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Updates from the Kubernetes Special Interest Group: How to run K8s on OpenStack clouds

Examples using Magnum, Kops and the upcoming Cluster-API project, plus how you can get involved.

February 15, 2019
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Bridging the two communities, the Kubernetes Special Interest Group (SIG-K8s) has been hard at work delivering OpenStack and Kubernetes integrations. There are several projects in the OpenStack and Kubernetes ecosystems that participate in the SIG, including:

The cloud-provider-openstack project published its Kubernetes-matched 1.13 release in December, followed by a 1.13.1 release in January, allowing users to make a Kubernetes installation hosted on an OpenStack cloud aware of the available resources and manage them directly. Features include creating ingress controllers (also known as load balancers) with Octavia, managing block storage devices through Cinder and having direct access to the status of nodes through Nova. In the latest release, the provider also supports Kubernetes key management with Barbican. When the Kubernetes API asks for resource, cloud-provider-openstack is the fundamental layer that delivers it on OpenStack.

There are several ways to run Kubernetes on OpenStack clouds:

  • One of the most mature and widely used is OpenStack Magnum, which offers a user-facing API to deploy managed OpenStack-hosted Kubernetes clusters. It’s in heavy production use today, including on public clouds like Vexxhost and Catalyst Cloud. Currently, CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, operates more than 300 managed Kubernetes clusters with OpenStack Magnum.
  • The Kops project greatly simplifies the deployment of Kubernetes on OpenStack. With just a set of OpenStack cloud credentials, users can issue basic commands to create, update and delete Kubernetes clusters.
  • Looking ahead, SIG-OpenStack community members are also excited to be participating in the new Cluster-API project in the Kubernetes community. Cluster-API provides native Kubernetes APIs to allow Kubernetes to self-host and manage the entire cluster lifecycle from initial deployment through upgrades to cluster deletion. This work is in its early stages, with active development on the OpenStack implementation.

Get involved

If you’d like to learn more or get involved with OpenStack and Kubernetes integrations:

And if you’d like to take a deeper dive on OpenStack and container integrations, check out the white paper  “Leveraging OpenStack and Containers: A Comprehensive Review,”  written by the SIG-K8s community.

Cover photo // CC BY NC

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Chris Hoge
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