Building the lightest-weight Kubernetes dev ephemeral environments

Kardinal is an open-source framework designed to create lightweight development environments within shared Kubernetes clusters, significantly reducing resource usage and time-to-test by over 90%. It allows developers to spin up temporary, tailored environments on-demand, focusing on specific versions of services relevant to feature development. Kardinal introduces the concept of "flows," which are dedicated paths through the Kubernetes cluster that optimize resource usage by deploying only the necessary services for the task at hand. This approach minimizes inefficiencies associated with traditional setups, where multiple resources are often redundantly deployed. Kardinal's architecture supports various flow types, including single-service, multi-service, state-isolated, and full application flows, catering to different testing needs. The framework consists of a cloud-hosted control plane (Kardinal kontrol) and a service deployed within the cluster (Kardinal manager), which manages cluster topology and routing. Additionally, Kardinal employs a flexible plugin system to manage state across environments, allowing for efficient setup and teardown of flows. The tool is open-source, enabling users to adapt it to their workflows. Kardinal aims to streamline the development and testing processes for Kubernetes-deployed applications, providing a visual representation of the cluster and facilitating easy management of resources.

- Kardinal reduces resource usage and testing time by over 90%.

- It allows for the creation of on-demand, temporary development environments.

- The framework supports various flow types for different testing scenarios.

- Kardinal utilizes a cloud-hosted control plane and a cluster-deployed service for management.

- It is open-source, allowing for customization and integration into existing workflows.