Loft Labs Simplifies Virtual Kubernetes Cluster Management with New Open Source Project

Joseph Eckert

May 12, 2022

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SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Loft Labs, a venture-backed startup working on developer tooling and multi-tenancy solutions for Kubernetes, today announced the release of a Cluster API provider for the popular open-source vcluster technology. Now, deploying virtual clusters can be done exactly the same as deploying physical Kubernetes clusters on a cloud platform or on-premises data center.

In addition to Loft Labs, the Cluster API project has received technical contributions from a wide range of companies including VMware, Microsoft, Weaveworks, Google, Mattermost, IBM, RedHat, D2iQ, Equinix, Apple, Talos Systems, Spectro Cloud, Daimler TSS, Ericsson, Giant Swarm, AppsCode, Intel, Twilio, New Relic, Amazon, and many more.

“Cluster API makes cluster lifecycle management boring by simplifying repetitive tasks while maintaining consistency and repeatability,” said Lukas Gentele, co-founder and CEO of Loft Labs. “It helps manage Kubernetes infrastructure holistically with automation and standardization.”

Kris Nóva, senior principal engineer, and J. Brandt Buckley, principal engineer, from Twilio commented on the CNCF blog about their experience using Cluster API. “At Twilio, we run upwards of 100 production Kubernetes clusters on bare metal servers distributed across various geographic data centers. We have found value in Cluster APIs overall topology, specifically with the paradigm of having a management cluster. We take advantage of management clusters as our dedicated infrastructure on which the team can build, manage, and secure the suite of applications that manage our company’s growing fleet of Kubernetes clusters.”

The vcluster open source software is growing quickly with more than 3 million downloads and over 1,500 stars on GitHub in less than a year after its initial release. First launched in April 2021, vcluster is used to create lightweight Kubernetes clusters that run inside the namespaces of underlying Kubernetes clusters. Using virtual clusters solves the majority of multi-tenancy issues of Kubernetes because they offer:

Better isolation than simple namespace-based multi-tenancy;

Reduced cloud computing cost because virtual clusters are much more lightweight and resource-efficient than spinning up separate single-tenant clusters;

Logical separation and encapsulation of application workloads from the underlying cluster’s shared infrastructure workloads (such as shared ingress controller or network plug-ins).

At the same time, virtual cluster users can expect that their virtual cluster behaves just like any regular Kubernetes cluster because vcluster is a certified Kubernetes distribution, which means that it passes all conformance tests that CNCF requires. Virtual clusters are often used as development environments when engineers are building, testing and debugging cloud-native software, but they are also frequently used as ephemeral environments for executing continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD) pipelines.

To learn more, go to the Kubernetes GitHub project hosting the Cluster API Provider for vcluster. Loft Labs is at booth SU15 at KubeCon Europe from May 16-20.

About Loft Labs

Loft Labs was founded in 2019 to create open-source developer tooling and virtual cluster technology for Kubernetes, with the goal to increase developer productivity and to help engineers gain secure but unimpeded access to cloud infrastructure.