Kubernetes

Kubernetes is an open-source container orchestration system that schedules containers across a cluster of machines, restarts failed ones, scales deployments on demand, and rolls out new versions gradually. It has become the de facto standard for running microservices at scale.

Cloud providers offer managed Kubernetes control planes, which remove the hardest operational work — etcd maintenance, control plane upgrades, and certificate rotation — while customers manage worker nodes, workloads, and networking. Pricing is commonly per control plane per hour plus the compute of the nodes.

The real cost of Kubernetes is rarely the control plane fee; it is operational maturity. Teams without dedicated platform capacity often get better results from simpler managed container services, and should treat Kubernetes as an organizational commitment, not just a deployment target.