CoreOS Announces “Tectonic” Kubernetes Platform, Google Investment

CoreOS, a San Francisco start-up building a new Linux distribution for modern infrastructure stacks, introduced Tectonic, its commercial Kubernetes platform.

Tectonic, which combines Kubernetes and the CoreOS stack, pre-packages all of the components required to build “Google-style infrastructure.”  CoreOS said it adds a number of commercial features to the mix, such as a management console for workflows and dashboards, an integrated registry to build and share Linux containers, and additional tools to automate deployment and customize rolling updates.

In addition, CoreOS announced a new $12 million round of funding led by Google Ventures, with additional investment from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB), Fuel Capital and Accel Partners, bringing its total funding to $20 million.

“When we started CoreOS, we set out to build and deliver Google’s infrastructure to everyone else,” said Alex Polvi, CEO of CoreOS. “Today, this goal is becoming a reality with Tectonic, which allows enterprises across the world to securely run containers in a distributed environment, similar to how Google runs their infrastructure internally.”

“We see a broader industry trend where enterprise computing is shifting to mirror the infrastructure of large-scale software companies,” said Dave Munichiello, Partner at Google Ventures. “With a focus on security, reliability, and ease of deployment CoreOS delivers a comprehensive platform for global enterprises to deliver services at scale. We are excited to be working with the team.”

https://coreos.com/blog/announcing-tectonic/

In December 2014, CoreOS released Rocket, a new portable container format, as an alternative to the Docker runtime. The idea is to provide a “standard container” that can be used for moving workloads between multiple servers and environments. The company said its container consumes 40% less RAM on boot than an average Linux installation and features an active/passive dual-partition scheme to update the OS as a single unit instead of package by package. Applications on CoreOS can run as Docker containers.  Up until this announcement, CoreOS had been a big supporter of Docker. In a blog posting, the company said the Docker company has strayed from its early principle of building a simple, composable container unit that could be used in a variety of systems and supported by everyone. So CoreOS is now developing Rocket around the App Container specification and promoting it as a new set of simple and open specifications for a portable container format.