Kubernetes is an open-source system for automating deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications. It groups containers that make up an application into logical units for easy management and discovery. The main Kubernetes components include a master node that manages the cluster and worker nodes that run applications. It uses kubectl, etcd, Docker, and various control plane components like the API server, scheduler and controller manager. AKS simplifies Kubernetes deployment and management on Azure by offloading much of the operational overhead. It can be deployed through the Azure CLI by creating a resource group, installing AKS and getting credentials to connect kubectl to the cluster.