The Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) recently announced that the Cluster API project is production-ready and moving to v1beta1 APIs. Cluster API is a Kubernetes sub-project that provides declarative APIs to create, configure, and update clusters.
The Cluster API project uses Kubernetes-style APIs and patterns to automate cluster lifecycle management for platform operators. It can support any infrastructure (AWS, Azure, vSphere, etc.) or bootstrap provider (kubeadm is the default). The list of available providers continues to grow.
Virtual machines, networks, load balancers and Virtual Private Clouds (VPCs_, and Kubernetes cluster configuration can be defined in a similar fashion by engineers that deploy and manage infrastructure.
David Justice, Principal Software Engineer Lead at Microsoft, said.
"Over the past year, the Azure Container Upstream team has migrated its upstream Kubernetes tests to the Cluster API ecosystem so that validation for Azure Kubernetes scenarios uses only open source, CNCF tools. This is a big win for both the community and for Microsoft. We are able to validate Kubernetes on Azure with tools that are community owned and maintained in collaboration. In the near future, all of the Kubernetes validation tests for Azure will be run using Cluster API."
The goals of the project are listed below:
- Life cycle management of Kubernetes-conformant clusters using declarative APIs
- Function correctly across different heterogeneous environments - both on-premises and the cloud
- Define everyday operations, establish default implementation,and provide the ability to swap implementations for alternatives
- Reuse and integrate existing ecosystem components (e.g. node-problem-detector, cluster autoscaler, SIG-Multi-cluster)
- Provide a transition path for Kubernetes lifecycle products to adopt Cluster API incrementally
Over the course of last year, the Cluster API project community has put a significant amount of effort towards stabilizing code, APIs and documentation. Additionally, there is support for automatic conversion between API versions, automatic upgrades via the clusterctrl tool. Feedback from the users has indicated that release 1.0 is production-ready.
Kubernetes Special Interest Group (SIG) Cluster Lifecycle started the Cluster API project. It has contributors from companies like VMware, Microsoft, Weaveworks, Google, Mattermost, IBM, RedHat, D2iQ, Equinix, Apple, Talos Systems, Spectro Cloud, Daimler TSS, Ericsson, Giant Swarm, AppsCode, Intel, Twilio, New Relic, Amazon, and more.
Interested readers can connect with the Cluster API project by joining the conversation on Kubernetes Slack channel #cluster-api. There is a SIG Cluster Lifecycle Google Group providing access to calendars and documents. The Cluster API project community hosts working group sessions weekly on Wednesdays at 10 AM Pacific Time on Zoom. Notes and recordings of meetings are also available.
