Mirantis unveils k0smotron: An Open-Source Streamlined Kubernetes Management Project

In a significant stride towards simplifying Kubernetes management, Mirantis, the well-regarded developer-centric company, has launched an innovative open-source project named k0smotron. This new project empowers Kubernetes operators with enhanced security, flexibility, and efficiency in managing Kubernetes control planes.

k0smotron is a Kubernetes operator designed to manage the lifecycle of k0s control planes in any distro's Kubernetes cluster. By running the control plane on a k8s cluster, you can enjoy and leverage the underlying cluster's high availability and auto-healing functionalities.

Once in place, K0smotron changes how you provision Kubernetes control planes on Kubernetes. It works by installing the k0smotron operator into an existing Kubernetes cluster. There you can use it to create and manage k0s control planes in that cluster.

It does this by leveraging the pattern of working with custom resources to manage the k0s control planes' lifecycle. k0smotron will automatically create all the needed Kubernetes lower-level constructs, such as pods, config maps, etc. It also includes support for remote worker nodes.

These remote worker nodes can be used for diverse use cases. These include edge computing, branch office operations, and Internet of Things (IoT) deployments.

Miska Kaipiainen, Mirantis's VP of Engineering, dove into its potential of k0smotron for IoT applications. "k0smotron is the perfect solution for IoT applications that require centralized and efficient management of control planes, especially when thousands of distributed worker nodes need to operate on remote, resource-limited devices with sub-optimal network connectivity."

Kaipiainen also emphasized the broader applications of k0smotron, stating, "It's equally effective for more conventional applications, such as enabling developers to provision clusters on demand for themselves on a private cloud. We're currently collaborating with Kubernetes ClusterAPI to allow k0smotron to provision underlying virtual machines (VMs) and networks for itself in a fully-automated manner, thereby abstracting underlying infrastructure and creating a comprehensive solution."

The k0smotron operator, a brainchild of the team behind the open-source, bare-metal k0s Kubernetes distribution, is deployed onto an existing Kubernetes cluster. This cluster then transforms into the mothership cluster, providing on-demand control plane services, thereby facilitating hybrid and multi-cloud support.

While k0smotron currently is a "standalone" controller for k0s control planes, Mirantis hopes to expand it as a full Cluster API provider. Or, rather, a set of providers, as Mirantis plans to implement both ControlPlane and Bootstrap providers.

Of course, multi-cluster management approaches such as Tanzu, and Rancher already exist. These provision specific infrastructure, usually a virtual machine (VM) for control planes. In these, the worker plane infrastructure is also provisioned in the same infrastructure as the control plane. With k0smotron, the management cluster is used for control plane management

Want to give it a try? Visit the k0smotron GitHub repository.