The API Server

Previously, we learned about the Kubernetes API. Let’s now take a closer look at the API server.

Introduction to the API server

The API server exposes the API over a RESTful HTTPS interface. It acts as the front-end to the API and is a bit like Grand Central Station for Kubernetes—everything talks to everything else via REST API calls to the API server. For example:

• All kubectl commands go to the API server (creating, retrieving, updating, and deleting objects).

• All kubelets watch the API server for new tasks and report the status to the API server.

• All control plane services communicate with each other via the API server.

Let’s dig deeper and demystify more jargon.

The API server is a Kubernetes control plane service that some clusters run as a set of Pods in the kube-system Namespace. If we build and manage our own clusters, we need to ensure the control plane is highly available and has enough ...