Architecture
Learn the key concepts and architectural components of a DKP cluster
Kubernetes provides the foundation of a DKP cluster. Because of this fundamental relationship, you should be familiar with a few key concepts and terms. The topics in this section provide a brief overview of the native Kubernetes architecture, a simplified view of the DKP architecture - both Essential and Enterprise versions. Also, it shows the operational workflow for a DKP cluster.
The following diagram provides a simplified architectural overview to help you visualize the flow of the key components:
![](../../__attachments/89032424/DKP2%20Arch%20DiagramFINAL.png?inst-v=fbc98f0a-f9ae-4d4c-828f-dc0defe966ca)
DKP Architectural overview
Components for the Kubernetes control plane
The native Kubernetes cluster consists of components that provide the cluster’s control plane and worker nodes that run users’ containers and maintain the runtime environment.
DKP supplements the native Kubernetes cluster by providing a predefined and pre-configured set of applications. Because this predefined set of applications provides critical features for managing a Kubernetes cluster in a production environment, the default set is identified as DKP platform services.
See Platform applications for the full set of DKP platform services.
Related information
For information on related topics or procedures, refer to the following Kubernetes documentation.