background

With the explosive growth of 5G and Internet-of-things devices, as well as the increasing computing power of smart terminals, unprecedented amounts of data are being brought to bear, leaving traditional centralised computing in short supply. The implementation of “new infrastructure” strategy, industrial Internet, Internet of vehicles/autonomous driving, intelligent transportation, cloud games and VR/AR and other benchmarking applications lead the integration of industries, the normalization of cloud on the enterprise, the emergence of distributed cloud, hybrid cloud, edge cloud and other concepts. Gartner expects that by 2025, more than 50% of organizations will be transforming their business models by using distributed cloud options in their chosen locations. Seventy-five percent of the data generated by the enterprise will be created and processed outside the traditional data center or cloud, closer to the end user’s edge.

Cloud computing industry is ushering in a new round of growth, domestic and foreign manufacturers and Open source community take the lead in action, respectively released and Open source Open Cluster Management (OCM) project and Clusternet project, unified Management of multi-cloud multi-cluster Kubernetes applications, Cloud native subsidence to achieve cloud side – end integration. Build a new generation of open multi-cluster management system based on OCM and Clusternet to manage the “cluster network” from the center to the edge, from the computer room to the terminal.

Clusternet

Clusternet (Cluster Internet) is Tencent’s open source multi-cluster and application management software. It enables you to manage/access clusters as if they are running locally, whether they are running on public, private, hybrid or edge clouds. Centrally deploy and coordinate multi-cluster applications and services with the K8s API. Through Addon plug-in, users can install, operate, maintain and integrate with one click, easily manage millions of Kubernetes clusters, as free and convenient as accessing the Internet.

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Clusternet is designed for future hybrid cloud, distributed cloud and edge computing scenarios. It supports the access and management of massive clusters. Its flexible cluster registration capability can meet the cluster management requirements under various complex network conditions, and it simplifies the management and operation costs of users by compatible with cloud native Kubernetes API. Accelerate the cloud native transformation of user services.

Clusternet provides users with:

One-stop management of various Kubernetes clusters

Clusternet supports cluster management in Pull and Push modes. Clusternet can set up network tunnels to connect the management cluster even if the cluster runs on the VPC Intranet, edge, or behind a firewall.

Supports service discovery and mutual access across clusters

In the absence of private network channels, cross-cluster access routes can still be provided.

Fully compatible with native Kubernetes API

It is fully compatible with Kubernetes standard APIS, such as Deployment, StatefulSet, DaemonSet, and user-defined CRD. Users can upgrade from single-cluster application to multi-cluster application with simple configuration and no need to learn complex multi-cluster API.

Support the deployment of Helm Chart, Kubernetes native applications and custom CRD

Support Helm Chart type applications, including chart distribution, differential configuration, state aggregation, and so on, consistent with the capabilities of the native Kubernetes API.

Rich and flexible configuration management

Multiple types of configuration policies are provided. Users can flexibly match these configurations to implement complex business scenarios, such as multi-cluster grayscale publishing.

Addon capability, simple architecture

Aggregated ApiServer, and doesn’t rely on additional storage, provides a simple architecture, and can be easily deployed, greatly reducing operation and maintenance complexity.

Convenient access to

Clusternet provides comprehensive interconnection capabilities including Kubectl Plugin and client-Go, facilitating one-click service access and managing multiple clusters.

OCM ( Open Cluster Management )

OCM (Open Cluster Management) is a community-driven project that focuses on multi-cluster and multi-cloud scenarios for Kubernetes applications. OCM aims to simplify the management of multi-Kubernetes clusters deployed in a mixed environment and expand the multi-cluster management capabilities for different management tools in the Kubernetes ecosystem. OCM summarizes the basic concepts of multi-cluster management, adopts the hub-Agent architecture, and defines the primitives and basic components of multi-cluster management to meet the requirements of multi-cluster management:

  • The ManagedCluster is defined using the ManagedCluster API, and OCM installs an agent named Klusterlet in each cluster for cluster registration and lifecycle management.
  • The Placement API defines how to schedule configurations or workloads to which clusters. The scheduling results are stored in the PlacementDecision API. Other configuration management and application deployment tools can use PlacementDecision to determine which clusters need to be configured and deployed.
  • The Configuration and resource information distributed to a cluster is defined through the ManifestWork API.
  • The ManagedClusterSet API groups clusters and provides boundaries for users to access the cluster.
  • The ManagedClusterAddon API defines how the management probe is deployed to multiple clusters and how it communicates securely with the control plane on the hub side.

By using OCM API primitives, it simplifies the deployment, operation and maintenance of open source multi-cluster management projects, and expands the multi-cluster management capabilities of many Kubernetes single-cluster management tools. Such as:

  • Simplify the administration of multi-cluster networking solutions such as Submariner. Use OCM’s plug-in management function to centralize the deployment and configuration of Submariner on a unified management platform.
  • Provides rich multi-cluster responsible scheduling policies and a reliable resource distribution engine for application deployment tools (KubeVela, ArgoCD, etc.).
  • Expand the existing Kubernetes single cluster security Policy governance tool (Open Policy Agent, Falco, etc.) to make it have the ability of multi-cluster security Policy governance.

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OCM also uses two built-in management plug-ins for application deployment and security policy management. The application deployment plug-in adopts the subscriber mode, which can obtain the resource information of application deployment from different sources by defining subscription channels.

Clusternet and OCM combine to generate more power

As can be seen from the above, Clusternet has powerful cluster access and management capabilities, supporting mass cluster registration and management in various complex scenarios, and meeting the platform management requirements of hybrid cloud, distributed cloud and edge computing in the future. At the same time, OCM has a mature multi-cluster application management ability, through a number of multi-cluster management primitives and basic components, to achieve a variety of Kubernetes projects and applications of multi-cluster release and management. The combination of the two can complement each other and provide more powerful multi-cluster and application governance capabilities.

How to combine OCM with Clusternet’s capabilities, community developers from Redhat (Github: Skeeey implements ClusterNet-Addon, an ADon-framework based on OCM, which shows that OCM can take advantage of clusterNet’s powerful cluster management capability. Implement access to subclusters through RBAC and distribute applications to multiple subclusters through Push mode. The OCM community will work closely with the Clusternet community to continue integration with the Clusternet project as a sub-project.

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Interested students can check out Clusternet-Addon for more information, or stay tuned to the OCM and ClusterNet project communities for updates.

Participate in the community

OCM and Clusternet project are important projects of Red Hat software, Tencent Tencent Cloud and open source partners. The combination of the two shows the powerful capability and unparalleled scalability of the next generation of open multi-cluster management platform. It provides a solid platform foundation and infinite possibilities for all kinds of new technologies, new formats and new services in the future.

The Clusternet project has released version v0.3.0, which supports multiple clustering and application management features. As Clusternet continues to iterate, it will provide users with more complete and powerful capabilities in the future.

The OCM project is closely integrated with the Kubernetes ecosystem, realizing several design solutions for The Kubernetes Sig-Multicluster, including the KEP-2149 Cluster ID

And keP-1645 Multi-Cluster Services API for clusterSet concepts. I’m also working with other developers in the community to promote the Work API.

OCM and Clusternet are still in rapid development. We welcome industry companies and community developers to join us, exchange and learn, and build a more open cloud world full of infinite possibilities in the future.

link

– OCM project address: github.com/open-cluste…

– OCM official website: open-cluster-management-io

– Clusternet Project Address: github.com/clusternet/…