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Gardener

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description Gardener Overview

Gardener is an open-source project that simplifies Kubernetes cluster management by providing a streamlined UI and CLI for deploying and operating applications within lightweight, reproducible environments called Gardens.

help Gardener FAQ

What is Gardener and what problem does it solve for Kubernetes?

Gardener is an open-source project that manages Kubernetes clusters at scale by treating each cluster as a custom resource, allowing teams to provision and operate dozens or hundreds of clusters from a central control plane. It was originally developed by SAP and is used in production to manage large numbers of clusters across multiple cloud providers.

What cloud providers does Gardener support?

Gardener supports major cloud providers including Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform, and OpenStack through its provider extensions. Additional provider plugins exist for platforms like Alibaba Cloud and metal-stack for bare-metal deployments.

What is a "Shoot cluster" in Gardener terminology?

In Gardener's architecture, a "Shoot" is a user-managed Kubernetes workload cluster that is provisioned and maintained by the system. Shoot clusters run on "Seed" clusters, which host the control plane components, while the "Garden" cluster serves as the central management interface.

How is Gardener different from Kubernetes Cluster API?

Both projects manage cluster lifecycles, but Gardener takes the approach of running each managed cluster's control plane as a set of pods inside a Seed cluster, effectively making it Kubernetes-native at the infrastructure level. Cluster API, maintained by the Kubernetes SIG community, uses a declarative API and infrastructure providers to provision clusters directly on cloud resources.

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