Kubermatic, a German-based startup, introduced an open-source tool called KubeCarrier that automates lifecycle management of services, applications, and hardware using Kubernetes Operators. The goal of the tool is to provide scalability and repeatability to meet the organization's requirements. KubeCarrier is licensed under Apache 2.0, and it is publicly available on Github.
In his blog post, Sebastian Scheele, CEO and co-founder at Kubermatic, provided a brief overview of KubeCarrier features. With rising cloud-native adoption, an organization faces challenges around service management across multiple clusters, clouds, and regions. Developers use a Kubernetes Operator, a method of packaging, deploying, and managing a Kubernetes application. As the workload grows, Operators are required to be managed as well. The management activities may include scheduled backups or provisioning databases as a service to the users inside and outside the organization. For such operations, developers typically contact the IT teams.
To build automation around this service management, KubeCarrier provides a central framework utilizing Kubernetes Operators and APIs, allowing enterprises to deliver cloud-native service management from one multi-cloud, multi-cluster hub. Ensuring scalability up to thousands of Kubernetes clusters, KubeCarrier also provides multi-tenancy and user management with access controls, permissions, and policies to define quotas.
IT teams can use KubeCarrier to create their own app store for Kubernetes Services as Kubermatic expects managed service providers (MSPs) to build a practice around KubeCarrier. Scheele mentioned,
We are going the next step by allowing customers to automate the provisioning of their services throughout their entire Kubernetes deployments, typically spread out among multi-cloud and on-premises infrastructures.
Among the top 10 corporate committers to Kubernetes Project in 2020, Kubermatic has changed its name from Loodse earlier this year. The Kubermatic product portfolio includes the Kubermatic Kubernetes Platform and KubeOne. Scheele added,
With our comprehensive portfolio of open source and enterprise software solutions and our strong footprint in the cloud-native ecosystem, Kubermatic combines deep open source expertise and enterprise technology experience. With KubeCarrier, we continue to be at the forefront of the cloud-native transformation helping businesses successfully operate their multi-cloud and edge deployments.
The tech community on Twitter took notice of the announcement. One of the Twitter users @breakawaybilly tweeted, "Have less Jira tickets - KubeCarrier is your multi cluster Kubernetes service Hub". Another user, abraxas, appreciated the work by tweeting, "Today I fell in love with @kubermatic. Guys your tools and contribution are amazing #kubeone #kubecarrier. Keep the good work and it gives viel spass! Really great folks"
To get started with KubeCarrier, access the GitHub repository and the documentation here.