Kubernetes is an open source system for managing [containerized applications](https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/kubernetes/wiki/Why-Kubernetes%3F#why-containers) across multiple hosts,
Kubernetes builds upon a [decade and a half of experience at Google running production workloads at scale](https://research.google.com/pubs/pub43438.html), combined with best-of-breed ideas and practices from the community.
However, initial development was done on GCE and so our instructions and scripts are built around that. If you make it work on other infrastructure please let us know and contribute instructions/code.
While the concepts and architecture in Kubernetes represent years of experience designing and building large scale cluster manager at Google, the Kubernetes project is still under heavy development. Expect bugs, design and API changes as we bring it to a stable, production product over the coming year.
: A cluster is a set of physical or virtual machines and other infrastructure resources used by Kubernetes to run your applications. Kubernetes can run anywhere! See the [Getting Started Guides](docs/getting-started-guides) for instructions for a variety of services.
: Pods are a colocated group of application containers with shared volumes. They're the smallest deployable units that can be created, scheduled, and managed with Kubernetes. Pods can be created individually, but it's recommended that you use a replication controller even if creating a single pod.
The Kubernetes team is hanging out on IRC on the [#google-containers channel on freenode.net](http://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=google-containers). This client may be overloaded from time to time. If this happens you can use any [IRC client out there](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Internet_Relay_Chat_clients) to talk to us.
We also have the [google-containers Google Groups mailing list](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/google-containers) for questions and discussion as well as the [kubernetes-announce mailing list](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/kubernetes-announce) for important announcements (low-traffic, no chatter).
If you are a company and are looking for a more formal engagement with Google around Kubernetes and containers at Google as a whole, please fill out [this form](https://docs.google.com/a/google.com/forms/d/1_RfwC8LZU4CKe4vKq32x5xpEJI5QZ-j0ShGmZVv9cm4/viewform) and we'll be in touch.
