In its ongoing assault on the complexity of containers (a virtualized method for running distributed applications), Red Hat Inc. acquired CoreOS Inc. earlier this year. CoreOS has broken ground in the use of Kubernetes (an open-source container orchestration platform) for operations automation. The two are blending their technologies to wrought out easy, practical value-adds from containers and Kubernetes.

“The acquisition of CoreOS by Red Hat was about … what can we take that CoreOS has been doing to accelerate both work in the community but also work that they’ve been doing to deliver those technologies to customers?” said Ashesh Badani (pictured, left), general manager of the Cloud Business Unit and OpenShift platform at Red Hat.

CoreOS’ major achievement thus far is Tectonic — an enterprise-ready Kubernetes platform that delivers automated operations, hybrid cloud portability, and is always upstream, open-source Kubernetes. This fits in swimmingly with Red Hat Enterprise Linux distribution and OpenShift container application platform, according to Badani.

Badani and CoreOS Chief Executive Officer Alex Polvi (pictured, right) spoke with John Furrier (@furrier), host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, and guest host John Troyer (@jtroyer), chief reckoner at TechReckoning, at Red Hat Summit in San Francisco. (* Disclosure below.)

Kubernetes douses operations fire drill

An “operator” is the piece of software that implements automated operations in Tectonic, Polvi explained. “If we were to get into specific Kubernetes lingo, it would be an application-specific controller that’s a piece of software that implements the automated operations,” he said.

This automates important but rote operations tasks like security updates out of human hands. “What we’re doing is saying, ‘Let’s not do the part that is the fire drill in the middle of the night that keeps you from making forward progress,'” Polvi stated.

The two companies are on the speedway to complete integration. “Sometime with these mergers or acquisitions, it’s like well, the technology will be incorporated at some point, and then it goes away to die and you never see it again. And then the people all leave and then you ask, ‘What was going on?'” Polvi said.

Red Hat and CoreOS have specific timelines drawn up; for instance, its Quay container registry is available through Red Hat now; further CoreOS integration into OpenShift will materialize this summer.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the Red Hat Summit event. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for Red Hat Summit. Neither Red Hat Inc., the event sponsor, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE