KubeCon’s Europe 2018 Event Highlights Kubernetes’ Progress, Expansion

KubeCon and CloudNativeCon Europe 2018 ran from May 2-4 at the Bella Center in Copenhagen, Denmark. The event showcased the latest developments in the cloud-native market, which has the open-source Kubernetes container orchestration system at its core. Among the highlights of the event were multiple sessions on security, including an update on the latest security additions to Kubernetes and new projects including Secure Production Identity Framework For Everyone (SPIFFE). Users also took to the stage to sing Kubernetes’ praises. Engineers from CERN detailed how they use Kubernetes at massive scale, and the Financial Times told how its move to Kubernetes improved operational efficiency. In this slide show, eWEEK looks at some of the highlights of the KubeCon and CloudNativeCon Europe 2018 event.

At the first KubeCon + CloudNativeCon event, which was held in San Francisco in November 2015, there were fewer than 1,000 attendees. In contrast, the Copenhagen event was the largest ever for the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF), hosting 4,300 attendees.

During her KubeCon keynote address, Aparna Sinha, group product manager at Google, detailed different areas of progress for Kubernetes. In particular, she detailed multiple improvements in security that have landed in the last several Kubernetes releases.

Andrew Jessup, co-founder of Scytale, used his time on the keynote stage to explain what the Secure Production Identity Framework For Everyone (SPIFFE) is all about. SPIFFE goes beyond the application infrastructure that is provided by Kubernetes to enable a new framework for security application workload identity.

David Aronchick, product manager of Cloud AI and co-founder of the Kubeflow project, discussed at KubeCon the intersection of machine learning and Kubernetes. Kubeflow is a new effort that aims to make it easier for organizations to deploy and run machine learning frameworks in a Kubernetes cluster.

At the KubeCon and CloudNativeCon Europe 2018 event, Jaice Singer DuMars, OSS governance program manager, and Caleb Miles, technical program manager at Google, outlined the core process and activities of the Kubernetes Release Special Interest Group (SIG). Kubernetes has a three-month cycle for development spread across feature definition, feature work, bug fixing and final release stages.

In a lightning talk, Spotify engineer Matthias Gruter explained how he has used Kubernetes to control and orchestrate his home automation efforts.

Ricardo Rocha, a CERN staff member, noted during his keynote that his organization is now using Kubernetes in addition to OpenStack to help power the scientific organization’s computing requirements.

Sarah Wells, technical director for operations and reliability at the Financial Times, used her time on stage to detail her organization’s migration to Kubernetes. Kubernetes has provided a stable and efficient approach for container and microservices workload management and deployment, she said.

Kubernetes is widely used by many organizations and vendors today, which was reflected in the list of event sponsors.

In the exhibit hall at KubeCon, vendors listed their jobs on a whiteboard, which included all manner of opportunities.

The KubeCon and CloudNativeCon Europe 2018 event was held at the Bella Center in Copenhagen, Denmark.

The event’s big party was held at historic Tivoli Gardens.

The next KubeCon and CloudNativeCon event will be held in Shanghai, China, in November, to be followed by the North America event in Seattle, which is scheduled for December.