Though we compare Docker Vs Kubernetes, it is an apple-to-orange comparison.
Reason - They are both fundamentally different technologies but they work very well together, and both facilitate the management and deployment of containers in a distributed architecture.
Let me elaborate -
Docker started as a GITHUB project back in 2013(which is almost 5+ years from now). Slowly it grew massively with HUGE contributors across the world. Today it is a platform which is shipped as both - an open source as well as a commercial product. The orchestration is just a mere feature of Docker Enterprise Edition.
But if we really want to study how K8s is related to Docker, then the most preferred answer would be -
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Docker CLI provides the mechanism for managing the life cycle of the containers. Where as the docker image defines the build time framework of runtime containers.
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CLI commands are there to start, stop, restart and perform lifecycle operations on these containers.
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Containers can be orchestrated and can be made to run on multiple hosts. The questions that need to be answered are how these containers are coordinated and scheduled? And how will the application running in these containers will communicate each other?
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Kubernetes is the answer.
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Today, Kubernetes mostly uses Docker to package, instantiate, and run containerized applications. Said that there are various another container runtime available but Docker is the most popular runtime binary used by Kubernetes.
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Both Kubernetes and Docker build a comprehensive standard for managing the containerized applications intelligently along with providing powerful capabilities.
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Docker provides a platform for building running and distributing Docker containers. Docker brings up its own clustering tool which can be used for orchestration.
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But Kubernetes is a orchestration platform for Docker containers which is more extensive than the Docker clustering tool, and has capacity to scale to the production level.
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Kubernetes is a container orchestration system for Docker containers that is more extensive than Docker Swarm and is meant to coordinate clusters of nodes at scale in production in an efficient manner.
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Kubernetes is a plug and play architecture for the container orchestration which provides features like high availability among the distributed nodes