Kubernetes orchestration works by managing a cluster of machines and deploying containers onto them based on the resources they require and the desired state defined by the user. The system is made up of several key concepts that work together.

• Containers: These are the lightweight, portable, and executable packages that contain an application and all of its dependencies. Kubernetes orchestrates the deployment and life cycle of these containers.
• Cluster: This is the set of all machines, known as nodes, that are grouped together and managed by Kubernetes to run your applications.
• Control plane: The control plane is the brain of the Kubernetes cluster. It makes all global decisions about the cluster (like scheduling) and is responsible for detecting and responding to cluster events to maintain the user's desired state.
• Nodes: A node is a single worker machine within the cluster, either a physical server or a virtual machine. It is the place where containers are actually run.
• Pods: In Kubernetes, pods are the smallest deployable objects, representing a single instance of a running process. They contain one or more containers, shared storage, and a unique network IP.

Container orchestration platforms provide tools for automating container orchestration and offer the ability to install other open source technologies for event logging, monitoring, and analytics, such as Prometheus.

There are two main types of container orchestration platforms: self-managed and managed.

• Self-managed container orchestrators: These platforms, typically built from scratch or leveraging an open-source platform like Kubernetes, give you complete control over customization. However, they also require you to take on the burden of managing and maintaining the platform, including tasks like installation, configuration, updates, and security patching.
• Managed Kubernetes services: Platforms like Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) handle the complexity of setting up and operating the underlying cluster infrastructure, allowing you to focus on deploying and managing your applications. The cloud provider is responsible for managing installation and operations. As a result, you can simply consume the capabilities and focus on running your containerized applications.

While Kubernetes itself provides the core orchestration, a range of cluster tools work in concert that can help its security, simplify management, and enable scaling. Below is a list of related tools: 

• Monitoring and logging solutions: Tools like Google Cloud's operations suite (Cloud Monitoring and Cloud Logging) are essential for observing the health and performance of the cluster and the applications running on it.
• CI/CD tooling: Systems like Cloud Build integrate with Kubernetes to automate the process of building container images and deploying them to the cluster.

Container orchestration tools like Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) make it easier to deploy and run containerized applications and microservices. Container orchestrators typically apply their own methodologies and offer varying capabilities, but they all enable organizations to automatically coordinate, manage, and monitor containerized applications.

While the end result is the same – a running, managed containerized application – the steps and level of effort involved differ significantly between Kubernetes and GKE.

Kubernetes automates several critical functions that would otherwise require significant manual effort. These core capabilities are what make it such a powerful orchestration platform.

• Deployment: Kubernetes helps you describe the desired state for your deployed application. The orchestration engine then manages the rollout of changes, such as updating an application to a new version, in a controlled manner, often with zero downtime.
• Scaling: Based on CPU utilization or other custom metrics, Kubernetes can automatically scale the number of running containers up or down. This helps ensure that your application has the resources it needs to handle load while optimizing for cost.
• Self-healing: If a container or a node fails, Kubernetes orchestration can automatically detect the failure. It will then restart, replace, or reschedule containers on healthy nodes to help ensure the application remains available without manual intervention.
• Service discovery and load balancing: Kubernetes can automatically expose a container to the internet or other containers in the cluster using a stable DNS name. It can also load-balance traffic across multiple containers that provide the same service, to ensure requests are distributed efficiently.
• Configuration management: Kubernetes lets you store and manage sensitive information, such as passwords and API keys, as "Secrets." It also handles application configuration data as "ConfigMaps," so you can update configurations without rebuilding your container images.