We are happy to announce that kube-green is now listed in the CNCF Landscape.

This is an amazing achievement that makes us very proud of all the work we've been doing supporting this project.

What is the CNCF Landscape?​

For those who are not familiar with the cloud ecosystem, the CNCF — Cloud Native Computing Foundation — is "the open source, vendor-neutral hub of cloud native computing".

The goal of the CNCF is to host cloud native projects, both open source and proprietary software, in order to foster their adoption and to make cloud native universal and sustainable.

The CNCF Landscape is an interactive and curated list of all the available tools and organizations that work with cloud native technologies. Everything is organized in categories and subcategories, so that it is easier to navigate and find the right tool for every need. The Landscape is maintained by the CNCF staff: everyone is encouraged to propose open-source projects by opening a pull request to the dedicated GitHub Repository.

kube-green in the CNCF Landscape​

Starting from October 7^th, kube-green is listed in the Scheduling & Orchestration subcategory, which is part of the Orchestration & Management category.

In the same category of Kubernetes, the de facto standard for orchestrating containerized application, now you can find our open-source tool that allows you to schedule when to stop unused pods.

For example, with kube-green you will be able to stop all the pods of non-production environments at night-time and in non-working hours. kube-green takes also care of automatically restarting pods at scheduled hours, and, if needed, you can always restart any pod at any time. In this way you can save resources and money, while also reducing the carbon footprint of your infrastructure. If you want to learn more about it, read our Intro to kube-green and take a look at the documentation.

Help us make kube-green grow​

We strive to reach as many people as possible: the more people use kube-green, the more we reduce overall CO2 emissions. To do so, we need all the help we can get.

How can you contribute? There are many ways to make the difference, even for non-technical people. Here is a list of some actions you can take:

• Tell everyone about kube-green: share the repository, the website, or the CNCF card on social media and tag us;
• Star the project on GitHub: let the world know how many people love this project;
• Join the community and connect with other users through the GitHub discussions;
• Tell us how you use kube-green and what you love most of it: reach out to Davide (creator of kube-green) or to Michel (Developer Advocate at Mia-Platform) and tell us everything;
• Improve the documentation by opening a pull request on the dedicated GitHub repository;
• Expand the project, adding more features or resolving any open issues: just follow the contribution guidelines.

If you have been one of the early adopters of kube-green you may have noticed something different in these days. New colors, new shapes, and a brand new logo? What it's all about? You may also be wondering if you are on the right repository, and if this is the same kube-green you are familiar with: don't worry, it is! (Actually, a new version has been released: take a look at what's new on v0.4.1).

Well, we are proud to announce that kube-green has gone through a full rebranding! Let's deep dive into it.

The reasons behind the rebranding​

To date, kube-green is effectively reducing CO2 emissions since almost two years, and more and more projects are adopting kube-green to save energy and money. The repository has now more than 300 stars on GitHub, and it will soon be added to the CNCF Landscape.

We felt that kube-green reached the status of a mature software project, and it was the right moment to take a step further in giving it a full brand identity. We wanted the brand identity to match and reflect the maturity reached by the software, so that it will be easy to keep evolving.

So, working closely with Fiorella Cerasuolo, Brand Designer at Mia-Platform, we defined all the visual assets that define the new brand identity of kube-green.

The new logo​

The greatest rebranding makeover involved the logo, that has been redesigned almost from scratch. However, it was not a disruptive revolution, but a well-reasoned evolution.

As the name suggests, kube-green works with Kubernetes. In particular, it is a Kubernetes operator that shuts down all the pods in non-production environments during non business hours. So, the logo of kube-green needs to evoke Kubernetes. The previous logo recalled Kubernetes one with the seven-branched nautical helm, but for the new logo we wanted something more defined and less evident. For this reason we opted for a heptagon for the external shape: the seven sides of the polygon are a clear reference to the seven branches of Kubernetes' helm.

On the background of the polygon there are two waves, representing the sea. This is another reference to the nautical theme derived from Kubernetes, together with the heptagon. But it is also a first allusion to the main feature of kube-green, which is reducing CO2 pollution. In fact, the waves stand for the purity of how the open sea should be: unpolluted and uncontaminated.

At the center of the polygon there is a big green leaf, that is the worldwide recognized symbol of all the green initiatives. The leaf was the heart also of the previous logo, and we kept it also at the very center of the new logo to clearly state the main purpose of kube-green: helping the environment by reducing the CO2 footprint of Kubernetes clusters. The shape of the leaf has been slightly compared with the original, to better match the new overall look and feel of the logo.

The new colors​

The rebranding involved also the colors of kube-green. The green remained the main chromatic key, but we revised the adopted shades to make them more recognizable.

We opted for bright colors for two main reasons: we wanted kube-green to be recognized as a high-technological product, and we wanted it to stand out in the CNCF Landscape. However, in choosing the colors, particular attention has been paid to the readability and accessibility of the logo. We made sure that the logo passed all the contrast tests, so that everyone can see it clearly.

The color palette includes three main shades: dark green, light green, and grey. The dark green contains a little tone of blue. It is barely perceptible, but it reminds to the nautical theme of Kubernetes. The light green is very bright: its main purpose is to give the idea of an innovative software, that leverages the latest available technologies. The grey scale goes from the white, that acts as a definition mark between the elements of the logo, to a dark grey tending to green.

The external heptagon is colored with a seamless transition from the light green to the dark green. The gradient gives light and motion to the entire logo. Also, the two different colors make the logo easily readable on both white and black backgrounds: this is a very important property for a software. In fact, kube-green's repository is hosted on GitHub, that allows users to choose between a dark and a light mode, and so does the official website.

Conclusion​

As you can see, there was a great effort behind this rebranding: we strive to do everything we can to make kube-green work better, and we believe that its success will depend also from its recognizability.

We believe that a great software needs a strong identity, and we did our best to give kube-green a long-lasting brand identity.

Welcome to kube-green blog!

In this blog, we'll introduce the new features of kube-green, and give you some other information about kube-green.

In this first tutorial, I will try to explain how it was born and why it is useful for reducing waste of resources.

Environmental impact​

Everything we do online has an impact on the real world environment.
From the emails in our inboxes to photos and videos on the cloud, from online games to digital currency, all this digital activity run on physical servers that constantly use energy.

Just some examples:

• minecraft all time emissions are about 600 million Kg of CO2, equivalent to drive at about 2,1 billion of km (reference)
• bitcoin produces between 22 and 22.9 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions a year, or between the levels produced by Jordan and Sri Lanka (reference)
• here it is possible to see how much emissions our emails generate

The Kubernetes clusters are not an exception. Also if they run in a cloud provider far from us they produces CO2, also if not used.

The idea of kube-green​

In a cluster, non production namespaces are usually used only during business hours.
The business hours are around 40 hours per week, respect the total number of weekly hours which are 168.
Also, in Kubernetes the resources could be allocated (both CPU and memory, setting the request of a container) also if not used. This means most of the time the pods in these namespaces are unnecessarily consuming resources.

The basic idea of kube-green is to stop all pods in those namespaces.

How it is possible?​

kube-green is a Kubernetes controller, which define a Custom Resource Definition called SleepInfo. SleepInfo CRD define when stop and restart the pods in a namespace.

So, for example in development namespaces, it is possible to stop all the pods in non business hours: wake up every morning from monday to friday and stop every night from monday to friday.

An example of SleepInfo CRD to make it is:

apiVersion: kube-green.com/v1alpha1
kind: SleepInfo
metadata:
  name: working-hours
spec:
  weekdays: "1-5"
  sleepAt: "20:00"
  wakeUpAt: "08:00"
  timeZone: "Europe/Rome"
  suspendCronJobs: true

What resources can you suspend?​

At the time of this post, with kube-green at v0.2.0, it is possible to sleep only Deployment. Other resources will be added in the future.
If you need some particular resources, write it in this issue to set it in roadmap!

Conclusion​

Do you want to reduce the CO2 emissions and costs of your Kubernetes cluster?

Read our documentation to install kube-green in your cluster!