Kubernetes Day 1/Day 2 Service Improvement at the Tactical Edge

KOP (short for K8S Operator), was developed out of the necessity for simplified software configuration management, and the need for a toolkit of common commands when updating kubernetes (aka, K8S) deployments.  Kubernetes, and its vast ecosystem of tools, can be overwhelming to navigate when updating deployments, potentially requiring deep knowledge of system components, or memorizing verbose commands to make even simple changes. There are currently full-featured, sophisticated gitops commercial products, such as ArgoCD, under active development in the K8S ecosystem, which span varying levels of maturity and complexity.  However, ArgoCD is also relatively complex, requiring an extensive knowledge of kubernetes, helm charts, devops and CI/CD pipeline configurations, automation tools, etc, so will drive a considerable learning curve for any NWC operators tasked with leveraging it for Day 1/Day 2 operations.  Also, ArgoCD requires additional maintenance, licenses, overhead and support, and continues to rapidly change, which will drive a burden onto the Day 1/Day 2 operations. KOP on the other hand provides a smaller footprint of common deployment commands, aimed at less experienced K8S operators. This initial work to develop KOP was an appropriate feasibility study in order to meet the Direct-to-Phase II (D2P2) Nuclear Weapons Center requirements for a service that enables an operator with minimal training to manage Day 1/Day 2 operations for Platform One Kubernetes.  Similar to how KOP was applied for the feasibility study, it can be applied to NWC’s operational environment to provide a service that would simplify and automate common Deploy and Operate/maintain operations to enable missions to execute without requiring teams to be deep experts in the underlying technology. The goal of this D2P2 proposal is to meet NWC’s Day 1/Day 2 K8S operations by simplifying configuration management and operator tasks in a multi-level classified environment running and maintaining applications in Platform One Kubernetes.  Additionally, KOP will be integrated with Skyward Federal’s fully operational Cross Domain Solution (CDS) management platform called DASH, which is a Data Transfer Agent that–while it is not itself a CDS–it facilitates connectivity to needed CDS’s based on environment and need.  Combining the capabilities of KOP and DASH will allow for seamless transfer of build artifacts from unclass to classified Kubernetes environments.