Red Hat to be a Key Contributor to and Benefactor of the Kubernetes Project

A few weeks ago, I covered the news that Google had released Kubernetes under an open-source license, which is software to manage computing workloads across thousands of computer servers and leverage docker containers. We've also covered Google's announcement that some vey big contributors have joined the Kubernetes project, including IBM, Microsoft, Red Hat, Docker, CoreOS, Mesosphere, and SaltStack. They are working in tandem on open source tools and container technologies that can run on multiple computers and networks.

Red Hat is one of the key players in the Kubernetes Project and that project may help the company as it sharpens its focus on cloud computing. Here are the details.

Commitment to Linux containers is part of a trend toward an application-centric vision for IT and the Docker project is quickly becoming a standard for application packaging in containerized environments.  According to Red Hat:

"Recently, we introduced support for Docker in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7, launched Project Atomic to redefine the operating system for the paradigm shift to application-centric IT and provide a new lightweight container host, and announced a new certification for containerized applications."

"Red Hat is announcing that as part of Project Atomic, we are collaborating with Google to tackle the challenge of how to manage Docker containers at scale, across hundreds or thousands of hosts. Docker container orchestration and management is critical for Red Hat customers and products like Red Hat Enterprise Linux and OpenShift. Today we are running hundreds of thousands of containerized applications in OpenShift Online and enabling customers to host their own containerized PaaS environment in OpenShift Enterprise."

"OpenShift applications typically run across multiple containers, distributed across different container hosts. As we began integrating OpenShift with Docker, the OpenShift Origin GearD project was created to tackle issues like Docker container wiring, orchestration and management via systemd, to enable the next generation of PaaS."

As Jon Buys has written here, about Docker itself: 

"Docker is supported by the biggest players in the technology industry, and the system clearly looks to be the next major change in systems infrastructure design."

That's even more true now, and players like Red Hat and Google are realizing that enterprises looking at deploying applications in the cloud need new models for doing so. 

The goal of Kubernetes is to enable users to easily manage, monitor and control containerized application deployments across a large cluster of container hosts, according to Red Hat. It's also been noted that Google can add muscle to the project by contributing from lessons that it has learned running enormous datacenters.

 Kubernetes has many mighty collaborators beyond just Red Hat and Google, and this project will be worth watching.