Self-Driving Kubernetes, Container Linux by CoreOS and Kubernetes 1.5

• By Alex Polvi

We started CoreOS with a mission to secure the internet. This is an intentionally audacious goal, but it is unquestionably necessary, as demonstrated by exploits threatening privacy, commerce, and government. It is also achievable.

Today at Tectonic Summit we mark an important milestone on the way to this goal with the delivery of the next generation of CoreOS Tectonic. This release builds on top of pure un-patched upstream Kubernetes to deliver self-driving capabilities. We’ve also made CoreOS Tectonic available for free on up to 10 nodes. We invite you to try Tectonic today.

We have some other big news, like the upcoming release of Kubernetes v1.5, and the new official name for our keystone Linux distribution: Container Linux. Let’s dive into the details.

CoreOS Tectonic Delivers Self-Driving Kubernetes

Kubernetes is on its way to becoming the standard for cloud-native plumbing. With self-driving Kubernetes, organizations can ensure this critical infrastructure layer is always up to date with the latest patches and features, and our customers can enjoy the benefits of continuous delivery of upstream innovation.

Self-driving extends the scale and hybrid deployment features of Kubernetes so that your deployment is:

Secure : Auto updates allow you to apply the most recent patches and fixes so that you can be assured you no longer have out of date, insecure software in production.

: Auto updates allow you to apply the most recent patches and fixes so that you can be assured you no longer have out of date, insecure software in production. Simple : Patches, upgrades and vulnerability response are typically resource intensive, especially in a distributed, scale out environment, where the challenge grows with the size of the cluster. Self-driving Kubernetes simplifies this process and removes the technical debt typically associated with these painful processes.

: Patches, upgrades and vulnerability response are typically resource intensive, especially in a distributed, scale out environment, where the challenge grows with the size of the cluster. Self-driving Kubernetes simplifies this process and removes the technical debt typically associated with these painful processes. Current: The pace of innovation in the Kubernetes community is astonishing. Dozens of special interest groups and hundreds of developers are contributing to this project every day. Tectonic allows you to keep up with this rate of innovation.

With the self-driving Kubernetes platform, users get the most advanced version of Kubernetes with the comfort of knowing that security updates can be patched seamlessly. Like the self-driving features of a modern car, we have made the functionality available as an option. It is available today in CoreOS Tectonic as a preview feature that can be enabled using an install option. Tectonic is also now immediately available at no cost for use on up to 10 nodes.

Kubernetes 1.5 Available Soon

Kubernetes 1.5 will be released soon. Because CoreOS Tectonic uses pure, upstream Kubernetes, it will be available to Tectonic users in a few weeks. Over the past year, we have made considerable contributions to Kubernetes and in this release we’ve helped add:

Improved Scheduling - Time to schedule 300,000 pods onto 1,000 nodes reduced from 8,750 seconds to 587 seconds

etcd V3 Speed Boost - Improved speed such that stress tests went from success on 1,000 node clusters to 5,000

Container Image Policies - Webhook out to an external service to block or allow a Pod from being scheduled. This will enable future integrations for Quay and Quay Security Scanning.

Easier Testing and Install - minikube continues to improve and provides a super simple setup for Kubernetes test clusters on a development machine

Our work upstream helps us release CoreOS Tectonic more quickly while at the same time allowing others to build off of our open source contributions.

CoreOS Linux is Now Container Linux

Our CoreOS Linux open source product was the first step in delivering on our promise of securing the internet. Today, we estimate 1 million unique instances of CoreOS Linux are created per month. This distribution is streamlined for containers but more importantly, it delivers the auto update capability that allows you to (A) get patches quickly, (B) ensure your vulnerability response efforts are automated/consistent/current and (C) keep up to date with the most recent innovations in the Kernel so you can run the most modern applications, like containers.

Over the years, CoreOS (the brand) has grown to represent not just a product but the leadership and expertise we provide to our customers and in the open community. So to differentiate our company from this widely used product, we have renamed CoreOS Linux to “Container Linux by CoreOS” and have given it a new logo as well.

Thank You

It would be remiss if we didn’t take a moment to thank our team for all the hard work and passion that has gone into getting Kubernetes and Tectonic to this moment. The CoreOS engineers have developed and contributed heavily to dozens of projects and introduced entirely new open source projects to the community because we believe in Kubernetes and application modernization.

But we must also send a big thank you to the community for your continued support of CoreOS. As the year comes to a close and our second annual Tectonic Summit comes to an end, we want to thank you for contributing alongside us on our mission to secure the internet. Together we can make the internet a safer and more secure place, while also making our places of work more productive and innovative.