Understanding operators

In traditional organizations, specialized and dedicated teams were required to maintain applications and other software components such as databases, caches, and messaging components. Moreover, those teams were continuously observing the software ecosystem and doing specific things, such as taking backups for databases, upgrading and patching newer versions of software components, and more.

Operators in Kubernetes are like system administrators or human operators, continuously monitoring applications running on the Kubernetes environment and performing operational tasks associated with the specific component. In summary, an operator extends Kubernetes to automate the management of the complete life cycle of an application. For example, a PostgreSQL operator automates the database’s high availability, installation, patching, and backup abilities, to name a few. Many operators are available for various software components, such as databases, caches,...