Defining an Evaluation Model for Container Orchestration Operator Frameworks

Sammanfattning: The growing complexity of cloud native applications has necessitated the intro- duction of operators to the container orchestration tools’ suite of components. Operators affords developers the ability to encode domain knowledge and make fine-grained controllers for their Kubernetes clusters, radically extending the range of feasible applications to host. Operators are however vast software entities and places large requirements on its developing party, almost forcing the use of a software framework. This master’s thesis explores the evaluation and comparison of Kubernetes operator frameworks. To address the challenge, a novel solution design is proposed, presenting an evaluation model that categorizes and assesses the frameworks using predefined attributes and accompanying metrics. The attributes were related to one of two overarching categories deemed appropriate for by the performed framework study, open source health status or operator capability. Profile assignment is done through the concordance non-discordance principle, inspired by multi-criteria decision theory. This research contributes to the understanding of evaluating Kubernetes operator frameworks and offers valuable insights for developers and decision-makers in selecting appropriate tools for managing cloud-based applications.