CoreOS Announces Tectonic: First Commercial Kubernetes Platform

On Monday the 6th, CoreOS announced a new product called Tectonic, a platform meant to combine the CoreOS stack and Google's Kubernetes. Tectonic's primary purpose is for creating enterprise-ready container tools, and it's goal is to capitalize the businesses looking to incorporate containers into their production infrastructure. The idea here is that any company can create a Google-styled infrastructure in an on-premise or cloud environment.

This announcement was coordinated with an investment by Google Ventures for $12 million to CoreOS to assist in bringing Kubernetes as a platform to companies of varying sizes. 

The platform will also include dashboards, a management console, and various automated deployment tools:

There is a lot of confusion and choice in the container technology ecosystem when trying to decide how to build a stack that supports application containers. Tectonic aims to provide an easily deployable solution that packages up the best in container technology. In addition to the CoreOS portfolio and Kubernetes, Tectonic includes a management console for workflows and dashboards, an integrated registry to build and share Linux containers, and tools to automate deployment. By using Tectonic, companies can begin to see the business benefits of using containers quickly.

CoreOS decided to launch Tectonic as a separate product because it's intended for commercial purposes, and so they want to keep it separate from CoreOS's solid open source reputation, and to distinguish it from other open source components like etcd, rkt, flannel, and CoreOS Linux.

You can visit Tectonic's website to sign up for the beta or to receive updates on the product as it develops. CoreOS also included a useful FAQ in their announcement.

Q: What does this change about CoreOS Linux and other open source projects like rkt, etcd, fleet, flannel, etc?

A: Nothing: development will continue, and we want to see all of the open source projects continue to thrive as independent components. CoreOS Linux will remain the same carefully maintained, open source, and container-focused OS it has always been. Tectonic uses many of these projects internally - including rkt, etcd, flannel, and fleet - and runs on top of the same CoreOS Linux operating system as any other application would.

Q: I am using Apache Mesos, Deis, or another application on top of CoreOS Linux: does anything change for me?

A: No, this announcement doesn't change anything about the CoreOS Linux project or software. Tectonic is simply another container-delivered application that runs on top of CoreOS Linux.

Q: What does this change for existing Enterprise Registry, Managed Linux, or Quay.io customers?

A: Everything will remain the same for existing customers. All of these components are utilized in the Tectonic stack and we continue to offer support, fix bugs and add features to these products.