Red Hat and Google collaborate on Kubernetes to manage Docker containers at scale

Interest in Linux containers is part of a broader trend to an application-centric vision for IT and the open source Docker project is quickly becoming a standard for application packaging in containerized environments. Red Hat and Google are both committed to open source and we were both early proponents of Docker as well as key contributors to the Docker project. We are now joining forces to drive a new open standard around orchestrating Docker containers at scale for the management of cloud application deployments.

Docker combines lightweight application isolation with an application-centric packaging model and the flexibility of an image-based deployment method to enable portability across bare metal systems, virtual machines and private and public clouds. Red Hat and Google have more than 10 combined years of experience driving core Linux container technology like Linux Control Groups and Kernel Namespaces, but both companies bring environment-specific expertise as well.

Red Hat has used container technology for years in Red Hat Enterprise Linux and OpenShift, enabling a broad variety of on-premise and cloud container uses. Google has built their entire datacenter infrastructure around Linux containers, launching more than 2 billion containers per week.

Recently, we introduced support for Docker in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7, launched Project Atomic to redefine the operating system for the paradigm shift to application-centric IT and provide a new lightweight container host, and announced a new certification for containerized applications. Google has also announced support for Docker in Google Compute Engine, enabling customers to easily deploy their Docker containers in the cloud.

Today, Red Hat is announcing that as part of Project Atomic, we are collaborating with Google to tackle the challenge of how to manage Docker containers at scale, across hundreds or thousands of hosts. Docker container orchestration and management is critical for Red Hat customers and products like Red Hat Enterprise Linux and OpenShift. Today we are running hundreds of thousands of containerized applications in OpenShift Online and enabling customers to host their own containerized PaaS environment in OpenShift Enterprise.

OpenShift applications typically run across multiple containers, distributed across different container hosts. As we began integrating OpenShift with Docker, the OpenShift Origin GearD project was created to tackle issues like Docker container wiring, orchestration and management via systemd, to enable the next generation of PaaS. Red Hat brings years of experience on these topics from running OpenShift across one of the broadest ranges of environments and applications in the industry.

Google has been investing in this area as well and recently launched the Kubernetes open source project for container management. The goal of Kubernetes is to enable users to easily manage, monitor and control containerized application deployments across a large cluster of container hosts. The project benefits from Google’s vast knowledge of running containers at scale in their own datacenters. Kubernetes is initially available on Google Cloud Platform, orchestrating Docker containers running on virtual machines powered by KVM.

Red Hat is embracing the Google Kubernetes project and plans to work to enable it with container management capabilities in our products and offerings. This will enable Red Hat customers to take advantage of cluster management capabilities in Kubernetes, to orchestrate Docker containers across multiple hosts, running on-premise, on Google Cloud Platform or in other public or private clouds.

As part of this collaboration, Red Hat will become core committers to the Kubernetes project. This supports Red Hat’s open hybrid cloud strategy that uses open source to enable application portability across on-premise datacenters, private clouds and public cloud environments.

Over the past year, Red Hat has helped drive the Docker technology and we have become one of the leading corporate contributors to the Docker project. We’ve also been excited to see the tremendous interest in containers and witness how quickly the Docker community has grown.

We are pleased to be working with Google to continue driving containers technology and enable customers to orchestrate their Docker containers at scale. This collaboration also continues Red Hat’s goal to bring open source technologies that are powering web-scale architectures at places like Google, Twitter, Facebook and more, and make them work in enterprise customer environments.