Confluent, a provider of a streaming platform based on Apache Kafka has announced the Confluent Operator, an enterprise-grade solution to provision and manage Apache Kafka on Kubernetes for scalability and deployment flexibility. This enables enterprises to deploy Kafka as a cloud-native application on Kubernetes to simplify provisioning, automate management, and minimize the operating burden of managing Kafka clusters.
The Confluent Platform, an enterprise distribution of Apache Kafka, is intended for large-scale production environments, improving Apache Kafka’s integration capabilities, adding tools to optimize and manage Kafka clusters, and ensuring the streams are secure. With Confluent Platform’s native support for Kubernetes, developers and operators can automate Kafka operations on Kubernetes in production. Confluent provides production-ready Confluent Platform Docker images, configuration templates for Kubernetes, a reference architecture with best practices for running Kafka on Kubernetes, as well as the Confluent Operator to automate cluster operations.
The Confluent Operator automates cluster management—enabling orchestration of Kafka clusters with the Confluent Operator and operationalize the management best practices acquired by Confluent from years of running Kafka in production; enhances the streaming platform –enabling a complete streaming platform on Kubernetes with support for the entire Confluent Platform; and provides deployment flexibility, enabling organizations to to deploy Confluent Platform on the major Kubernetes installations and cloud providers using one common operating model, including platforms such as Pivotal Cloud Foundry, Heptio Kubernetes Subscription, Mesosphere DC/OS and Red Hat OpenShift; as well as Amazon Elastic Container Service for Kubernetes (EKS), Google Cloud Kubernetes Engine and Microsoft Azure Container Service (AKS).
“With the Confluent Operator, we’re unlocking the ability to seamlessly deploy and run Kafka and the entire Confluent Platform on Kubernetes,” said Neha Narkhede, co-founder and CTO at Confluent. “We are productizing our experience of running Kafka on Kubernetes in Confluent Cloud, by providing best practices and automation for running mission-critical deployments of Kafka and Confluent Platform on Kubernetes.”
The Confluent Operator includes a rollout of pre-built Docker images for the entire Confluent Platform, Kubernetes configuration templates, a reference architecture to deploy Confluent Platform on Kubernetes and the Operator itself. They will be made available throughout the year – visit www.confluent.io/kubernetes to stay informed on the availability of each component.
For more details, visit: https://www.confluent.io/kubernetes