What is Sidecar?
A container that runs alongside the main container in a pod to extend its functionality.
The Sidecar pattern involves deploying a helper container alongside the main application container in the same Pod. The sidecar extends or enhances the main container without changing it. Common sidecars: log shippers (Fluentd, Promtail), proxy containers (Envoy in service meshes), secrets injectors (Vault Agent), and init sync helpers. Sidecars share the pod's network and storage, allowing them to observe and augment the main container's behavior.
Related Terms
More Kubernetes Terms
Admission Controller
A Kubernetes plugin that intercepts API requests before objects are persisted.
Auto Scaling
Automatically adjusting the number of compute resources based on demand.
ClusterIP
The default Kubernetes Service type that exposes a service on an internal cluster IP.
ConfigMap
A Kubernetes object for storing non-sensitive configuration data as key-value pairs.
Controller Manager
Kubernetes control plane component running control loops to maintain desired state.
CoreDNS
The default DNS server in Kubernetes clusters for service discovery.
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