According to latest reports by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF), a massive 92 percent market share in container orchestration tools has been achieved by Kubernetes. Though some companies are still using a Docker engine for creation and sharing of container, most of them prefer Kubernetes for their container orchestration requirements.

When it comes to modern software deployment today, container orchestration is playing a significant role. It is revolutionizing the processes for deployment of applications, management and scaling in IT environments. The idea primarily refers to the automation for container management that takes place in a distributed environment.

“The minute you are on Docker or container, you have every advantage of keeping it on-premise or moving it on cloud or you can toggle between the both based on the business's criticality and needs”, mentioned L K Santhosh Kumar, Chief Executive Officer at Catnip Infotech.

There are several benefits in software deployment that can be achieved by means of container orchestration. Let us look into those benefits in detail.

Enhanced Speed of Delivery

A virtual machine generally takes several minutes for launching once applications are installed. On the other hand, containers are able to do the same in the blink of an eye only because they do not have to wait for the boot in the operating system. Only a few seconds is taken by a container to create, clone or destroy because it runs comparatively faster and uses very limited resources from the host operating system. This has had a transformative impact on the development process altogether. This has allowed organizations to move faster from software to market and simultaneous add new features and fix bugs.

To give an example, Kubernetes' auto-scaling capabilities allow organizations to automatically scale application instantly based on real-time traffic demands. This means that during peak shopping seasons or sudden traffic spikes, the system could automatically provision additional resources to handle the load and ensuring a seamless user experience without manual interference.

Implementing a DevOps-first Approach

Embracing DevOps has been one of the revolutionary ideas in an integrated IT environment. IT delivery has been immensely facilitated by this implementation and has helped organizations in combining people, practices and tools in order to break down silos that may occur between the operations and development teams. Here, micro service based containers have been helpful in enabling developers in owning specific segments of an application. It has made them clearly understand work flows and accordingly optimize performance. Developers are able to troubleshoot issues using monolithic applications using micro service based containers.

To give an example, Netflix is an organization that is heavily dependent on automation so as to manage the vast infrastructure it has and deliver a seamless streaming experience to millions of users worldwide. They have built sophisticated CI/CD pipelines that enable developers to deploy changes quickly and safely, with extensive automated testing and monitoring to ensure high-quality service.

Increased Portability

Containers have the capability to pack applications along with all their dependencies. Through this process it makes it easier for Windows, Mac or Linux hardware to reliably move and run containers. Containers are able to run within the jurisdiction of public or private networks on virtual servers or on premises. If applications need to be moved from one public cloud environment to another, this process also helps in avoiding vendor lock-in. 

A prominent example in this regard is Spotify that has leveraged container orchestration technologies to enhance the portability of its applications across different environments. By containerizing their microservices-based architecture and deploying them with Kubernetes, Spotify has achieved greater consistency and flexibility in managing their infrastructure.

Increased Scalability

Containers are generally small is size because they do not require any separate OS the way Virtual Machines (VMs) do. A container is sized in the order of tens of megabytes, whereas a single VM can be tens of gigabytes. It is roughly 1,000 times the size of one container. That efficiency allows organizations to store numerous containers on a single host operating system and increase the scalability.

In this regard, by means of container orchestration, Airbnb can dynamically scale its application instances based on the traffic patterns and user demand. Kubernetes' auto-scaling capabilities allow Airbnb to automatically provision additional containers to handle spikes in traffic during peak periods, ensuring a seamless user experience without manual intervention.

With the dynamically changing IT infrastructure, organizations are rapidly getting accustomed with innovative technologies. Several container orchestration tools have merged the market with robust features that have been successful in increasing scalability and harness complete potential of cloud-native technologies.