Roadmap › Kubernetes (K8s) & AKS › Module: Architecture and Core Objects
Lessons in this course (15)
1. Cluster architecture
Basic★ Must knowLesson 1 of 15
Control plane (managed by Azure in AKS):
| Component | Role |
|---|---|
| kube-apiserver | Front door — all reads/writes go through the REST API; authentication, authorisation, admission |
| etcd | Consistent key-value store holding all cluster state |
| kube-scheduler | Assigns new pods to nodes (resources, affinity, taints) |
| kube-controller-manager | Runs controllers (Deployment, ReplicaSet, Node, Job...) that reconcile desired vs actual state |
| cloud-controller-manager | Integrates with the cloud (load balancers, disks, routes) |
Worker nodes:
| Component | Role |
|---|---|
| kubelet | Agent ensuring the pods assigned to the node are running and healthy |
| kube-proxy | Programs networking rules (iptables/IPVS) for Services (or replaced by eBPF, e.g. Cilium) |
| Container runtime | containerd / CRI-O run the containers |
Everything is declarative: you kubectl apply YAML manifests describing desired state; controllers loop forever to converge.