Our technology is often characterized as “Google’s infrastructure for everyone else.” Today we are excited to make this idea a reality by announcing Tectonic, a commercial Kubernetes platform. Tectonic provides the combined power of the CoreOS portfolio and the Kubernetes project to any cloud or on-premise environment.

Why we are building Tectonic

Our users want to securely run containers at scale in a distributed environment. We help companies do this by building open source tools which allow teams to create this type of infrastructure. With Tectonic, we now have an option for companies that want a preassembled and enterprise-ready distribution of these tools, allowing them to quickly see the benefits of modern container infrastructure.

What is Tectonic?

Tectonic is a platform combining Kubernetes and the CoreOS stack. Tectonic pre-packages all of the components required to build Google-style infrastructure and adds additional commercial features, 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.

Tectonic is available today to a select number of early customers. Head over to tectonic.com to sign up for the waitlist if your company is interested in participating.

What is Kubernetes?

Kubernetes is an open source project introduced by Google to help organizations run their infrastructure in a similar manner to the internal infrastructure that runs Google Search, Gmail, and other Google services. The concepts and workflows in Kubernetes are designed to help engineers focus on their application instead of infrastructure and build for high availability of services. With the Kubernetes APIs, users can manage application infrastructure - such as load balancing, service discovery, and rollout of new versions - in a way that is consistent and fault-tolerant.

Tectonic and CoreOS

Tectonic is a commercial product, and with this release, we have decided to launch our commercial products under a new brand, separate from the CoreOS name. We want our open source components - like etcd, rkt, flannel, and CoreOS Linux - to always be freely available for everyone under their respective open source licenses. We think open source development works best when it is community-supported infrastructure that we all share and build with few direct commercial motives. To that end, we want to keep CoreOS focused on building completely open source components.

To get access to an early release of Tectonic or to learn more, visit tectonic.com. To contribute and learn more about our open source projects visit coreos.com.

Google Ventures Funding

In addition to introducing Tectonic, today we are announcing an investment in CoreOS, Inc. led by Google Ventures. It is great to have the support and backing of Google Ventures as we bring the Kubernetes platform to market. The investment will help us accelerate our efforts to secure the backend of the Internet and deliver Google-like infrastructure to everyone else.

FAQ

Q: What does this change about CoreOS Linux and other open source projects like rkt, etcd, fleet, flannel, etc?

A: Nothing: development will continue, and we want to see all of the open source projects continue to thrive as independent components. CoreOS Linux will remain the same carefully maintained, open source, and container-focused OS it has always been. Tectonic uses many of these projects internally - including rkt, etcd, flannel, and fleet - and runs on top of the same CoreOS Linux operating system as any other application would.

Q: I am using Apache Mesos, Deis, or another application on top of CoreOS Linux: does anything change for me?

A: No, this announcement doesn't change anything about the CoreOS Linux project or software. Tectonic is simply another container-delivered application that runs on top of CoreOS Linux.

Q: What does this change for existing Enterprise Registry, Managed Linux, or Quay.io customers?

A: Everything will remain the same for existing customers. All of these components are utilized in the Tectonic stack and we continue to offer support, fix bugs and add features to these products.

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Follow @TectonicStack on Twitter

Go to Tectonic.com to join an early release or to stay up to date on Tectonic news

Visit us in person at CoreOS Fest in San Francisco May 4-5, to learn more about CoreOS, Tectonic and all things distributed systems