The Cloud Foundry Foundation (CFF) adopted the open source KubeCF runtime as an incubating project, tightening the group’s embrace of the Kubernetes ecosystem.

KubeCF is an open source distribution of the Cloud Foundry Application Runtime (CFAR), which is an app-centric platform designed to support application development lifecycle. KubeCF was developed initially by CFF member SUSE – with initial work dated back to 2015 – and is designed to run on top of Kubernetes and be deployed as a Helm chart.

CFF explained that KubeCF provides a “full CFAR experience, passes acceptance tests, and will soon be backing at least two certified commercial releases.”

It also builds on the CFF’s Project Quarks, which is a way to deploy Cloud Foundry’s Bosh container runtime as a container on top of Kubernetes. Cloud Foundry Foundation CTO Chip Childers wrote in an email that “KubeCF is a way to get a pure upstream open source Cloud Foundry experience that can be easily be deployed on top of Kubernetes.”

It can also tap CFF’s Project Eirini – another incubating project at CFF – to use Kubernetes as the underlying container scheduler. Project Eirini has been CFF’s biggest push into the Kubernetes space and allows operators and vendors to use Kubernetes as the underlying container scheduler for the CFAR. It basically provides developers with a “cf push” experience for moving applications into production on top of Kubernetes.

The KubeCF adoption is also another block in CFF's path-building toward Kubernetes. The Eirini, Quarks, and now KubeCF combo work together as a more Kubernetes-focused path for Cloud Foundry users. They are also an alternative to CFF’s concurrent work with its Diego container management system and Bosh manager that is designed to work in virtual machine (VM) environments.

The CFF has been clear that it plans to continue supporting both paths, though Eirini is acting as a bridge between the two for users. Troy Topnik, product manager for SUSE, noted in a blog post that “users who want Cloud Foundry on Kubernetes now can get that from KubeCF,” noting that ongoing CFAR work “will be substituted into KubeCF as well.”

“To be clear, the end user developer experience is exactly the same as users of a Bosh-based CFAR deployment,” Topnik explained in a separate email to SDxCentral. “The big advantage is for the admins/operators who can now deploy a multi-tenant application platform to Kubernetes to give those developers access to compute resources provided by Kubernetes.”