With the digitalisation of socially and economically relevant structures, the IT of organisations and companies of all sizes has become critical infrastructure. In day-to-day data management, it is therefore not only security that is in demand - the reliability of systems is also more important than ever before.
Kubernetes, the open source system for deploying, scaling and managing containerised applications, was already introduced in the first blog post in our series on Blackbit's new hosting service. Thanks to its containerised architecture, the open source platform can guarantee a new level of security that traditional root server solutions cannot provide. However, developed by Joe Beda, Brendan Burns and Craig McLuckie at Google in 2014, Kubernetes was originally created primarily to run large workloads with maximum reliability.
Downtime is more than just lost revenue
Whether in product information management (PIM), master data management (MDM), on customer data platforms (CDP) or in the day-to-day business of digital commerce platforms - the reliable operation of any system is crucial to real revenue. The costs incurred per hour of downtime vary depending on the size of the company.
The total cost of a system failure is made up of lost sales and productivity. However, the calculation must also include working hours during the disruption and the costs of restoring operations. In addition, there are also claims from third parties, such as contractual penalties and liability claims.
Kubernetes counters this risk situation, which can hit small and medium-sized companies particularly hard, with a particularly high degree of reliability in operation.
The pillars of reliability
Kubernetes can ensure the highly stable and reliable operation of sometimes highly complex infrastructures at all times, as its special infrastructure based on nodes and containers offers decisive advantages over classic root servers.
- Stable performance
The open source platform permanently monitors the current operation. If necessary, defective containers are removed fully automatically and replaced during operation.
- Balanced load balancing
Kubernetes automatically distributes the current computing load across a pool of existing hosting instances to ensure optimum utilisation and maximum availability at all times.
- Performance-orientated autoscaling
Kubernetes automatically starts applications on multiple instances in order to dynamically adapt the computing power to the current load and optimally distribute resources. This guarantees optimum performance in times with a high number of page accesses and saves resources when the number of accesses is low.
- Updates during operation
Application users want constant availability, while developers want to publish new versions or updates several times a day. Kubernetes does not have to make any compromises, but enables both. So-called "rolling updates" enable deployments to be updated without any downtime: when updates are made, a new instance is started first and only then is the old one deleted and replaced.
- Fastest possible disaster recovery
In classic root server operation, the previous state must be restored using documentation before a system can go live again. If the documentation is missing or incomplete, successful recovery can take a long time. Meanwhile, the economic damage increases with the duration of the downtime.
Kubernetes minimises downtime, as replicating a system only takes minutes instead of hours and effectively reduces financial losses.
Kubernetes and GitOps
Blackbit combines the new Kubernetes technology with the GitOps principle: the entire system is described declaratively in configuration files. All operating parameters are defined in this state repository and stored as code that can be called up at any time. On this basis, the entire system can be restored immediately and at any time in the event of external attacks or internal crashes.
The decoupling of development and deployment in GitOps also leads to shortened processes in development, which can mean an enormous increase in efficiency - more on this in the next blog post.
Rely on K8s now - and more reliability
Stable operation, secure hosting, time-saving development and smooth deployment - benefit now from the structural advantages that Kubernetes offers. Contact our sales team directly if you would like to find out more about what switching to Kubernetes can mean for you and your company.
Leave us feedback