Kubernetes Cheat Sheet
K8s jargon decoded
50 terms
- AI Chain
- A sequence of AI-related steps in which the output of one model call or processing stage becomes input to the next. AI chains are used for workflows like retrieval, reasoning, transformation, validation, and final response generation.
- AI Multi-Agent
- Describing an AI system in which multiple agents or agent-like components cooperate, specialize, or divide work rather than relying on a single monolithic assistant. AI multi-agent designs are used for planning, tool use, verification, and task decomposition, though they add coordination complexity.
- ArgoCD
- Cilium
- A cloud-native networking, security, and observability project built heavily around eBPF, often used in Kubernetes environments.
- Cluster Orchestration
- The automated coordination of workloads across a cluster, including scheduling, placement, restart behavior, scaling, and network wiring. Cluster orchestration systems make it possible to run many distributed workloads without manually deciding which node should host what.
- CNI Security
- Security concerns and controls related to container networking interfaces, especially in orchestrated environments such as Kubernetes. CNI security affects segmentation, policy enforcement, visibility, and how workloads communicate on the network.
- Config Map
- A named collection of configuration key-value pairs, especially in Kubernetes, used to inject non-secret settings into applications and containers at runtime. Config maps help separate configuration from image contents so behavior can change without rebuilding the application artifact.
- ConfigMap
- A Kubernetes object for storing non-sensitive configuration data (environment variables, config files, command-line arguments) separate from container images. Mounted as files or injected as environment variables, enabling configuration changes without rebuilding images.
- Container Cluster
- A cluster of machines or nodes configured to run and manage containerized workloads together. Container clusters are typically paired with orchestration systems that handle scheduling, scaling, service discovery, and rolling updates across the group.
- Control Plane Security
- Security for the management layer that controls infrastructure, orchestration, identity, and policy decisions rather than the workloads themselves. Because the control plane can reconfigure or access everything, compromise here is often catastrophic.
- CoreDNS
- A flexible DNS server widely used in cloud-native environments, especially as Kubernetes' cluster DNS service.
- CRI-O
- A Kubernetes-focused container runtime implementation designed around the Container Runtime Interface.
- Crossplane
- An open-source control-plane framework for managing cloud infrastructure through Kubernetes-style APIs and reconciliation.
- DaemonSet
- A Kubernetes workload type that ensures a pod runs on every node or on selected nodes in a cluster.
- GitOps Pull Model
- A GitOps implementation where an agent running inside the cluster (ArgoCD, Flux) continuously polls a Git repository and reconciles the cluster state to match the declared state in Git. Unlike push-based CI/CD (which pushes changes to the cluster), pull-based GitOps is more secure (no external clust
- Hashicorp Nomad
- A workload scheduler from HashiCorp used to deploy and manage containerized and non-containerized applications.
- Helm
- The de facto package manager for Kubernetes, using templated YAML files called 'charts' to define, install, and upgrade applications. Helm charts bundle together all the Kubernetes resources an application needs (deployments, services, configs) into a versioned, shareable package. Love it or hate it
- Helm Chart
- A package format for Kubernetes applications containing templated YAML manifests, default configuration values, and metadata. Helm charts enable versioned, reproducible deployments and are distributed through chart repositories.
- Helm Template
- A Helm Template is a development concept used to shape how software is built, executed, or maintained in real systems. Developers rely on it to make code easier to reason about, integrate, and operate as projects grow. It usually matters most when teams need predictable behavior, clearer abstraction
- Init Container
- A specialized container in a Kubernetes pod that runs to completion before the main application containers start. Used for setup tasks like waiting for a database, running migrations, downloading config files, or setting file permissions.
- Istio
- An open-source service mesh platform that provides traffic management, security, and observability for microservices running on Kubernetes. Istio deploys an Envoy proxy sidecar alongside each service to intercept all network traffic. Powerful but notorious for its operational complexity and steep le
- K3s
- A lightweight Kubernetes distribution designed for simpler deployment, edge environments, and lower operational overhead than full standard installations. In infrastructure culture, K3s is popular where teams want Kubernetes compatibility without the full platform burden.
- Knative
- A Kubernetes-based platform for building and operating serverless and event-driven workloads.
- Kubernetes
- Kubernetes, often abbreviated as K8s, is an open-source container orchestration platform originally designed by Google and now maintained by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF). It automates the deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications across clusters of machines. K
- Kubernetes Community
- The ecosystem of users, maintainers, vendors, contributors, and educators around Kubernetes and related cloud-native tooling. In infrastructure culture, the Kubernetes community is known for its scale, governance, and extensive surrounding ecosystem.
- Kubernetes (K8s)
- The numeronym for Kubernetes: K + 8 letters + s. The tech industry loves numeronyms — i18n (internationalization), l10n (localization), a11y (accessibility). K8s won because nobody can consistently spell Kubernetes.
- Kubernetes operator
- A method of packaging, deploying, and managing a Kubernetes application using custom resources and custom controllers that encode operational knowledge into software. Operators automate complex lifecycle management tasks (backup, scaling, upgrading) that would otherwise require manual intervention.
- Kubernetes Security
- Kubernetes Security is the protection of cluster components, workloads, identities, network policies, and supply-chain paths in Kubernetes. Security teams use it to enforce trust, reduce exposure, improve detection, or standardize secure operations in production environments. Its value depends on co
- KubeSphere
- A Kubernetes-based platform that adds management, DevOps, and multi-tenant capabilities on top of clusters.
- Kustomize
- A Kubernetes configuration customization tool that layers patches and overlays onto base manifests.
- Linkerd
- A lightweight open-source service mesh focused on secure service-to-service communication and observability.
- Longhorn
- A cloud-native distributed block-storage system for Kubernetes workloads.
- Minikube
- A tool for running a local Kubernetes cluster on a developer machine, often used for learning, demos, and small-scale testing. In Kubernetes culture, Minikube is one of the most familiar ways to experiment locally without provisioning full remote infrastructure.
- Minio Operator
- The Kubernetes operator used to deploy and manage MinIO object-storage clusters in a cloud-native way.
- Network Policy
- A defined rule set controlling which network communications are allowed between systems, services, namespaces, or endpoints. The term is commonly used in container platforms and zero-trust designs where traffic permissions are declared explicitly instead of assumed implicitly.
- Pod
- The smallest deployable unit in Kubernetes — a group of one or more containers that share the same network namespace (IP address and ports), storage volumes, and lifecycle. Containers within a pod communicate over localhost and are always co-scheduled on the same node.
- PV
- PersistentVolume — a Kubernetes storage resource provisioned by an administrator or dynamically by a StorageClass that exists independently of any individual pod's lifecycle. Pods claim storage from PVs via PersistentVolumeClaims (PVCs), allowing data to survive pod restarts and rescheduling.
- Rancher
- A platform for managing Kubernetes clusters and related container infrastructure across environments.
- Reconciler
- A component that continuously compares desired state with actual state and takes actions to converge them. In React, the reconciler (Fiber) diffs the virtual DOM and schedules DOM updates. In Kubernetes, a reconciler is the control loop inside a controller or operator that watches a resource's spec
- Replica Set
- A group of redundant instances maintaining the same data or workload — in MongoDB, a cluster of mongod processes with one primary and multiple secondaries that automatically elect a new primary on failure; in Kubernetes, a controller that ensures a specified number of identical pod replicas are runn
- Rolling Update
- A deployment strategy that gradually replaces old instances with new ones, maintaining availability throughout. Typically configured with maxSurge (extra instances during update) and maxUnavailable (instances that can be down). The default strategy in Kubernetes Deployments.
- Rook
- A cloud-native storage orchestrator for Kubernetes that helps manage distributed storage systems such as Ceph.
- sidecar
- A deployment pattern where a helper container runs alongside the main application container in the same pod, providing auxiliary functionality like logging, monitoring, TLS termination, or service mesh proxying without modifying the application code. Named after motorcycle sidecars, this pattern is
- Sidecar
- A helper container deployed alongside the main application container in the same pod, providing supporting functionality like logging, proxying, or service mesh communication. The sidecar shares the pod's network and storage without modifying the app's code.
- Skaffold
- A developer workflow tool for building, deploying, and iterating on Kubernetes applications locally and remotely.
- StormForge
- A tooling brand associated with optimizing Kubernetes resource settings and performance behavior.
- Swarm
- Docker Swarm — Docker's native container orchestration tool, offering simpler setup than Kubernetes at the cost of fewer features. The 'we don't need Kubernetes, this is fine' option. Also used generically for coordinated multi-agent systems.
- Tekton
- A Kubernetes-native framework for defining and running CI/CD pipelines as custom resources.
- Temporal
- An open-source durable execution platform (originally forked from Uber's Cadence) that lets developers write long-running, fault-tolerant workflows as ordinary code. Temporal persists workflow state at each step, automatically retrying failed activities and resuming after crashes without manual stat
- Velero
- A backup and restore tool for Kubernetes resources and persistent volumes.