Containers

A container is the smallest unit in the Kubernetes world, although you don’t work directly with containers (you work with pods instead). The main purpose of k8s is to manage, deploy, and, to a certain extent, monitor containers.

Kubernetes is not limited to Docker containers. In fact, since Kubernetes v1.24, the default container runtime in Kubernetes has been containerd , which is lighter weight than Docker Engine whilst maintaining full compatibility with Docker Engine and Docker container images. Kubernetes also includes a Container Runtime Interface (CRI) that allows customers to switch out the default container runtime for an alternative if they have any specific requirements.