Use Knative When You Can, and Kubernetes When You Must

Knative offers benefits for security and resource management in microservices on Kubernetes

• Knative offers auto-scaling to dynamically adjust the number of pods based on load
• Knative provides revision management to help manage changes to microservices
• Knative is working on adding TLS to reduce reliance on service mesh for security
• Knative promotes uniformity in services for easier security and monitoring

Microservices are vulnerable to cyber attacks even if best practices are followed, and over-provisioning can lead to unnecessary energy consumption. Knative's auto-scaling and revision management features can help address these issues, while also promoting uniformity for easier security and monitoring. Additionally, Knative is working on adding TLS to reduce reliance on service mesh for security.

Knative extends Kubernetes. It lowers costs and improves the security of the deployed services. …and yes! it also helps you become greener and save energy. This talk provides a fresh view of Knative. Forget about Serverless, consider Knative simply as an Opinionated Kubernetes. Knative advantages include Automation, Simplification, Auto-Scaling, Controlled-Revisions, and An Application Backbone. Deploying services via Knative is therefore a better choice than deploying the same services using Kubernetes directly. Knative requires each deployed service to work in a certain way. We show that many existing microservices are already built to run as Knative services offering an immediate benefit to users. Since Knative extends Kubernetes, it allows a mix and match between Knative services and Kubernetes microservices. We analyze the security benefits of deploying your services via Knative and show how Knative help protect users against configuration drift. We also show that even when users deploy vulnerable services, Knative protects such services from being exploited. Last, we show how using Knative reduces the energy footprint of your services and discuss what the future holds to continuing on this path of making Kubernetes energy efficient.