DevOps Articles

We Pushed Helm to the Limit, then Built a Kubernetes Operator

The K8ssandra team recently finalized a decision we had debated for months: to create an operator for the K8ssandra project. In this article, we present our experience using Helm, our decision to create an operator for K8ssandra, and what we hope this will accomplish for the project.

That’s not to say that Helm is for the “less Kubernetes savvy,” because a big part of the Kubernetes ecosystem uses Helm.

As it turns out, we found some common ground with the creators of the Operator Framework, who have defined a capability model for operators, which we highlight here: As described in this figure, Helm is most suited for the first two levels of operator functionality, focusing on simple installation and upgrades.

While we have separate repositories for Reaper Operator, Medusa Operator and Stargate Operator, we do plan to consolidate those into the K8ssandra operator.