At least 15 sessions at this month’s Red Hat Virtual Summit will examine Kubernetes Operators. O’Reilly Media’s new release, Kubernetes Operators: Automating the Container Orchestration Platform, can make you the teacher’s pet in every one of them. Written by Red Hat’s Jason Dobies and Joshua Wood, the book is an essential guide to crafting applications that are Kubernetes natives.

A Kubernetes application doesn’t just run on Kubernetes; it is composed and managed in Kubernetes terms. Operators extend Kubernetes with custom controllers watching custom API resources to add application-specific operational knowledge to a cluster. Think of your DBA’s disaster handbook encoded in software, or your network engineers’ know-how automatically keeping things on your cluster connected. Operators coordinate application upgrades, repair failures by restoring complex resources, and automate repetitive toil, such as backups.

Kubernetes Operators shows the problems Operators try to solve and explains how Operators fit into the Kubernetes API. Going on to describe the Operator Framework and its SDK, the book guides readers in building an Operator for a simple multi-tiered application. Kubernetes Operators concludes with how Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) principles can guide advanced Operator design beyond the lifecycle basics.

More than 30,000 people have already registered for Red Hat Virtual Summit, and we hope you’ll join us there, too. With a copy of Kubernetes Operators, you’ll be more than prepared to go in-depth at any of the Operator talks and labs. Read it online with O’Reilly, or get a paperback at any major bookstore. A sponsored PDF edition is also available for a limited time courtesy of Red Hat.

Once you’ve cracked open your copy, be sure to check out Summit presentations with both authors, from Operator concepts with Joshua Wood, to a look at automation on the OpenShift Kubernetes platform with Jason Dobies. Have questions about the book or Operators in general? Both writers will be available during some of the virtual open neighborhood hours each day of Red Hat Summit.