What is Kubernetes? — UK Software Development Guide
Direct Answer
Kubernetes (commonly abbreviated as K8s) is an open-source container orchestration platform that automates the deployment, scaling, and management of containerised applications. Originally developed by Google, Kubernetes groups containers into logical units ("pods") and manages them across a cluster of servers.
Kubernetes in the UK
Kubernetes is the standard container orchestration platform for UK enterprise software. AWS EKS (Elastic Kubernetes Service) in the eu-west-2 (London) region and Azure AKS (Azure Kubernetes Service) in the UK South region are the two most common managed Kubernetes services for UK businesses. Kubernetes is particularly valuable for UK regulated-sector applications: it enables zero-downtime deployments (critical for FCA operational resilience requirements), facilitates Cyber Essentials patch management (rolling updates for security patches), and supports the multi-tenancy isolation required for GDPR data separation in SaaS platforms.
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