Kubernetes
Kubernetes is an open-source platform for orchestrating containerized applications at scale — automating deployment, scaling, and management of containers (often Docker containers) across a cluster of machines. In testing contexts, it's used to manage and scale realistic test environments and infrastructure.
Where Docker packages an application into a portable container, Kubernetes manages many containers running across a cluster — handling scheduling, scaling, networking, and self-healing (automatically restarting failed containers) at a level of complexity that becomes necessary once a system involves more than a handful of interdependent services.
For QA specifically, Kubernetes matters most in testing production-representative infrastructure at realistic scale — load and performance testing against a Kubernetes-orchestrated staging environment can reveal scaling and orchestration issues that a simpler, single-container Docker setup wouldn't surface at all.
