Gardener
Kubernetes as a Service
Open source, managed Kubernetes as a Service (KaaS) solution for any infrastructure
Gardener is a Kubernetes Botanist
High Availability with Kubeception
1. Gardener leverages original Kubernetes concepts for all of its tasks.
It adds new API objects into an existing K8s Garden cluster via CRDs to operate other clusters.
2. On top of the main Garden cluster the Seed K8s clusters are created.
Those clusters are used to host control plane for end-user K8s cluster known as Shoot clusters.
3. The hierarchy is: Garden (main) cluster ➜ Seed (control) cluster(s) ➜ Shoot (end-user) clusters.
The Shoot etcd, API server, scheduler and controller manager are deployed into Seed Namespaces.
Managed KaaS on any Cloud platform
Homogeneous Kubernetes experience on OpenStack, AWS, Azure, GCP, vSphere and other platforms with Gardener
Unique Gardener Features
► HIBERNATION – make your K8s clusters sleep when not in active use or schedule hibernation for your DEV/QA clusters to reduce your cloud bill.
► DNS MANAGEMENT – automatically create and manage DNS records for your K8s clusters with external DNS providers (Cloudflare, Route53 and other).
► CREDENTIAL ROTATION – painless rotation of all secrets in a cluster. From CA to passwords, SSH-keys and ETCD encryption. All with a single click.
► CLUSTER AUTOSCALER & VPA – auto-provision more nodes for K8s clusters within the limits configured. Or simply flip the switch to enable Vertical Pod Autoscaler with Gardener.
Prometheus, Plutono and LOKI
Gardener includes industry Standard Open Source monitoring and logging tools.
► PROMETHEUS – for monitoring and alerting. Prometheus keeps metrics in a time series database collected via pulling from all components.
► PLUTONO – for interactive graphs and charts. Plutono is a fork of a well-known Grafana project with a permissive Apache 2.0 license.
► VALI (LOKI) – for logging. VALI is a son of LOKI. Or in software terms that is also a fork with Apache 2.0 license and the same logging functionality.
Not sure if Gardener is right for you?
Check out the official Gardener demo or drop us a message for Gardener on OpenStack demo. We often deploy Gardener as a part of c12n private cloud.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Gardener free and Open Source?
Yes! ✅
Gardener project is completely free and open source developed under permissive Apache 2.0 license.
The source code can be found on GitHub.
Which Kubernetes versions are supported?
All the latest! ✅
Gardener closely follows official Kubernetes release cycle and all recent Kubernetes versions can be used for Shoot clusters.
Can Gardener replace VMware Tanzu?
Yes! ✅
However, the vSphere extension for Gardener is not actively developed and integration effort is higher comparing to the proprietary VMware Tanzu KaaS solution.
Can Gardener run on Bare Metal?
Yes! ✅
There are a few project and extensions make it possible to run Gardener on Bare Metal. Check below:
Can Gardener Shoot cluster autoscale?
Yes! ✅
Gardener has an official Kubernetes Cluster Autoscaler integrated. End-users are able to configure the minimum and maximum number of nodes the cluster can scale to.
Can we pre-provision software on all Gardener Shoot clusters?
Yes! ✅
Using Gardener Shoot Flux extension it is possible to setup GitOps using FluxCD on Gardener.
This way we’ve enabled auto deployment of various Kubernetes operators, databases, GitLab and other tools into Shoot clusters.
Are the Gardener Shoot clusters Highly Available?
Yes! ✅
You only need to select “HA” configuration when provisioning your Shoot cluster to make your cluster HA.
The respective Gardener cloud provider will take care of the rest.
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