AWS has introduced the Kube Resource Orchestrator (kro), an experimental open-source project designed to streamline the creation and management of custom APIs and resources within Kubernetes environments.
By utilizing kro, users can define intricate, multi-resource API extensions that are reusable across various Kubernetes clusters, effectively creating personalized application and infrastructure building blocks.
Kro offers a robust abstraction layer that manages resource dependencies and configuration sequences, subsequently generating and overseeing the necessary resources. Users define custom resources through kro’s primary custom resource, known as ResourceGroup.
Instead of developing multiple Custom Resource Definitions (CRDs) and employing additional solutions to integrate them, users can create a single ResourceGroup.
This resource acts as a blueprint for assembling and administering collections of underlying Kubernetes resources. Upon applying the ResourceGroup to a cluster, kro validates the specification, automatically generates the required CRDs, and deploys dynamic controllers to manage the lifecycle of the new custom resources.
Kro is compatible with any Kubernetes cluster and is currently a public experiment under active development, not yet intended for production use. The APIs and the ResourceGroup CRD are subject to change, and kro is not currently integrated into any AWS product or service, including Amazon EKS.
The extensibility of Kubernetes through CRDs and custom controllers has transformed platform development, enabling organizations to create their own APIs that encapsulate operational knowledge, best practices, and business requirements into reusable building blocks. However, developing these platform APIs can be challenging, often requiring complex controller code and deep Kubernetes expertise. Kro addresses these challenges by providing a Kubernetes-native solution that allows the creation of reusable APIs for deploying multiple resources as a single unit, simplifying complex deployments into manageable components.
By handling resource dependencies and configurations internally, kro enables teams to focus more on application development and less on the operational complexities of managing CRD versions and controller lifecycles. Organizations can encode their operational knowledge and standards into custom resource groups, allowing developers to deploy applications without interacting directly with the underlying resources. Kro manages the complexity by determining the correct order for resource creation, handling inter-dependencies, and injecting specified configurations, resulting in a streamlined deployment process.
In summary, kro empowers platform and DevOps teams to define complex, multi-resource API extensions for reuse in any Kubernetes cluster, simplifying the creation and management of custom APIs and resources. By providing a powerful abstraction layer, kro handles resource dependencies and configuration ordering, allowing users to focus on building applications and services with reduced operational burden.
To see a demo of kro implementation read the following documentation
