I like it, but because I have no other choice. The etcd cluster is finally coming back online after I manually scrubbed the data directory and forced a new member addition. <\/p>\n<p>To truly answer <strong>what is<\/strong> Kubernetes, you have to accept that it is a &#8220;Reconciliation Engine.&#8221; It is a system that exists to constantly correct itself. <\/p>\n<p>When you submit a YAML file to the <code>kube-apiserver<\/code>, the following happens:<br \/>\n1. The API Server validates the YAML (and usually complains about a missing field).<br \/>\n2. It stores the object in <code>etcd<\/code>.<br \/>\n3. The <code>Scheduler<\/code> sees a new Pod object with no <code>nodeName<\/code>. It looks at the resource requests and the available nodes and picks the one that is the least overloaded (or the one that is the most broken, it\u2019s a coin toss).<br \/>\n4. The <code>Scheduler<\/code> updates the Pod object with the <code>nodeName<\/code>.<br \/>\n5. The <code>Kubelet<\/code> on that specific node is &#8220;watching&#8221; the API server. It sees its name on the Pod.<br \/>\n6. The <code>Kubelet<\/code> pulls the image using the CRI.<br \/>\n7. The <code>Kubelet<\/code> tells the CNI to give the pod an IP.<br \/>\n8. The <code>Kubelet<\/code> starts the container.<br \/>\n9. The <code>Kubelet<\/code> reports back to the API server: &#8220;I\u2019m running.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>This is the &#8220;Distributed State Machine.&#8221; It\u2019s a series of independent actors watching a central database and acting on changes. It\u2019s beautiful in a horrifying, &#8220;I-can&#8217;t-believe-this-actually-works&#8221; kind of way. <\/p>\n<p>But then you see the reality in the logs:<\/p>\n<pre class=\"codehilite\"><code class=\"language-bash\">$ kubectl describe pod api-gateway-7f5d69g\nEvents:\n  Type     Reason                  Age                From               Message\n  ----     ------                  ----               ----               -------\n  Normal   Scheduled               4m                 default-scheduler  Successfully assigned default\/api-gateway-7f5d69g to node-01\n  Normal   Pulling                 3m (x3 over 4m)    kubelet            Pulling image &quot;our-registry.io\/bloated-image:latest&quot;\n  Warning  Failed                  3m (x3 over 4m)    kubelet            Failed to pull image: rpc error: code = Unknown desc = Error response from daemon: Get https:\/\/our-registry.io\/v2\/: net\/http: TLS handshake timeout\n  Warning  Failed                  3m (x3 over 4m)    kubelet            Error: ImagePullBackOff\n  Normal   BackOff                 2m (x6 over 4m)    kubelet            Back-off pulling image &quot;our-registry.io\/bloated-image:latest&quot;\n  Warning  Unhealthy               1m (x10 over 3m)   kubelet            Liveness probe failed: Get &quot;http:\/\/10.244.1.45:8080\/healthz&quot;: dial tcp 10.244.1.45:8080: connect: connection refused\n<\/code><\/pre>\n<p>Acceptance is knowing that <code>ImagePullBackOff<\/code> is your new best friend. Acceptance is knowing that <code>CrashLoopBackOff<\/code> usually means you forgot to set an environment variable. Acceptance is realizing that Kubernetes isn&#8217;t here to make your life easy; it\u2019s here to make your failures standardized.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<h2><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"6_The_Final_Bill_Why_We_Suffer_Through_It_Anyway\"><\/span>6. The Final Bill: Why We Suffer Through It Anyway<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h2>\n<p>So, CEO, if you\u2019re still awake and haven&#8217;t closed this tab to go look at more AI-generated art, here is the answer.<\/p>\n<p><strong>What is<\/strong> Kubernetes? <\/p>\n<p>It is the most expensive, complex, and frustrating way to run a &#8220;Hello World&#8221; app ever devised by man. It is a system that requires a dedicated team of sleep-deprived engineers to maintain a &#8220;cloud-native&#8221; posture. It is a collection of binaries that spend 90% of their time talking to each other and 10% of their time actually running your code.<\/p>\n<p>We suffer through it because the alternative is worse. The alternative is &#8220;Snowflake Servers.&#8221; The alternative is &#8220;It works on my machine.&#8221; Kubernetes gives us a common language for our misery. It gives us a way to describe infrastructure that\u2014theoretically\u2014can be moved from AWS to GCP to Azure without rewriting everything (though we all know that\u2019s a lie because of LoadBalancer annotations and CSI driver differences).<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s 4:45 AM now. The etcd cluster is green. The <code>api-gateway<\/code> pods are finally <code>Running<\/code>. The <code>iptables<\/code> rules have settled. My PagerDuty is quiet, for now.<\/p>\n<p>Kubernetes is a mirror. It reflects the complexity of your organization. If your app is a mess, Kubernetes will make it a distributed mess. If your team doesn&#8217;t understand networking, Kubernetes will ensure no one understands networking.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m going to close my laptop now. I\u2019m going to try to sleep for three hours before the next &#8220;reconciliation loop&#8221; decides that my desired state of &#8220;being asleep&#8221; doesn&#8217;t match the current state of &#8220;production is down.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Don&#8217;t ask me &#8220;what is&#8221; Kubernetes again. Just pay the cloud bill and leave me alone. I have more YAML to write.<\/p>\n<h2><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"Related_Articles\"><\/span>Related Articles<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h2>\n<p>Explore more insights and best practices:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/itsupportwale.com\/blog\/artificial-intelligence-best-practices-a-complete-guide\/\">Artificial Intelligence Best Practices A Complete Guide<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/itsupportwale.com\/blog\/10-essential-machine-learning-best-practices-for-success\/\">10 Essential Machine Learning Best Practices For Success<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/itsupportwale.com\/blog\/manual-partition-in-ubuntu-18-04-lts-desktop\/\">Manual Partition In Ubuntu 18 04 Lts Desktop<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. The sound isn&#8217;t even a sound anymore. It\u2019s a physical weight pressing against my temples. 3:14 AM. The blue light of my monitor is the only thing keeping my retinas from fusing shut. I\u2019ve been on rotation for 72 hours because Dave decided to &#8220;optimize&#8221; the etcd maintenance script and then &#8230; <a title=\"What is Kubernetes? The Ultimate Guide to K8s for Beginners\" class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/itsupportwale.com\/blog\/what-is-kubernetes-the-ultimate-guide-to-k8s-for-beginners\/\" aria-label=\"Read more  on What is Kubernetes? The Ultimate Guide to K8s for Beginners\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4777","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.0 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>What is Kubernetes? The Ultimate Guide to K8s for Beginners - ITSupportWale<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/itsupportwale.com\/blog\/what-is-kubernetes-the-ultimate-guide-to-k8s-for-beginners\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"What is Kubernetes? The Ultimate Guide to K8s for Beginners - ITSupportWale\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. The sound isn&#8217;t even a sound anymore. It\u2019s a physical weight pressing against my temples. 3:14 AM. The blue light of my monitor is the only thing keeping my retinas from fusing shut. I\u2019ve been on rotation for 72 hours because Dave decided to &#8220;optimize&#8221; the etcd maintenance script and then ... 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