Fermyon Contributes SpinKube to CNCF, Making WebAssembly a First-Class Workload in Kubernetes
New Sandbox project delivers faster scalability and higher density without the need to dramatically change operational posture
PARIS, March 21, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Fermyon™ Technologies, the serverless WebAssembly company, announced today in a keynote at KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe it has contributed SpinKube to the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) as a Sandbox project. SpinKube is an open source project that streamlines the experience of developing, deploying, and operating WebAssembly workloads on Kubernetes. This follows the company’s recent announcement of Fermyon Platform for Kubernetes, the first WebAssembly platform for Kubernetes that enables 50x more applications per node.
WebAssembly (Wasm) is uniquely poised to enable the third wave of cloud computing as an ultra-efficient runtime with supersonic performance, and is also shaping up to be the cheapest wave of cloud computing. Analyst Paul Nashawaty of The Futurum Group says, “The trajectory is crystal clear—Wasm is not merely a trend but a transformative force in the world of cloud-native applications, heralding an era of unparalleled capabilities and security features.” (source: Revolutionizing Cloud-Native Apps through WebAssembly Development)
SpinKube combines the Spin operator, containerd Spin shim, and the runtime class manager (formerly KWasm) open source projects with contributions from Microsoft, SUSE, Liquid Reply, and Fermyon. By running applications at the Wasm abstraction layer, SpinKube enables application developers to easily deploy serverless WebAssembly applications into Kubernetes, leading to efficient use of node resources and cold start speeds under one millisecond.
Artifacts are orders of magnitude smaller compared to container images so they can be fetched over the network and started much faster, as well as consuming significantly fewer resources while idle. All of this while being able to integrate with Kubernetes primitives (DNS, probes, autoscaling, metrics, and a lot more cloud native and CNCF projects).
“This is a seminal moment for WebAssembly and Kubernetes. The performance, scalability, and density that the ZEISS Group experienced marks the next chapter for serverless powered by Wasm,” said Matt Butcher, CEO at Fermyon Technologies. “CNCF is the ideal home for this project and we’re thrilled to partner with them to grow the community and ecosystem around server-side WebAssembly. If you’ve been waiting for a production use case, now is the time to try it for yourself.”
“The SpinKube project uses all the conventional Kubernetes tools to easily get it installed and set up. It took me 5 minutes before I could start deploying Spin WebAssembly applications to my cluster,” said Kasper Juul Hermansen, Platform/Data Engineer, Lunar.
“With a growing number of production use cases, Wasm is proving to be a game changer for the cloud, redefining security, workload density, and cost efficiency. However, enterprises face a significant challenge in migrating their existing applications to Wasm. With the donation of SpinKube, we are enabling an evolutionary migration path to more secure and cost-effective architectures and facilitating further innovation in the Wasm ecosystem,” said Sven Pfennig, Principal Engineer, Liquid Reply.
The contribution of SpinKube was announced during a keynote titled “Revolutionizing Cloud Native Architectures with WebAssembly” featuring Ralph Squillace, Principal Product Manager, Microsoft; Michelle Dhanani, Founding Engineer, Fermyon Technologies; and Kai Walter, Distinguished Architect, ZEISS Group; and moderated by Taylor Dolezal, Head of Ecosystem at CNCF.
SpinKube is available now on GitHub: https://github.com/spinkube.
Additional Resources
About Fermyon™ Technologies
Fermyon is leading the next wave of cloud computing with the first cloud-native WebAssembly FaaS that lets developers build better serverless apps faster. Fermyon is focused on empowering cloud developers to quickly realize the things they are thinking about creating and focus on the code that brings value instead of the obligatory foundation code. Fermyon was founded by the Deis Labs team at Microsoft Azure and is backed by Insight Partners and Amplify Partners. For more information, go to https://www.fermyon.com or follow @fermyontech.
Media Contact
Melissa Logan
fermyon@constantia.io
