A Kubernetes Cluster is a group of physical or virtual machines managed by Kubernetes, an open-source container orchestration platform. A Kubernetes cluster automates the deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications. The cluster consists of worker nodes, where the application containers run, and a control plane (or master node), which manages the state of the cluster.

The control plane includes essential components such as the Kube API server, controller manager, scheduler, and etcd (a key-value store for configuration data). These components are responsible for scheduling containers on nodes, scaling applications, and managing cluster-wide health. Each worker node in the cluster runs containers (typically managed by Docker or another container runtime) and includes the Kubelet agent, which communicates with the control plane.

Kubernetes clusters provide high availability, fault tolerance, and automated management, making them ideal for large-scale, cloud-native applications. Kubernetes also supports features like load balancing, auto-scaling, rolling updates, and self-healing, ensuring that applications remain resilient and responsive even in dynamic environments.