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Containers and Container Orchestration Key Concepts Explained | Different Container Orchestration Options

Shah Wajahat

Containers and Container Orchestration Concepts 

This article will help you understand complete concepts of containers in Kubernetes and other Container Orchestration tools. It also covers, What is Container orchestration, reasons for doing container orchestration and discusses different options for container orchestration as well.

By the end of this article, reader should be able to:
    • Define the concept of container orchestration.
    • Explain the reasons for doing container orchestration.
    • Discuss different container orchestration options.
    • Discuss different container orchestration deployment options.

What is a Container?

Containers are application-centric methods, these methods can deliver high performing, scalable applications on any kind of infrastructure.Containers are the most suitable way of providing microservices while being portable, isolated and virtually hosted environment.
Containers and Container Orchestration Concepts | Different Container Orchestration Options
Containers and Container Orchestration Concepts 
  • Containers are highly scalable.
  • Containers are infrastructure independent. ( won't matter which machine you want to run application on).
  • Microservices are provided by containers in isolated virtual enviroments.
  • Containers provide portability to microservices. Such that each microservice can be running, moved or updated independently in isolation.

What are Microservices?


Microservices are lightweight applications. These applications are developed by various programming languages, with specific dependencies, uses and libraries of data. In order to run a microservice successfully, it has to be packed with its dependencies with in a package so that all requirements are fulfilled at runtime.

Here, containers come in place, containers encapsulate a microservice and its dependencies. But containers don't run microservices directly, containers run container images to run the microservice.

If you want to learn details about microservices: Microservices complete Concepts


Container Orchestration Concepts

What is a Container Image?

A container Image can be defined as: a bundle that has packaged the application along with its functional dependencies at runtime. Containers are deployed by container images. Containers offer an isolated executable environment where applications run. Containers can be deployed by any specific machine and container is platform independent.  Infrastructure of machine doesn't effects container running on it. 

In development Phase, running containers on a single host for development and testing purpose is smart enough to save time and resources. Although, while we are migrating Containers to Quality Assurance(QA) and Production (Prod) Phases this is no longer a viable option. These applications and services need to meet some specific requirements for that.

Requirements for Containers

Requirements for Containers to be passed to Quality Assurance environment are:


  • Fault-tolerance
  • On-demand scalability
  • Optimal resource usage
  • Auto-discovery to automatically discover and communicate with each other
  • Accessibility from the outside world
  • Seamless updates/rollbacks without any downtime.

What is Container Orchestration?

Container Orchestration is the set of tools which can group a system together to form a cluster where these containers are deployed and managed automatically at scale while meeting all the requirements.

Today, Enterprises are moving forward towards containerizing their applications and migrating them to cloud solutions. This is a growing market for container orchestration solutions.

While there are already well established container orchestration solutions and tools available, enriched with latest features and flexibility, mostly new solutions are making a copy of pre-built and well renown orchestration solutions.

Different Container Orchestration Options


Some of the well known container orchestration tools and services are listed below:




We can manually maintain a container or write scripts for dozens of containers. But this doesn't makes work easier. Container Orchestration makes things easier enough for us. Container orchestration helps us to manage and maintain hundreds of thousands of containers on a global infrastructure.

What does Container Orchestrators do? 


Function of Contain Orchestrators

Container orchestrators mostly can:
  • Create clusters while they are Grouping hosts together.
  • Check and maintain recourse availability for containers and Schedule containers to run on hosts in a cluster.
  • Bind together containers and storage resources available.
  • Optimize the resource usage and maintain them.
  • Container Orchestrators allow the implementation of policies to secure the access of applications, which are running inside a container.
  • Enables Containers to communicate with one another regardless of host they are deployed on in a cluster.


  • Container orchestrators create a level of abstraction between containers and users to bind them to load-balancing, which simplifies access to container applications.

Deployment for Container Orchestraotors:

Containers can be deployed independent of infrastructure. They can be deployed on a machine of your choice- on Virtual Machines, On-premise, or even a Public cloud.

Take example of Kubernetes, One of the most populer options for containers orchestraion, can be deployed on any workstation which is with or without a local hypervisor such as VirtualBox or also inside any company's data center, OpenStack, Google Computer Engine etc.

Kubernetes can be installed easily with few commands using turnkey solutions. There are managed conatiner orchestration services available too.  Therse are Kubernetes as-a-Service solution, offered and hosted by the major cloud providers, such as:

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Shah Wajahat

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