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Canonical teams help shape Juju's future
28 Jul 2021, 2:59 PMCatalyst partnered with Canonical to evaluate its Python Operator Framework for Kubernetes workload deployment.
Background
Canonical are world leaders in open source. While they are most known for Ubuntu Linux, they are pioneers in Linux security, cloud services with OpenStack, containerisation (LXD), and Kubernetes, among many others. Canonical has a powerful suite of tools to automate the building, maintenance, and security of applications and infrastructure. Its automation tool Juju enables teams to easily model, provision, upgrade, and maintain complex applications at scale and across multiple cloud providers. With the increasing shift towards containerisation and orchestration with Kubernetes, Juju has been extended to make managing Kubernetes simpler.
Opportunity
Part of Canonical's effort towards this has been creating a new Python framework called the Python Operator Framework. The framework enables engineers to define their applications and infrastructure in Juju Charms ("infrastructure recipes") using Python. Also, there is significant work underway to reshape the Juju ecosystem (the Charm store, Charm Hub, partnerships with existing and new cloud providers, documentation, and tutorials).
Canonical needed an external, unbiased evaluation of the new Python Operator Framework to improve its existing offering, and engaged Catalyst.
The Catalyst engineers we worked with were knowledgeable and brought practical, real-world experience to the task at hand. The final report was comprehensive and contained useful and sensible recommendations for the way forward. Also highlighted were barriers to adoption, which served as useful points of discussion for us internally.
Solution
Diagram of how Canonical works.
The Cloud Native team at Catalyst focused primarily on the design and development of systems on Kubernetes and the tooling required to do so. The team has a long track record in the containerisation, automation, and orchestration space. Plus, with a background in software architecture, cloud engineering, systems administration, and technology consulting, the team was an ideal fit for the engagement.
Catalyst and Canonical formed a team of engineers from New Zealand, Australia, and Dubai. Alpha and beta software were released to Catalyst to explore and evaluate, with a tight feedback loop based on weekly video calls and online discussions.
In addition to using the new tooling to spin up infrastructure on Catalyst Cloud, Catalyst produced an in-depth technical report for Canonical, covering Juju and Kubernetes, the operator framework organisational fit, and the ecosystem in general.
Result
Ian Booth, Developer at Canonical shared the team was pleased with the result. “We found the experience rewarding and productive and it was a pleasure to work with the team from Catalyst.” Canonical found the final comprehensive report useful as it recommended approaches moving forward while also highlighting barriers to adoption for Canonical internally.
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