Chapter 1: Introducing the Operator Framework

Managing a Kubernetes cluster is hard. This is partly due to the fact that any microservice architecture is going to be inherently based on the interactions of many small components, each introducing its own potential point of failure. There are, of course, many benefits to this type of system design, such as graceful error handling thanks to the separation of responsibilities. However, diagnosing and reconciling such errors requires significant engineering resources and a keen familiarity with an application's design. This is a major pain point for project teams who migrate to the Kubernetes platform.

The Operator Framework was introduced to the Kubernetes ecosystem to address these problems. This chapter will go over a few general topics to give a broad overview of the Operator Framework. The intent is to provide a brief introduction to the Operator Framework, the problems it solves, how it solves them, and the tools and patterns it provides to users. This will highlight key takeaways for the goals and benefits of using Operators to help administrate a Kubernetes cluster. These topics include the following:

• Managing clusters without Operators
• Introducing the Operator Framework
• Developing with the Operator software development kit (SDK)
• Managing Operators with the Operator Lifecycle Manager (OLM)
• Distributing Operators on OperatorHub.io
• Defining Operator functions with the Capability Model
• Using Operators to manage applications