Mirantis has announced the release of version 1.2.0 of its open-source distributed container management platform, k0rdent. The company positions k0rdent as a “super control plane” designed to assist platform engineers in managing Kubernetes infrastructure across multiple environments.
k0rdent is built on open standards and helps manage Kubernetes clusters and services in on-premises, cloud, and hybrid environments through centralized and templated management. The platform aims to help teams build secure and consistent internal developer platforms (IDPs) for modern workloads by leveraging three core components:
- k0rdent Cluster Manager (KCM) – responsible for managing the lifecycle of Kubernetes clusters, including handling upgrades and scaling.
- k0rdent State Manager (KSM) – used for deploying and managing services such as Istio, Flux, and cert-manager using declarative templates.
- k0rdent Observability & FinOps (KOF) – generates metrics, logs, and dashboards through integrations with VictoriaMetrics and OpenCost, providing cost visibility and analytics.
In a blog post announcing the initial motivation and release of k0rdent earlier this year, Mirantis explained that modern enterprise applications have become significantly more complex than just having frontends and a few API endpoints. These applications now encompass databases, processing pipelines, data storage, and compute resources distributed across multiple locations. This complexity is particularly evident in AI-related applications where inference, training, and data processing are often spread across different infrastructure environments, including on-premises, public cloud, and edge locations—leaving a management gap that k0rdent aims to address.
Among the key features introduced in the recent 1.2.0 release is the addition of an OpenStack managed control plane template, which was a highly requested feature but previously delayed due to a bug in the Cluster API Provider OpenStack (CAPO). The team devised a workaround that eliminates the need for CAPO to create networks, subnets, routers, and load balancers. However, this workaround has a trade-off: administrators must now manually build these infrastructure components.
Version 1.2.0 also introduces improved ARM64 support and enhanced community documentation to simplify implementation, although the release notes highlight certain limitations. Additionally, the Azure template has become more flexible, allowing users to specify alternative image sources beyond those available in the default marketplace.
k0rdent includes an Observability & FinOps module, which received a major update in version 1.2.0. The platform has transitioned from using VictoriaMetrics collectors to OpenTelemetry, enhancing metric labeling and dashboard integration. The module now features four collectors: a kube-state metrics collector for cluster statistics, a node daemon collector for host metrics, a k0s component collector for polling etcd and controller manager, and a syslog collector with Grok pattern extraction capabilities.
k0rdent serves as the upstream source for Mirantis k0rdent Enterprise, which builds additional enterprise-grade features and 24/7 support atop the open-source core. Mirantis also offers k0rdent AI, an enterprise AI lifecycle management solution based on the same foundation. The company emphasizes community engagement, with users sharing experiences and use cases during the first community call in July, hosted by maintainer Dina Belova.
The platform has been tested on AWS EC2, AWS EKS, Azure Compute, Azure AKS, vSphere, and OpenStack, and can be easily extended to support other publicly available and custom providers. k0rdent is designed with organizational freedom in mind, allowing teams to use their preferred technologies without vendor lock-in.
During a Reddit discussion on managing large-scale Kubernetes clusters, user liltaf recommended exploring k0rdent:
You should check out k0rdent—it meets all your needs. It leverages CAPI but is incredibly user-friendly. No more managing complex Terraform scripts; instead, it uses simple YAML file templates that can be GitOps-ready. It also allows you to manage services and their versions across every cluster using the same principles. Plus, it’s open source.
k0rdent enters a growing market, competing with other “super control plane” platforms such as Cloudfleet, which targets enterprises requiring hybrid and edge Kubernetes management. Cloudfleet’s distribution, CFKE, offers centralized lifecycle automation, infrastructure configuration, built-in template support, and seamless scaling across on-premises and multi-cloud environments. Rafay, another player in the space, provides SaaS-first Kubernetes operations for managing clusters and services across diverse infrastructures. It includes built-in security and lifecycle automation to streamline tasks in public cloud, on-premises, and hybrid deployments.
