Kubernetes Installer Comparison

Declarative Cluster Configuration - describing the K8s cluster including infra components (eg. CRI, CNI), versions, number of nodes (master+worker), architecture, K8s certificates

Y

Y

N

N

Y

Y. Uses Kustomize for layering and substitution.

Templated configuration

Y

Y

N

N

Y

Y. Uses Kustomize

Centralized configuration model

Y

Y

Y

N

Y

Y

Ability to use existing machines (from machine provisioning stage)

Y

Y

Y

Y

TBD. Recognizes the use case of "bring your own OS", but not committed to implementing in v2.0.

Ability to manage underlying infrastructure (i.e. to create and configure nodes for use by a cluster)

Y

N

unknown

N

depends on infra provider

Yes, integrates cluster-api-provider-metal3

Support for different architectures: Arm and x86

Y

N

N

Y

unknown

N.  ARM is out of scope for v2.0. Operators are welcome to step up and add the support.

K8s clusters pass conformance test

Y

Y

Y

Y

unknown

TBD, May run internally.

100% open source

Y

Y

Y

Y

Y

Y

Support all CNCF-hosted projects

Y

unknown

Yes. Airship architecture allows users to deploy additional extensions and add-ons. If an extension has Helm charts, it can be optionally added to Airship life cycle management experience.

Support for specific versions of K8s

Y

N

Y

Y

Y

Y

Specific versions of K8s components

Y

Y

Y

etcd

Y

Y

Y

Y

Y

Y

Support for deploying from HEAD / `master` branch of K8s

Y

N

Y

Y

unknown

?

Container runtimes (containerd, cri-o) with specific versions

Y

Y

N

Y

Y

Y, uses cluster api kubeadm provider

Kubernetes add-ons/extensions installation (e.g. CNI, CSI, Service Mesh, Ingress, LB, etc.)

partially

Y

Hybrid Support both VNF and CNF

Y

Customizable - pick and choose what and when to use for installation

Y