CNCF CTO Foresees Larger Orchestration Role for Kubernetes

The role Kubernetes plays in enterprise IT environments is on the verge of expanding beyond simply orchestrating containers.

During the virtual Cloud Native Now conference hosted by Techstrong Group today, Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) CTO Chris Aniszczyk said as Kubernetes continues to evolve, the application programming interface (API) server the platform provides is being used to expand orchestration capabilities beyond containers to, for example, the components that make up an application based on the WebAssembly (Wasm) file format.

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Red Hat, meanwhile, has developed a prototype of a multi-tenant Kubernetes control plane (KCP) for workloads based on a generic CustomResourceDefinition (CRD) API server that is divided into multiple logical clusters, noted Aniszczyk. Each of these logical clusters is fully isolated from the others, allowing different teams, workloads and use cases to live side by side.

Crossplane, a CNCF project, is simultaneously using the Kubernetes API server to create a control plane that can be applied to integrate with legacy platforms, added Aniszczyk.

In addition, that API server will make it possible to shrink the overall size of the Kubernetes control plane over time without disrupting application environments. For example, underlying components of Kubernetes could be redeveloped in a memory-safe programming language such as Rust in much the same way the Linux community is undertaking, he noted.

The Kubernetes API server, in effect, provides the foundation upon which many forthcoming innovations will be driven, added Aniszczyk.

It’s too early to say how fully Kubernetes will evolve into a general-purpose orchestration engine for IT environments, but most enterprise IT organizations are spending a significant amount of time and effort trying to master various control planes. Rationalizing those control platforms could go a long way toward reducing the total cost of IT by providing a control plane that can be used across both emerging cloud-native and legacy monolithic applications.

Ultimately, as the number of cloud-native applications being deployed in production environments expands, it will force the issue. Enterprise IT organizations, for example, are embracing platform engineering to centralize the management of DevOps workflows.

It’s been the better part of a decade since Kubernetes was first launched, but as it becomes more widely used, internal IT teams are becoming more familiar with it as a new construct for managing IT. The addition of management tools with graphical user interfaces (GUIs) makes Kubernetes accessible to IT administrators rather than requiring a DevOps team to manage every function. Ultimately, the goal is to enable IT administrators and DevOps professionals to manage cloud-native application environments alongside each other with a minimal amount of friction.

It may, of course, be a while before Kubernetes becomes the de facto standard for orchestrating IT environments, but it’s clear there is much more to come. The issue now is continuing to build a foundation by extending the reach of Kubernetes from the cloud to the network edge as application environments become even more distributed. The immediate challenge is, as always, reducing the level of Kubernetes complexity that limits the number of IT professionals capable of managing it.