Kubernetes is celebrating its 10th birthday in mid-2024 as the market-leading container orchestration platform. Over the past decade, Kubernetes has evolved into a mature container platform for cloud-native applications, offering robust storage solutions for stateful data.
To commemorate this milestone, a series of interviews with engineers who played a role in the development of Kubernetes and addressed challenges in storage and data protection, including the use of Kubernetes Operators, have been conducted. Michelle Au, a software engineer at Google focusing on Kubernetes storage development, shared her insights on adding support for snapshots and operators to enhance Kubernetes’ capabilities for advanced storage and data protection services.
When Kubernetes first launched, it was one of the early players in the container space as companies started exploring containerization. Michelle got involved in storage for Kubernetes in 2017 when she joined the Kubernetes team at Google, drawn to the opportunity to contribute to an open-source project reshaping the industry.
As Kubernetes gained momentum in the market, Michelle recognized its leading position, particularly in handling stateful workloads with efficiency. She appreciated Kubernetes’ strengths like the declarative API, workload portability, and standard deployment practices, which guided her in designing storage features for Kubernetes.
Addressing challenges in data and storage for Kubernetes, Michelle focused on issues like data locality awareness, support for local storage, and implementing snapshots to enhance disaster recovery capabilities. She also delved into the realm of Kubernetes operators, which enabled the automation of complex operational processes for stateful workloads, supporting cloud-native approaches and facilitating maintenance operations.
Looking ahead, Michelle sees opportunities for enhancing Kubernetes’ data and storage capabilities to meet evolving needs, especially in the realm of AI/ML workloads and multi-cloud environments. She encourages more contributors to join the Kubernetes SIG-storage and Data in Kubernetes communities to share their experiences and contribute to the project’s development.