Meet the Container Experts: Karan Goel

Tell us a bit about yourself and your background, how did you get involved in containers at Google?

I’m a software engineer on the Cluster Lifecycle team at Google in Seattle. The team primarily works on the Cluster API that aims to simplify Kubernetes cluster management. Before that I worked on App Engine Flexible Environment to help developers build scalable apps without thinking about infrastructure.

What projects most excite you in the container ecosystem at the moment?

Perhaps the answer is too simple here, but for me it’s Kubernetes. It provides new and better primitives for infrastructure and containers, while being heavily extensible. Beyond the technical aspects, what makes K8s exciting for me is also the community. Every single person working on or with the project is genuinely excited by it, and wants to drive the industry forward. I take a great sense of pride in working with these people, and learning from them.

Is there someone in the container community who you admire for their work?

Kelsey Hightower is probably the most prominent advocate and though leader in the containers, Kubernetes and serverless industry. I find that a lot of my principles align with his, especially when it comes of open source.

Without giving too much away, what three things will people learn from your Container Camp AU talk?

1. What is Cluster API and why should you care.

2. How you can use the new Cluster API to set up and manage clusters across multiple cloud providers.

3. Why machine upgrades are hard and how the Cluster API simplifies it.

Join Karan in Melbourne on May 23–25th for his Container Camp AU talk ‘Set up and manage multi-cloud clusters using the Cluster API’.