Comment by stevehipwell
2 hours ago
I'm interested to see how the `oxide-cloud-controller-manager` is being built for "modern" Kubernetes and if it leads to any signify difference compared to CCMs that originated in-tree. Given the way Oxide engineer their solutions this could be really interesting.
FYI I've got `karpenter-provider-oxide` on my bingo card...
There are few paths we can take here. The CCM's primary responsibility is to implement the cloudprovider.Interface[0] which has node, route, and service controllers. However, the CCM can run arbitrary named controllers as well, giving us a fun extension point for the future. The in-tree CCMs are being phased out in favor of out-of-tree CCMs. The AWS Cloud Provider[1] is a good example of what that's starting to look like.
My colleague demo'd Karpeneter internally. We haven't committed releasing it yet but we're discussing it.
[0] https://github.com/kubernetes/cloud-provider/blob/master/clo...
[1] https://github.com/kubernetes/cloud-provider-aws
My point was that the major cloud CCMs are rooted (at least spiritually) in in-tree implementations. With Oxide having an API first strategy (similar in principle to a major cloud provider) the direction you take on your greenfield CCM could be interesting.
RE Karpenter, it always seemed like a natural fit for Oxide, even more so than some of the currently implementors. And now you have the expertise in the team, I'd be really interested in the reason if you don't go down that path.
Totally, the out-of-tree CCM gives us a good opportunity to differentiate.
Autoscaling is a requested feature, and Karpenter fits that shape naturally. The nuance is to decide where something like the Cluster API provider ends and Karpenter begins since there's a bit of overlap in concerns. Specifically, both want to manage Kubernetes nodes but for different reasons. We're discussing it though. We have a Kubernetes watercooler meeting today where we'll likely discuss the comments in this post!
Karpenter is definitely a natural fit for Oxide. There's some interesting boundaries that we're discussing internally, like @sudomateo mentioned. One of which is CAPI. There's a CAPI Karpenter provider that elmiko built (notably back in the very early days of Karpenter). I think there's room for both use-cases. Some may want to use CAPI for everything and others may want a platform that is based on CAPI but guest clusters are not.
One implementation specific detail which makes Karpenter interesting on Oxide is the tunable CPU and memory parameters rather than strict instance type shapes. The prototype I built for Karpenter on Oxide generates all possible "instance type" combinations, so you can create some really specific nodes to bin-pack pods.
Another interesting area is multiple providers. This is becoming pretty common across public clouds too. A multi-provider Karpenter is something I'm interested in and I know some folks have already been gluing together, but the Karpenter story isn't great on maintaining those since you basically need to compile them together today. CAPIs multi-provider story is a bit cleaner since it only relies on CRDs.
If you have ideas, let's chat in the Kubernetes slack #karpenter-dev.
Yes this would be great addition! Also it would be awesome to see proper load balancer, ingress controller with `gateway api` and a `api gateway` (two separate things).
I’m not an oxide customer, just a fan. I have lots of ideas around how something like this should look, being disappointed with the complexity and also shortcomings of products on the market for this stuff, both in the cloud and on prem.
I'll need to record a video on what's possible today. My personal Kubernetes cluster running on Oxide uses the CCM for LoadBalancer services and NGINX Gateway Fabric for Gateway API things. I'm mostly using HTTPRoute resources today.
There's an opportunity to more tightly integrate at the network layer but we'll want to get our load balancer released first.