Key Benefits of Implementing Kubernetes on Your Project

Lindsay Harrison, Project Manager for Acro, works on some of our most complex ecommerce development projects. Learn why she sings the praises of Kubernetes and why you should consider it for your development projects.

Implementing Kubernetes on your project can save you and your team a lot of time and strife. With its auto-scaling, balancing, and easy monitoring capabilities, it makes approaching high-traffic timeframes like Black Friday and Cyber Monday, a whole lot less stressful. It takes DevOps magic to set up, but once you install Kubernetes, you do yourself and your clients a huge favour.

As a project manager on a large enterprise project, I feel very much at ease knowing we have Kubernetes backing our project as we approach these high-traffic ecommerce shopping periods.

How does Kubernetes make life easier?

As a project manager, here is how to explain Kubernetes helps in very simple terms to a product owner or product manager (aka the client).

“Imagine you have a bunch of applications or software you want to run on your computer. Each of these applications comes in a small, isolated package called a "container," kind of like a virtual box. Managing all these containers can get tricky, especially when you want them to work together smoothly and handle changes easily.”

Here's where Kubernetes shines

Kubernetes acts as the smart boss for all your containers. Its job is to ensure your containers are running smoothly, even if you have lots of them spread across multiple computers.

Kubernetes is the smart boss that takes control of

1. Starting and Stopping: It knows when to start your containers (applications) and when to stop them. If a container crashes, Kubernetes notices and restarts it automatically.
2. Scaling: When lots of people start using your apps, Kubernetes can create more containers to handle the increased demand. When things quiet down, it can reduce the number of containers.
3. Balancing Work: It evenly distributes the work (traffic) among your containers, so no single container is overwhelmed while others are idle.
4. Updates: When you want to update your apps, Kubernetes can do it without causing downtime. It gradually replaces old containers with new ones so your apps keep running.
5. Communication: If your containers need to talk to each other, Kubernetes helps set up ways for them to communicate easily.
6. Monitoring: Kubernetes keeps an eye on your containers, making sure they're healthy and running as they should be. If not, it tries to fix things or lets you know there's a problem.
7. Saving Secrets: It helps you keep secrets (like passwords) safe and makes them available to your containers when they need them.
8. Choosing Where to Run: If you have multiple computers or cloud services, Kubernetes can decide where to place your containers for the best performance.

In simple terms, Kubernetes is like a super-organized manager for your software containers. It ensures they're always doing their job, working well together, and adapting to changes in a smooth, efficient, and automated way. 

We want to caution that Kubernetes has many, many moving parts and is not for the faint of heart. As mentioned above, it takes DevOps wizardry to set up Kubernetes and reap the benefits. It does magical things but doesn’t do any of them until you define them with expertise and precision, and that is exactly what Acro Commerce is here for. 

Interested in learning how Kubernetes can help your organization?

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Note: Project Manager Lindsay Harrison wrote this blog, but not without integral guidance and review from Acro's in-house DevOps wizard Dale Anderson and consultation with Senior Software Developer Cody Banman.