Kubernetes, often abbreviated as K8s, is an open-source platform designed for automating the deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications across distributed systems. It operates within a cluster architecture consisting of worker nodes and a control plane. The control plane, acting as the system's brain, manages container deployments to worker nodes using components such as the kube-apiserver, kube-controller-manager, kube-scheduler, and etcd. Worker nodes, which can run on Linux or Windows, execute containerized applications organized into pods, with core components including kubelet, kube-proxy, and a container runtime. Kubernetes supports high availability and flexibility, making it suitable for deploying microservices and implementing DevOps practices. It can be deployed across various environments, including public clouds, private clouds, and on-premise setups, with the ability to run on a single machine for development and testing purposes.