Book Image

The Kubernetes Operator Framework Book

By : Michael Dame
1 (1)
Book Image

The Kubernetes Operator Framework Book

1 (1)
By: Michael Dame

Overview of this book

From incomplete collections of knowledge and varying design approaches to technical knowledge barriers, Kubernetes users face various challenges when developing their own operators. Knowing how to write, deploy, and pack operators makes cluster management automation much easier – and that's what this book is here to teach you. Beginning with operators and Operator Framework fundamentals, the book delves into how the different components of Operator Framework (such as the Operator SDK, Operator Lifecycle Manager, and OperatorHub.io) are used to build operators. You’ll learn how to write a basic operator, interact with a Kubernetes cluster in code, and distribute that operator to users. As you advance, you’ll be able to develop a sample operator in the Go programming language using Operator SDK tools before running it locally with Operator Lifecycle Manager, and also learn how to package an operator bundle for distribution. The book covers best practices as well as sample applications and case studies based on real-world operators to help you implement the concepts you’ve learned. By the end of this Kubernetes book, you’ll be able to build and add application-specific operational logic to a Kubernetes cluster, making it easier to automate complex applications and augment the platform.
Table of Contents (16 chapters)
1
Part 1: Essentials of Operators and the Operator Framework
4
Part 2: Designing and Developing an Operator
9
Part 3: Deploying and Distributing Operators for Public Use

Core Operators – extending the Kubernetes platform

There is no differentiation in the Operator Framework between Operators that manage user-facing applications and infrastructure and Operators that manage core Kubernetes components. The only difference is simply in how the concepts of Operator design and development are applied to a slightly different class of problems. Still, the various Pods and control loops that comprise an installation of Kubernetes can be viewed as no different than the workload Pods that they deploy and manage.

Without getting too existential, this reduction bridges the conceptual gap between development for Kubernetes and the development of Kubernetes, making the latter seem much more approachable. This idea opens the gates to give system administrators and DevOps specialists greater control and flexibility over the cloud architectures they orchestrate.

Next, we will look at a few high-level examples of Operators that extend Kubernetes. We won...