This is a repackaged open source software product wherein additional charges apply for support. Kubernetes, often abbreviated as K8s, is a powerful open-source container orchestration platform developed by Google and now maintained by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF). It simplifies the management of containerized applications by automating deployment, scaling, and operations across clusters of hosts. Kubernetes abstracts away the underlying infrastructure, providing a consistent platform for deploying, managing, and scaling applications regardless of the environment whether on-premises, in the cloud, or hybrid. At its core, Kubernetes utilizes a declarative approach to configuration, where users specify the desired state of their applications and Kubernetes ensures that the current state matches the desired state.