Kubernetes has very ambitious goals. It aims to manage and simplify the orchestration, deployment, and management of distributed systems across a wide range of environments and cloud providers. It provides many capabilities and services that should work across all that diversity, while evolving and remaining simple enough for mere mortals to use. This is a tall order. Kubernetes achieves this by following a crystal-clear, high-level design and using well-thought-out architecture that promotes extensibility and pluggability. Many parts of Kubernetes are still hard coded or environment aware, but the trend is to refactor them into plugins and keep the core generic and abstract. In this section, we will peel Kubernetes like an onion, starting with the various distributed systems design patterns and how Kubernetes supports them, then go over the mechanics of Kubernetes, including its set of APIs, and then take a look at the actual components that comprise Kubernetes. Finally, we will take a quick tour of the source-code tree to gain even better insight into the structure of Kubernetes itself.

At the end of this section, you will have a solid understanding of the Kubernetes architecture and implementation, and why certain design decisions were made.