Linux container technologies are changing the way that people deploy and manage applications. Google has long relied on these technologies to run our internal workloads, and we are excited to see the growing community momentum around technologies like Docker and our Kubernetes project.

Today we are announcing the alpha release of a new service: Google Container Engine. Powered by Kubernetes, Container Engine delivers a fully-managed cluster manager for Docker containers. Container Engine lets you get a Docker packaged application up and running quickly in a logical computing cluster. It frees you up from worrying about deploying to individual virtual machines and significantly reduces your operational burden while letting you develop in a far more agile fashion.

Container Engine has taken inspiration from the systems that run Google’s internal workloads. While these systems were originally built to operate at unprecedented levels of scale and efficiency, the patterns they introduced are relevant to everyone. Container Engine allows you to break your application into smaller, atomic units that can be easily organized, managed and wired together. This enables all parts of your application to effortlessly scale to any level you need. By adding the concept of a cluster (a large logical computer that stitches together lots of individual machines) and using Docker to package your application, Container Engine allows you to rapidly test and deploy your application. It takes care of scaling, monitoring and the health of your containers.

Google Container Engine groups together a set of Google Compute Engine VMs into a compute cluster that is managed for you. It lets you get the most out of your compute infrastructure and simplifies the development and deployment of distributed applications. Container Engine lets you:

  • spin up a Kubernetes cluster in minutes on fast-booting Google Compute Engine VMs
  • deploy a composite or distributed Docker packaged application quickly and easily
  • make containers accessible to one another, and the outside world with deep integration into the powerful Andromeda based virtual network
  • easily manage and monitor the health of your applications
  • deploy services easily and make them discoverable to other parts of your application
  • organize your complex systems with a powerful label based management system

One of the unique things about Google Container Engine is that it was designed from the start with workload mobility in mind, making it easy to create portable applications that can easily be moved from one hosting environment to another. We understand that our larger customers live in a multi-cloud world (either on-premises and public cloud, or multiple public clouds). Because it is based on Kubernetes, and we have worked with a broad array of partners including Microsoft, IBM, Red Hat, and VMWare to make Kubernetes work everywhere, you are not locked into Google Cloud Platform. You can build your application in a local development environment, then deploy to Google Cloud Platform, or create applications that can be run in multi-cloud environments. The choice is yours.

This is an Alpha release and although it isn’t yet production-ready, Container Engine will continue to become richer and more powerful in the coming weeks and months. Because of the intense interest in containers and Kubernetes, we decided to open Container Engine up for everyone to give us feedback and help guide its development.

Take Container Engine for a free test drive and get the details you need with our technical docs. If you want to participate in one of our early customer programs for Container Engine, please sign up here. These programs will directly connect you with our engineering team to help shape the future of the product, and give early support for production use. Stay tuned for more updates.

- Posted by Craig Mcluckie, Product Manager