Containers vs. Virtual machines: Understanding the shift to Kubernetes

Damarapati, Abhinav (2025) Containers vs. Virtual machines: Understanding the shift to Kubernetes. World Journal of Advanced Engineering Technology and Sciences, 15 (1). pp. 852-861. ISSN 2582-8266

compelling alternatives to traditional virtual machine architectures. This evolution addresses longstanding challenges with VMs, including resource intensity, slow provisioning, and operational complexity. Containers achieve greater efficiency by sharing the host system's kernel while maintaining isolation, enabling faster startup times and improved resource utilization. Kubernetes has emerged as the dominant container orchestration platform, providing automated management for large-scale deployments through its robust architecture of control planes, nodes, pods, services, and deployments. Organizations adopting containerization and Kubernetes benefit from enhanced scalability, optimized resource allocation, simplified deployment processes, and accelerated development cycles. The comprehensive capabilities of Kubernetes—including self-healing, horizontal scaling, service discovery, and automated deployments—have driven widespread adoption across industries, supported by its vendor-neutral design and active community ecosystem.