February 2019 Summaries

The evolving landscape of Kubernetes tools has seen the deprecation of ksonnet, a project initially launched by Heptio, Box, Microsoft, and Bitnami, which introduced a DSL for managing Kubernetes configurations. In contrast, Pulumi offers a more versatile approach by utilizing familiar programming languages like JavaScript, Python, and Go, thereby leveraging existing language capabilities, package ecosystems, and IDE support. Pulumi not only provides access to the complete raw Kubernetes API but also extends its functionality to work with public and private cloud resources, allowing users to deploy both Kubernetes and AWS/Azure/GCP resources using a single workflow. This integration offers features beyond ksonnet’s scope, such as robust status reporting and a comprehensive cloud object model, enhancing the ease and efficiency of managing cloud-native infrastructure. Pulumi also facilitates the transition for those familiar with ksonnet by offering similar features like modules and functions but within a more expansive framework that spans multiple clouds and resource types.

Pulumi has expanded its ecosystem by introducing the F5 BIG-IP provider, which integrates Cloud Native Infrastructure as Code capabilities with F5 BIG-IP devices using familiar programming languages and a consistent programming model. This integration caters to customer demands for managing both on-premises and cloud workloads effectively. The provider allows users to perform advanced traffic management tasks, such as creating load balancers for backend HTTP servers and managing iRules, which enable the manipulation of request and response data and dynamic traffic direction based on application requirements. The provider also supports the dynamic creation of iRules, such as redirecting users to localized versions of websites based on language preferences. With this tool, developers can manage BIG-IP systems across multiple platforms, including AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud, or in on-premises data centers, thus bringing modern development practices to BIG-IP-powered applications.