Container

A software-defined form of virtualization that combines an application and its dependencies. Docker containers, based on Linux container technology, are a widely accepted standard. Many prebuilt container images are available for deployment on systems that support the Docker format.

Kubernetes cluster

A highly available instance of an open-source container-orchestration system for automating application deployment, scaling, and management. Some possible abstractions of a Kubernetes cluster are applications, data plane, control plane, cluster infrastructure, and cluster operations. A Kubernetes cluster comprises a set of machines that are known as nodes.

Kubernetes cluster node

A node that runs containerized applications. A Kubernetes cluster can contain a mixture of physical machine and virtual machine (VM) nodes. One node of the cluster is designated as the master node, which is used to control the cluster. The remaining nodes are worker nodes. The Kubernetes master is responsible for distributing work among the workers and for monitoring the health of the cluster.

Kubernetes pod

One or more containers that are co-located on a worker node and can share resources. A pod is the basic scheduling unit and the minimum deployment unit of Kubernetes. Kubernetes pods are assigned a unique IP address within the cluster, enabling applications in the pod to use ports without the risk of conflict. The Kubernetes master automatically assigns pods to nodes in the cluster.