Virtual Kubernetes Clusters: The Key to a Modern IDP
The increasing complexity of modern software systems means developers are tasked with building and running a myriad of complex services, one of the most common being Kubernetes clusters. To improve developer experience and increase efficiency, platform engineering arose as a methodology for delivering self-service capabilities to developers via internal developer platforms (IDPs). IDPs become internal products that can be integrated into existing workflows and provide developers all the operational resources necessary for the entire deployment process.
Maintaining agile, scalable IDPs is becoming a necessity for cloud-native engineering teams; Gartner predicts that “by 2026, 80% of large software engineering organizations will establish platform engineering teams as internal providers of reusable services, components and tools for application delivery.” However, platform teams struggle to continuously optimize costs, improve security and boost efficiency in the face of sprawling resources and toolchains.
Virtual Kubernetes clusters are an emerging technology with the potential to significantly improve resource management and utilization — while maintaining security, reducing cloud costs and providing a superior developer experience. Platform creators seeking to build modern IDPs should consider adopting virtual clusters as they develop golden paths for developers.
Benefits of Virtual Kubernetes Clusters for Platform Teams
Platform engineering leaders have stressed the importance of listening to developers to deliver an IDP that integrates all the necessary tooling and context to reduce developers’ cognitive load while empowering them to own the deployment process. Therefore, a modern IDP encompasses a daunting set of services and workflows that platform teams must bind together to foster innovation and enable CI/CD.
By adopting virtual Kubernetes clusters at the outset, platform teams will set themselves up for success. Virtual clusters are essentially virtually isolated Kubernetes environments within a single physical cluster. They operate identically to traditional Kubernetes clusters without heavyweight platform stack components such as Istio and Open Policy Agent — these only run once in the underlying ‘real’ cluster — providing significant cost savings via enhanced efficiency and operational control. In the context of IDPs, virtual clusters offer unparalleled benefits in terms of scalability, security, cost optimization and more.
Scalability and Dynamic Provisioning
In today’s cloud-native environments, the demand for development resources changes constantly. Virtual clusters are up to the task, as they can be scaled up to meet increased demand or spun down to limit idle resources, all within seconds. Virtual clusters operate from the same shared ‘physical’ Kubernetes cluster, which means, platform teams can simply activate them as required rather than provisioning an entire platform stack each time, as is the case with traditional cluster management. Such flexibility lets teams preserve momentum and continuity, adapting to rapidly changing needs without hindering the delivery of innovative new products and features.
Efficient Resource Utilization
As virtual clusters operate within a single Kubernetes cluster, they can leverage the infrastructure of the underlying host cluster. This means platform teams can manage several workloads and development environments from a centralized location, without scaling physical resources or adding additional hardware and infrastructure. As organizations expand engineering efforts to gain a competitive edge, using resources efficiently is crucial from an operational and financial perspective.
Reduced Administrative Burden
Virtual clusters not only make it easy to strategically utilize resources, they also significantly reduce the administrative burden of changes to the system. With virtual clusters, the management of disparate environments is centralized within the context of the host cluster. This means changes such as new policies, patches and updates can be applied to all virtual environments at the same time. Typically, platform teams must apply such changes to each environment individually, opening the door for potential errors and creating outsize operational burden for necessary updates.
Optimized Cost Management
Kubernetes is inherently expensive as each cluster requires its own platform stack and there is a lot of replication. As organizations rush to keep up with competitors, cloud computing budgets are stretched thin — particularly as more teams deploy artificial intelligence (AI) workloads. Virtual clusters are an optimal solution as they streamline resource management, maximizing the use of existing server capacities. Thus, teams circumvent unnecessary spending on physical infrastructure. From startups to enterprises, cutting cloud costs with virtual clusters lets engineering teams devote maximum resources toward the development of new features and innovative R&D projects.
Superior Isolation
The lack of strict isolation between workloads often leads companies to spin up separate Kubernetes clusters for each project to ensure the activities of one team’s workload do not impact the performance of others’. Isolation is critical to managing security risks, but provisioning individual clusters is not financially viable for most companies.
Enter virtual clusters: They stand out for their ability to create isolated environments within a shared physical infrastructure, so that activity in one virtual cluster will never interfere with another. This unmatched isolation is especially beneficial for organizations in highly regulated industries as it enables compliance with internal governance policies and stringent security standards.
Better Developer Experience
Platform teams want to provide developers as much autonomy as possible over their deployment workflows, and virtual clusters empower developers to be creative and experiment without the risk of impacting overall operations. Platform teams can easily spin up virtual Kubernetes environments that replicate production settings and yet are isolated to avoid the ‘noisy neighbor problem’ and security risks. Thus, adopting virtual clusters supports a culture of continuous improvement and innovation.
Achieving a Modern IDP with Virtual Clusters
Overall, the virtual cluster approach eliminates various obstacles faced by platform creators when building a secure, agile and scalable IDP. Virtual clusters revolutionize platform engineering efforts with guaranteed isolation, optimized resource utilization and reduced management burden. As organizations enter the AI era and weigh the operational and financial tradeoffs of new projects, virtual clusters are a crucial solution to maintain growth and innovation at scale.