Loft makes working with virtualized Kubernetes clusters easier

Loft Labs helps developers -- and the businesses that employ them -- more efficiently use their Kubernetes clusters by virtualizing Kubernetes itself. This makes it easier to share a single Kubernetes cluster with multiple developers working on different projects instead of spinning up a new cluster for every use case, which is what often happens.

Today, Loft launched version 3 of its virtual cluster solution, which includes a fully revamped user interface, a deeper integration with Argo CD and better support for GitOps-style deployments.

As Loft founder Lukas Gentele told me, the team got its start doing client work for other startups and then launched DevSpace, a tool that helps developers streamline their Kubernetes workflow. The founders applied to Y Combinator in 2018 with this idea and while they made it to the in-person interview round, they weren't chosen for that batch, they took it as validation of the idea. The team eventually got an offer from UC Berkeley's SkyDeck accelerator and built out a cloud version of DevSpace in the process. And while DevSpace Cloud had a few thousand users, they mostly used it as a hobby platform. This made it almost impossible to monetize. So after scrapping that idea, the team went back to the drawing board.

Image Credits: Loft

"We were reflecting on DevSpace Cloud and what went well, what did we learn and what was missing," Gentele told me about the origin of Loft. "The really big missing piece was: it's really freaking hard to share Kubernetes clusters. Multi-tenancy is an unsolved problem in Kubernetes. Nobody really knows how to do it. That's why so many companies create hundreds or even thousands of Kubernetes clusters."

With Loft, developers get one Kubernetes cluster and then the tool creates a container that hosts the cluster. "It functions and it interacts like a real Kubernetes cluster. I won't be able to tell the difference -- just like a virtual machine and a real physical machine," Gentele explained. Developers talk to the same Kubernetes API and use the same kubtctl CLI they are already used to.

"I think one thing that makes us unique is that we're super Kubernetes-native. There are a lot of these companies that now talk about platform engineering. I think a lot of them make the mistake of having a proprietary API. We've never done that. Our API is the Kubernetes API," Gentele explained.