Docker is an OS (especially Linux at the moment) level facility/technology that can build OS images dedicated all the way to the application level in multiple layers. Developers will build docker application images instead of application packages where by the application images are stand alone and can run on any hardware on *any* OS. The images are layered and can be shared publicly or privately. Docker provides the verbs and scripts necessary to build, deploy, and monitor application images running in containers on a native OS. Docker containers are significantly lightweight compared to virtual machines making distributed, scalable, multi-tenanted computing engines in the cloud effective and efficient.

Kubernetes establishes robust declarative primitives for maintaining the desired state requested by the user. We see these primitives as the main value added by Kubernetes. Self-healing mechanisms, such as auto-restarting, re-scheduling, and replicating containers require active controllers, not just imperative orchestration.