KubeCon Rewind: SIG Cluster API & Gardener – Managing Machines Automatically

  2 minute read  

The KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe buzz might be settling, but the energy from our deep dive session with the incredible folks at SIG Cluster API is still palpable! We, from the Gardener team, were absolutely thrilled to share the stage and explore the powerful, declarative world of Kubernetes cluster lifecycle management.

For those who don’t know, Gardener has been on a mission since 2017 to provide a fully managed Kubernetes experience, uniquely running customer control planes as pods within dedicated “seed” clusters, a.k.a. “Kubeception”. This approach demanded robust automation for the underlying infrastructure. To solve this, we pioneered the Machine Controller Manager, introducing the core abstractions you might recognize: Machine, MachineSet, and MachineDeployment. These concepts were born out of real-world needs to declaratively manage VMs and their lifecycles as if they were just another Kubernetes resource.

It’s exciting to see these foundational ideas embraced and extended by the wider community through Cluster API! Our joint talk was a fantastic opportunity to showcase how these abstractions, originally developed within Gardener, now form a cornerstone of Cluster API’s approach to creating, configuring, and managing Kubernetes clusters in a standardized way, across any provider. Incidentally, this also made Gardener the first adopter of the machine API.

We dove into:

  • The “why” behind Cluster API – the drive to stop reinventing the wheel for cluster provisioning.
  • The core API types (yes, including those familiar Machine, MachineSet, and MachineDeployment concepts!) that provide the declarative power.
  • How you can bootstrap Cluster API and get it managing your clusters.
  • The vibrant community and how everyone can get involved.

This collaboration isn’t just about shared code; it’s about a shared vision for a more consistent, automated, and less painful Kubernetes world. Seeing Gardener’s early innovations become part of a community-driven standard like Cluster API is a testament to the power of open source.

If you were there, thank you for the great questions and engagement! If you missed it, keep an eye out for the recording. The journey to simplify cluster management is a collective one, and we’re stoked to be building that future together with SIG Cluster API and all of you!