Cosmonic Donates Kubernetes Operator for wasmCloud to CNCF
Cosmonic this week at the Open Source Summit revealed it has contributed an Operator developed for the wasmCloud platform that enables WebAssembly applications to run on Kubernetes clusters to the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF).
Previously, Cosmonic contributed wasmCloud to the CNCF as part of an effort to create an ecosystem for advancing the deployment of Wasm applications on Kubernetes clusters.
WebAssembly was developed five years ago by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), with the intent of creating a common format for browsers executing JavaScript code. It is starting to be used to rapidly build lighter-weight applications that can be deployed on any server platform. In effect, it promises the ability to write an application once and deploy it anywhere, some 25 years after the Java programming language was introduced.
Wasm applications are designed to run anywhere. But Cosmonic and the CNCF are making a case for deploying them alongside applications, based on containers on a Kubernetes platform that can be centrally managed by a platform engineering team. As part of that effort, Cosmonic developed an Operator, formerly known as Cosmonic Connect Kubernetes, that makes it simpler to deploy wasmCloud on a Kubernetes cluster. A Kubernetes Operator is a controller that extends the Kubernetes application programming interface (API) to automate the deployment and management of a specific application.
Taylor Thomas, a wasmCloud maintainer and director of engineering for Cosmonic, said Wasm will provide a construct that should make it simpler to build applications for Kubernetes clusters at a higher level of abstraction. Many developers are hesitant to build container-based applications for Kubernetes environments because they need to know too much about the underlying platform.
In addition, Thomas added, Wasm will also make it easier to build and deploy applications spanning multiple Kubernetes clusters, running everywhere from the cloud to a Raspberry Pi device.
It’s not clear how quickly application developers are embracing Wasm to build applications that would be deployed on servers, but with support from Microsoft, Intel, Amazon, Docker, Cisco, Red Hat and other vendors, the number of developers being exposed to Wasm continues to increase. Wasm continues to evolve technically. However, many of those applications are still likely to need the orchestration capabilities currently enabled by Kubernetes.
Regardless of how applications are constructed, platform engineering teams can be assured that investments made in Kubernetes today will remain relevant as cloud-native computing continues to evolve, said Thomas. In effect, wasmCloud provides a Kubernetes bridge for developers of Wasm applications, he added.
Each organization needs to determine when it makes sense to use Wasm versus containers. But for the foreseeable future, there will be a mix of software artifacts being employed by developers. The one thing that is certain is that as additional types of artifacts are added to DevOps pipelines the more complex software engineering is likely to become.
