Update to Crossplane Adds Ability to Include Custom Logic

An update to the open source Crossplane control plane released this week adds the ability to add custom logic written in any programming language via a Composition Functions capability.

Originally developed by Upbound and now being advanced under the auspices of the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF), version 1.14 of Crossplane also makes available a set of generic functions that IT teams can readily employ as a precursor to a library of functions that will be made available via an online store.

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In addition, the command line interface (CLI) for Crossplane has been revamped to add rendering capabilities that simplify composition authoring and testing processes and support for traces that can be used to troubleshoot issues. A usage application programming interface (API) can be invoked to programmatically delete resources that are no longer required to run Crossplane.

Finally, Management Policies and Composition Validation APIs are now available in beta, along with a Realtime Compositions API available in alpha. RuntimeConfig API is replacing ControllerConfig.

Crossplane provides IT teams with a control plane that extends the one originally developed for Kubernetes in a way that can be applied from the edge to the cloud to centralize the management of any type of IT platform.

Jared Watts, founding engineer at Upbound and co-creator of Crossplane, said interest in centralizing management of control planes is accelerating with the rise of platform engineering as a methodology for managing DevOps workflows at scale. In fact, there are now more than 10,000 members of a Crossplane channel on Slack.

Control planes provide an alternative to making changes using custom scripts within IT environments at scale using application programming interfaces (APIs). That approach reduces the cognitive load that IT teams carry when managing hybrid IT environments. It’s not clear how quickly organizations are moving to centrally manage control planes, but it’s apparent more organizations are becoming increasingly sensitive to the total cost of IT.

Each control plane employed today is managed in isolation, requiring organizations to hire IT staff to manage each type. Upbound is making a case for a centralized approach to managing infrastructure using an API familiar to organizations that run Kubernetes clusters. That approach can also be applied to cloud-native and monolithic application environments based on virtual machines.

Of course, IT leaders need to have sufficient political capital to centralize the management of control planes. IT teams generally prefer the control plane they know best, so convincing leadership to transition to another will require a lot of fortitude. Far too many IT personnel still define their value by the certification they have achieved to manage specific platforms rather than the function they provide to their organization.

Ultimately, however, it’s only a matter of time before the control plane issue is forced. As organizations continue to deploy workloads across multiple clouds and on-premises IT environments that include edge computing platforms, it’s becoming less practical to use multiple control planes. Each control plane increases IT headcount at a time when the single biggest cost of IT is still the people needed to manage it.