As a seasoned simulation pro, I’ve spent years in the trenches of hardware. Racking computers, weaving a network of cables, and painstakingly loading software – it was a manual, grueling process prone to errors and sweat.  The need to replicate this setup and plan for failure scenarios only multiplied the effort. Then I discovered Kubernetes, and the way I define and manage systems changed forever.

 

An ugly tangle of wires in the back of a rack

Kubernetes is an open-source container orchestration system. What does that mean in practice?  It lets you declare the desired state of your application – the containers it needs, how many copies should run, networking requirements – and Kubernetes handles the rest. This declarative approach is a world apart from the step-by-step instructions of old.

 

Kubernetes Logo

My Kubernetes journey began with experiments on my local machine using Docker Desktop and minikube. This experimentation ignited a spark, and I’ve never looked back. For the past six years, I’ve turned to Kubernetes for projects ranging from Rail Worker Geofence Protection at Wabtec to the system I created for Oway’s trucking platform. Minikube, Amazon EKS, Docker Desktop, Azure – Kubernetes has seamlessly deployed to them all.  Helm, its package manager, further streamlined things by letting me easily install common components like MongoDB or RabbitMQ.

The improvements are hard to ignore  Gone are the error-prone manual installs.  Instead, I have reliable recipes for system configurations.  Kubernetes dynamically scales resources, saving money and ensuring my applications remain performant.  Its fault tolerance and self-healing mean less downtime and a better experience for users.  Most importantly, I’m no longer constrained by specific hardware or vendors; Kubernetes lets my applications shine wherever they deploy.