Container Orchestration: What it is and How it Works

December 5, 2025 4:29 pm |

min

Modern IT systems need to accommodate more data and more applications than ever before. In doing so, IT systems use containers to ensure continued operations and consume fewer resources. Although reliance on containers can create new challenges, orchestration can alleviate many problems related to app development.

Key Takeaways:

The adoption of orchestration tools simplifies an otherwise complex environment of containers.
Orchestration relies on the open-source Kubernetes system, which uses a control plane to deploy clusters to facilitate the management of containers within individual nodes.
Proper orchestration of containers helps all moving parts in modern app development keep pace with the agility and dynamism of hybrid cloud technology and hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI).

Businesses can maximize their investments in containers and orchestration by understanding why and how they work together to future-proof IT environments.

What is container orchestration?

Containerization is a modern solution to the problems that physical hardware limitations can cause. By packaging software into remotely-accessible containers, it is possible to bypass restrictions and run an operating system in the public cloud and from other locations.

Although containers are lightweight and convenient, the execution of a single application can involve an overwhelming volume of containers. Container orchestration automates the deployment, networking, scaling, and management of containers in large numbers.

Kubernetes is an open-source orchestration platform for managing containers in the enterprise setting. Platforms that use Kubernetes are rapidly-growing and highly-supported, with operators that can configure storage orchestration and automate containerization processes to their own specifications.

According to CNCF’s Kubernetes in 2025 Trends Report, container adoption remains strong, with about 84% of organizations actively using containers for development and production environments. The Voice of Kubernetes Experts 2025 Report (CNCF) further reveals that 41% of enterprises already operate with a mostly cloud-native application footprint, and 82% plan to make cloud-native environments—including containers—their primary platform for new applications within the next five years. Businesses evaluating whether to adopt container orchestration can make informed decisions by understanding the strategic benefits and implementation approaches behind these technologies.

Containerization vs container orchestration

Container orchestration coordinates many containers across many hosts. It provides a control plane that schedules workloads, maintains the desired state, and automates day-2 operations like scaling, rollouts, health checks, and recovery. Orchestration adds service discovery, policy enforcement, secrets and config management, and persistent storage integration for stateful apps.

When to use containerization vs container orchestration

Use containerization alone for local development, proofs of concept, or a single service on one host.
Use orchestration when you need high availability, multiple replicas, rolling or canary updates, or multi-tenant clusters.
Choose orchestration for hybrid or multicloud deployments where consistent policy, placement, and automation are required across sites.

In practice, containerization solves packaging. Orchestration runs those containers reliably at scale with the automation, security, and governance enterprises expect.

Why do businesses need container orchestration?

As many organizations embrace DevOps, specifically bringing developers and operators closer together for greater agility, they must adopt the necessary tools. Orchestration does this by introducing automation to an environment that prioritizes speed and efficiency. It also aligns teams on a single, declarative desired state so changes are safe and repeatable.

Proper orchestration also streamlines cloud-native application development. Businesses that seek cost-efficiency, scalability and flexibility in a cloud-native future can also find those same benefits in containerization and orchestration. Orchestration provides one operating model across on-premises, public cloud, and edge. It standardizes identity, networking, and storage integration, and enforces policy from day one.

For day-2 operations, orchestration improves reliability and lowers toil. Health checks, autoscaling, and automated rollouts reduce manual steps and shorten recovery times. Teams gain consistent audit trails and evidence for compliance.

Stateful workloads also benefit. Persistent volumes, snapshots, and scheduled backups protect critical data while maintaining performance targets. Security tightens through RBAC, secrets management, and admission controls.

You likely need orchestration when:

Release cadence outpaces what manual operations can support.
Uptime targets require replicas, health probes, and safe rollback.
Clusters span regions or clouds and need consistent policy enforcement.
Multiple teams must isolate resources with quotas and network rules.
Applications require reliable storage and controlled failover during incidents.

Container orchestration expected outcomes

Orchestration should translate into reliable releases, faster recovery, and less manual work. A control plane automates placement, scaling, rollouts, and healing so teams keep services aligned to a clear desired state.

Tie results to your service level objectives (SLOs) and budgets. Track deployment frequency, rollback safety, mean time to recovery, resource utilization, and spend by team. Use those insights to tune capacity, policy, and pipelines.

Expect to see

Higher availability and quicker recovery with health checks and replicas
Safer releases using rolling or canary updates with automatic rollback
Stronger security through RBAC, secrets management, and policy admission checks
Better efficiency from right-sized requests, bin packing, and autoscaling

Container orchestration benefits

Container orchestration automates deployment, scaling, and recovery across hybrid multicloud. It reduces manual work, speeds delivery, and improves reliability for modern applications.

A consistent control plane helps teams enforce policy, protect data, and manage cost. Workloads become portable, observable, and easier to operate at scale.

Simplified operations at scale: Manage large container fleets with one control plane.
Secure automation, less human error: Policy-driven workflows execute repeatably and safely.
Resilience by design: Orchestrated scaling and automatic restarts improve uptime.
Higher availability and faster recovery: Health checks and replicas shorten outage duration.
Faster, safer releases: Rolling and canary updates with automatic rollback reduce risk.
Stronger security and governance: RBAC, admission policies, and encrypted secrets standardize controls.
Better efficiency and cost control: Right-sized requests, bin-packing, and autoscaling reduce waste.
Stateful data protection: Persistent volumes, snapshots, and backups safeguard critical data.
Unified operations anywhere: Consistent policies across on-prem, public cloud, and edge.
Improved observability and SLO alignment: Standard metrics and alerts tie performance to goals.

How does container orchestration work?

Knowing how to implement orchestration starts with understanding the components of a Kubernetes cluster.

These main components are:

The nodes are where work takes place. Each node hosts pods that make up the application workload.
The control plane manages all nodes in the cluster. Control planes typically exist across multiple computers in a production environment.

Orchestration follows a declarative model: you define the desired state, and controllers continuously reconcile the actual state to match. The scheduler places workloads on suitable nodes, while health probes and autoscaling keep services reliable and right-sized.

Although Kubernetes is an open-source solution, re-architecting an IT environment is often costly. The common approach is to work with a platform provider that will help install and configure a unique orchestration platform with Kubernetes as its base. The configuration instructs the tool on where to find containers and store related logs, as well as how to establish a container network, all in accordance with a business’s needs.

Nutanix and container orchestration

Orchestration is designed to simplify operations. But when searching for the right orchestration platform provider, simplicity is not the only thing to consider. It is also necessary to consider how a provider handles installation and how they resolve any problems that arise once the product is up and running.

The Nutanix Kubernetes Platform (NKP) delivers simplicity through a fully integrated approach. By providing a comprehensive container orchestration solution, NKP enables organizations to deploy clusters in a fraction of the time traditionally required—streamlining processes that once took days or weeks. Built on the Nutanix hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI), NKP seamlessly integrates into cloud-native environments, offering a unified platform that simplifies management and accelerates application modernization.

Containerization is a necessary practice, but one that becomes uncontrollably complex as data and applications multiply. Container orchestration should not allow this complexity to be visible to the operator — rather, orchestration should be simple enough to allow for focus on important outcomes.

Learn more about the role containers play in simplifying data management in a hybrid cloud and how Kubernetes nodes can scale and expand with Nutanix Cloud Clusters.

Container Orchestration FAQs

How can container orchestration facilitate modern app development?

The application development process is rapidly evolving, meaning that companies must adopt the most modern technology. Cloud-native solutions comprise the present and future of development, and Kubernetes-powered orchestration helps make it possible.

Modern development is dynamic, and takes place across private, public and hybrid clouds. Management of this development must be efficient so that all moving parts can work together in harmony. The best way to achieve this is by running comprehensive container orchestration on HCI. Agility and efficiency are vital in the modern climate, so many companies have begun moving certain business-critical apps away from on-premises data centers and into the cloud.

This complete migration to cloud-native methodologies is possible through advancements in containerization, orchestration and virtualization. It serves to hasten app delivery and streamline internal processes, rapidly putting products in the hands of consumers.

How should we handle data for apps running in containers?

Handle application data with CSI-backed persistent volumes, encrypted at rest and scoped by RBAC. Protect it with snapshots and replication, then verify restores on a fixed cadence against documented RPO and RTO.

What’s the best way to run containers across regions or clouds?

Operate clusters as a governed fleet with shared policies, signed images, and GitOps for configuration. Mirror registries and configs per region to reduce external dependencies, while keeping day-2 operations local for speed.

How do we keep clusters secure without slowing developers down?

Enforce least-privilege RBAC, default-deny network policies, and admission controls that block risky changes pre-deploy. Manage secrets with a central KMS and capture automated evidence so releases and audits share the same artifacts.

How can we manage Kubernetes costs while meeting performance goals?

Right-size requests and limits from measured usage, and scale with autoscaling policies tied to SLOs. Increase density with bin packing, enforce quotas, show back spend by team, and prune idle images and volumes. Place data on the correct storage tier.

What does disaster recovery look like for containerized applications?

Back up cluster state, manifests, and persistent data with clear retention rules, then replicate to a secondary region. Maintain runbooks for failover, validation, rollback, and planned failback, and rehearse regularly with evidence captured for improvement.

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