Software containerization encapsulates applications and their dependencies into isolated units, called containers. These containers provide a consistent and portable environment, ensuring that software runs reliably across different computing environments. Containerization simplifies deployment, scaling, and management of applications, fostering consistency and efficiency in software development and operations.

Kubernetes (often stylized as k8s), originally developed by Google, is an open-source container orchestration platform that automates the deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications. It provides tools for container deployment, load balancing, and self-healing, making it easier to manage complex microservices architectures. Kubernetes abstracts the underlying infrastructure, enabling seamless scaling and resource optimization while enhancing application reliability. It has become a cornerstone in modern cloud-native application development, allowing efficient utilization of resources and simplifying the management of containerized workloads at scale.

Many of the world’s largest cloud-hosted applications use Kubernetes to achieve their scale and power. Kubernetes enables applications to achieve this scale by orchestrating their execution across a cluster of computers. A cluster refers to one or more physical computers (called nodes) working together to form a single, logical system. A cluster could be just a few servers, or tens of thousands of them.

Kubernetes is analogous to the operating system that ICE Server runs on. In much the same way that an application that runs on Linux, Windows or macOS utilizes components provided by that operating system, ICE Server depends on and interoperates with elements provided by the Kubernetes ecosystem.