Overview

The Kubernetes and container-optimized VM releases are open source projects to make it simple to run Docker containers on Google Cloud Platform. The container-optimized VM provides a way to statically and declaratively run multiple Docker containers on a Google Compute Engine instance. The Kubernetes release enables dynamic container scheduling across multiple VM instances, including over container-optimized VMs. All additions by Google are open sourced.

There is more to come, and we hope you get involved .

Container VMs

Container-optimized Google Compute Engine images are Debian images with a few additions:

• The Docker runtime is pre-installed, so you're ready to create containers as soon as your instance is up.
• The image includes an agent that handles container manifest files, to create and monitor containers automatically.

More information about container VMs, including sample code to get you started, is available on the Container-Optimized Images page.

Kubernetes

Kubernetes is an open source container cluster manager. It schedules any number of container replicas across a group of node instances. A master instance exposes the Kubernetes API, through which tasks are defined. Kubernetes spawns containers on nodes to handle the defined tasks.

The number and type of containers can be dynamically modified according to need. An agent (a kubelet ) on each node instance monitors containers and restarts them if necessary.

Kubernetes is optimized for Google Cloud Platform, but can run on any physical or virtual machine.

To get started, visit the Kubernetes repository on GitHub .

Get involved

We encourage you to be involved in the development and design of the image and the related open source projects:

• Give early feedback and talk with the community (including the developer team) on the google-containers mailing list .
• Ask development and best practices questions on Stack Overflow .
• Browse and contribute to the Kubernetes project on GitHub .
• Chat with the community on IRC .
• Nominate a project for our early adopter program for companies.
• For questions about Docker images or with Docker in general, we encourage you to join the very active Docker community .

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