Kubernetes automates the deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications. Running one Docker container is simple. Running 200 containers across 50 nodes with auto-scaling, health checks, rolling updates, service mesh, and persistent storage requires Kubernetes. K8s handles: pod scheduling, horizontal/vertical autoscaling, service discovery (DNS), load balancing, rolling deployments, and self-healing (restart failed containers).
Enterprise Kubernetes requires: cluster architecture (node pools, resource quotas, namespace isolation), networking (Ingress, Network Policies, service mesh), security (pod security, RBAC, secrets management), observability (Prometheus, Grafana, distributed tracing), and GitOps (ArgoCD, Flux) for declarative deployment.