special feature
Integrating the Hybrid Cloud [1]
As far and fast as cloud computing is embedding itself into the enterprise, there remain many cloud-resistant applications and services.
One of the biggest questions at Red Hat Summit[3] in San Francisco was "What will Red Hat be doing with its recent CoreOS acquisition[4]?" Now we know. In a presentation, Ben Breard, Red Hat product manager for Linux Containers, and Brandon Philips, CTO of CoreOS[5], explained where CoreOS offerings are going now that the company is part of Red Hat.
Red Hat[6] will be integrating CoreOS Tectonic[7], its Kubernetes distribution; Quay[8], its enterprise container registry; and Container Linux[9], its lightweight cluster Linux distribution, into Red Hat's container and Kubernetes-based software portfolio. One popular CoreOS technology won't be making the trip: The rkt container standard[10]. Instead, it will become a community-supported container technology.
Container Linux and Project Atomic[11], which is built around the lightweight containerized operating system, Atomic Host, will be united into Red Hat CoreOS. Breard said, "Red Hat CoreOS will preserve the best from both offerings." Ultimately, Red Hat CoreOS will supersede Atomic Host and Container Linux and function as Red Hat's immutable, container-centric operating system.
There will be an upstream community version of CoreOS, as Fedora[12] is to Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)[13], but that's still a work in progress. The Project Atomic site will eventually be phased away, but