key value store

Question

Kubernetes uses ETCD as a key value store

Why in the first place Kubernetes cluster needs key-value store ? What’s the use case ?

In: Technology

Answer 1

A key/value store is something that stores data as pairs: a name (“key”), and a value. For instance such a store can be used to store configuration. Example:

Key Value
—————————-
Username Alice
Password hello64234
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And so on. They’re generally much simpler than databases, so they get used a lot for all kinds of simple use cases that don’t require something more complex, like a full blown relational database.

So, for instance a list of which machine has which IP address could be stored like that.