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Software used to be installed using a manifest file in the form a shellscript. Then, the cloud-native container platform arrived, and the old way didn’t quite work for this next-generation application environment. A robust control plane was needed to manage the complexities of the myriad range of softwares throughout their various lifecyles, including patching and upgrade tasks.
There is increasing adoption of an automated, reusable means of managing cloud-native software, in Kubernetes Operator format, through an open-source framework, called the Operator Framework.
On July 9th 2020, the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) approved the Operator Framework as an incubation-level hosted project.
So what is an Operator and the Operator Framework?
OpenShift Commons defines an Operator as “a method of packaging, deploying and managing a Kubernetes application”.
In order to provide an automated, scalable method of managing Kubernetes applications, called Operators, an open source toolkit called the Operator Framework is made available to any developer of software.
