Loft Labs, a venture-backed startup working on developer tooling and platform technology for Kubernetes, announced that the popular open source vcluster project now supports upstream Kubernetes.
Although engineers have already been able to deploy virtual clusters using vcluster on top of vanilla Kubernetes clusters, the virtual clusters themselves have always been using the opinionated K3s distribution internally rather than upstream Kubernetes. With today’s release, vcluster said, users will now be able to deploy Kubernetes-powered virtual clusters to improve and optimise utilisation of computing resources without the need to use K3s within the virtualisation layer.
With the availability of upstream Kubernetes in vcluster, users can now also use any new Kubernetes feature immediately after its release and will not have to wait for K3s to ship their adapted Kubernetes version.
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 due to better isolation, reduced cloud computing cost, logical separation and encapsulation of application workloads from the underlying cluster’s shared infrastructure workloads and more.
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.
Also, an increasing number of companies are starting to explore virtual clusters in production, where virtualising Kubernetes can be a great way to: surpass the scalability limits of regular Kubernetes clusters; isolate heterogeneous workloads in shared clusters; and streamline and simplify cluster operations when working with large-scale multi-tenant cluster, the startup said.
Open Source Project vcluster Now Runs Upstream Kubernetes Natively
Loft Labs, a venture-backed startup working on developer tooling and platform technology for Kubernetes, announced that the popular open source vcluster project now supports upstream Kubernetes.
Although engineers have already been able to deploy virtual clusters using vcluster on top of vanilla Kubernetes clusters, the virtual clusters themselves have always been using the opinionated K3s distribution internally rather than upstream Kubernetes. With today’s release, vcluster said, users will now be able to deploy Kubernetes-powered virtual clusters to improve and optimise utilisation of computing resources without the need to use K3s within the virtualisation layer.
With the availability of upstream Kubernetes in vcluster, users can now also use any new Kubernetes feature immediately after its release and will not have to wait for K3s to ship their adapted Kubernetes version.
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 due to better isolation, reduced cloud computing cost, logical separation and encapsulation of application workloads from the underlying cluster’s shared infrastructure workloads and more.
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.
