As we wrote in our last TL;DR, Kubernetes is gaining momentum. The open-source orchestration software — first developed by Google — recently saw new support from Microsoft Azure, extended functionality from StackPointCloud, and an expanding Cloud Native Computing Foundation (which serves as a vendor-neutral home for the platform).

That momentum has continued, and this week’s TL;DR features even more stories on Kubernetes — on Apprenda’s role in making Kubernetes manage Windows containers, and on VMWare’s Photon Platform 1.1, which includes “Kubernetes-as-a-Service.”

Apart from Kubernetes news, the past 10 days yielded insight on Unikernel security (from Dell EMC CTO Idit Levine), and some advice for fostering healthy, effective open source communities (from Config Management Camp).

See our summaries of recent container news and analysis below.

Kubernetes Momentum Continues

Kubernetes Managing Windows Containers — According to an 11/15 article by The New Stack, Kubernetes’ Windows Special Interest Group is currently expanding Kubernetes orchestration capabilities to include Windows containers. This effort would effectively “expand the number of enterprise applications the orchestration engine could manage,” since, “85 percent of enterprise software currently runs on Windows.” Apprenda, a company with a track record in Windows/.NET architectures and Kubernetes, is leading the effort.

Photon Platform Adds Kubernetes-as-a-Service — According to an 11/22 article by The New Stack, VMware recently released version 1.1 of Photon Platform. This is a “container-centric workload management system,” which includes “an orchestration mechanism VMware describes as ‘Kubernetes-as-a-Service.'” It will allow users to “deploy Kubernetes-driven environments from a completely remodeled Photon portal.”

Insights & Advice

Unikernel Security — In an 11/22 episode of The New Stack Makers podcast, Dell EMC CTO Idit Levine explained how unikernels can help defend against DDoS attacks. According to Levine, “The beauty of unikernels is you’re only running one process. Even if one can somehow get to the unikernel, it does not have a shell to use, so one cannot execute any shell script. The beauty of it is you cannot actually run a dangerous extra binary.” The podcast also covers Unik, an open source unikernel compilation and management platform.

Open Source Communities — Finally, an 11/22 article by The New Stack shared some great advice on building healthy open source communities. The article covers presentations delivered at Config Management Camp (11/15), including one on “Open-Source Maintainership and Community” by Puppet technical product manager Eric Sorenson.

According to the article, Sorenson says contributors should “look for a project that suits [their] temperament as well as [their] technical skills,” talk about big projects before embarking on them, “work on pull requests iteratively,” and “work with [their] organization to get approval to contribute back.” Meanwhile, maintainers should “set up testing infrastructure so you can give commit bits,” “have design discussions in the open,” and “find some way to flag… issues as being newbie-friendly.” Also, maintainers should not tolerate jerks.

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Any major container news we missed? Please feel free to drop us a line. This weekly summary is an ongoing series from InfoSiftr, and we want to make sure all top container stories are covered.