Add SIG Apps spotlight
Co-authored-by: Sandipan Panda <samparksandipan@gmail.com>pull/49961/head
Frederico Munoz
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layout: blog
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title: "Spotlight on SIG Apps"
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slug: sig-apps-spotlight-2025
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canonicalUrl: https://www.kubernetes.dev/blog/2025/03/05/sig-apps-spotlight-2025
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date: 2025-03-05
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author: "Sandipan Panda (DevZero)"
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---
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In our ongoing SIG Spotlight series, we dive into the heart of the Kubernetes project by talking to
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the leaders of its various Special Interest Groups (SIGs). This time, we focus on
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**[SIG Apps](https://github.com/kubernetes/community/tree/master/sig-apps#apps-special-interest-group)**,
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the group responsible for everything related to developing, deploying, and operating applications on
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Kubernetes. [Sandipan Panda](https://www.linkedin.com/in/sandipanpanda)
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([DevZero](https://www.devzero.io/)) had the opportunity to interview [Maciej
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Szulik](https://github.com/soltysh) ([Defense Unicorns](https://defenseunicorns.com/)) and [Janet
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Kuo](https://github.com/janetkuo) ([Google](https://about.google/)), the chairs and tech leads of
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SIG Apps. They shared their experiences, challenges, and visions for the future of application
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management within the Kubernetes ecosystem.
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## Introductions
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**Sandipan: Hello, could you start by telling us a bit about yourself, your role, and your journey
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within the Kubernetes community that led to your current roles in SIG Apps?**
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**Maciej**: Hey, my name is Maciej, and I’m one of the leads for SIG-Apps. Aside from this role, you
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can also find me helping
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[SIG-CLI](https://github.com/kubernetes/community/tree/master/sig-cli#readme) and also being one of
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the Steering Committee members. I’ve been contributing to Kubernetes since late 2014 in various
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areas, including controllers, apiserver, and kubectl.
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**Janet**: Certainly! I'm Janet, a Staff Software Engineer at Google, and I've been deeply involved
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with the Kubernetes project since its early days, even before the 1.0 launch in 2015. It's been an
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amazing journey!
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My current role within the Kubernetes community is one of the chairs and tech leads of SIG Apps. My
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journey with SIG Apps started organically. I started with building the ``Deployment`` API and adding
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rolling update functionalities. I naturally gravitated towards SIG Apps and became increasingly
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involved. Over time, I took on more responsibilities, culminating in my current leadership roles.
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## About SIG Apps
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*All following answers were jointly provided by Maciej and Janet.*
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**Sandipan: For those unfamiliar, could you provide an overview of SIG Apps' mission and objectives?
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What key problems does it aim to solve within the Kubernetes ecosystem?**
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As described in our
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[charter](https://github.com/kubernetes/community/blob/master/sig-apps/charter.md#scope), we cover a
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broad area related to developing, deploying, and operating applications on Kubernetes. That, in
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short, means we’re open to each and everyone showing up at our bi-weekly meetings and discussing the
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ups and downs of writing and deploying various applications on Kubernetes.
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**Sandipan: What are some of the most significant projects or initiatives currently being undertaken
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by SIG Apps?**
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At this point in time, the main factors driving the development of our controllers are the
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challenges coming from running various AI-related workloads. It’s worth giving credit here to two
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working groups we’ve sponsored over the past years:
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1. [The batch work group](https://github.com/kubernetes/community/tree/master/wg-batch), which is
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looking at running HPC, AI/ML, and data analytics jobs on top of Kubernetes.
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2. [The serving work group](https://github.com/kubernetes/community/tree/master/wg-serving), which
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is focusing on hardware-accelerated AI/ML inference.
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## Best practices and challenges
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**Sandipan: SIG Apps plays a crucial role in developing application management best practices for
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Kubernetes. Can you share some of these best practices and how they help improve application
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lifecycle management?**
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1. Implementing [health checks and readiness probes](https://kubernetes.io/docs/tasks/configure-pod-container/configure-liveness-readiness-startup-probes/)
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ensures that your applications are healthy and ready to serve traffic, leading to improved
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reliability and uptime. The above, combined with comprehensive logging, monitoring, and tracing
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solutions, will provide insights into your application's behavior, enabling you to identify and
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resolve issues quickly.
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2. [Auto-scale your application](https://kubernetes.io/docs/concepts/workloads/autoscaling/) based
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on resource utilization or custom metrics, optimizing resource usage and ensuring your
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application can handle varying loads.
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3. Use ``Deployment`` for stateless applications, ``StatefulSet`` for stateful applications, ``Job``
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and ``CronJob`` for batch workloads, and ``DaemonSet`` for running a daemon on each node. Use
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Operators and CRDs to extend the Kubernetes API to automate the deployment, management, and
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lifecycle of complex applications, making them easier to operate and reducing manual
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intervention.
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**Sandipan: What are some of the common challenges SIG Apps faces, and how do you address them?**
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The biggest challenge we’re facing all the time is the need to reject a lot of features, ideas, and
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improvements. This requires a lot of discipline and patience to be able to explain the reasons
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behind those decisions.
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**Sandipan: How has the evolution of Kubernetes influenced the work of SIG Apps? Are there any
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recent changes or upcoming features in Kubernetes that you find particularly relevant or beneficial
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for SIG Apps?**
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The main benefit for both us and the whole community around SIG Apps is the ability to extend
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kubernetes with [Custom Resource Definitions](https://kubernetes.io/docs/concepts/extend-kubernetes/api-extension/custom-resources/)
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and the fact that users can build their own custom controllers leveraging the built-in ones to
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achieve whatever sophisticated use cases they might have and we, as the core maintainers, haven’t
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considered or weren’t able to efficiently resolve inside Kubernetes.
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## Contributing to SIG Apps
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**Sandipan: What opportunities are available for new contributors who want to get involved with SIG
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Apps, and what advice would you give them?**
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We get the question, "What good first issue might you recommend we start with?" a lot :-) But
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unfortunately, there’s no easy answer to it. We always tell everyone that the best option to start
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contributing to core controllers is to find one you are willing to spend some time with. Read
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through the code, then try running unit tests and integration tests focusing on that
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controller. Once you grasp the general idea, try breaking it and the tests again to verify your
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breakage. Once you start feeling confident you understand that particular controller, you may want
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to search through open issues affecting that controller and either provide suggestions, explaining
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the problem users have, or maybe attempt your first fix.
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Like we said, there are no shortcuts on that road; you need to spend the time with the codebase to
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understand all the edge cases we’ve slowly built up to get to the point where we are. Once you’re
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successful with one controller, you’ll need to repeat that same process with others all over again.
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**Sandipan: How does SIG Apps gather feedback from the community, and how is this feedback
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integrated into your work?**
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We always encourage everyone to show up and present their problems and solutions during our
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bi-weekly [meetings](https://github.com/kubernetes/community/tree/master/sig-cli#meetings). As long
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as you’re solving an interesting problem on top of Kubernetes and you can provide valuable feedback
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about any of the core controllers, we’re always happy to hear from everyone.
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## Looking ahead
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**Sandipan: Looking ahead, what are the key focus areas or upcoming trends in application management
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within Kubernetes that SIG Apps is excited about? How is the SIG adapting to these trends?**
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Definitely the current AI hype is the major driving factor; as mentioned above, we have two working
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groups, each covering a different aspect of it.
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**Sandipan: What are some of your favorite things about this SIG?**
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Without a doubt, the people that participate in our meetings and on
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[Slack](https://kubernetes.slack.com/messages/sig-cli), who tirelessly help triage issues, pull
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requests and invest a lot of their time (very frequently their private time) into making kubernetes
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great!
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---
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SIG Apps is an essential part of the Kubernetes community, helping to shape how applications are
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deployed and managed at scale. From its work on improving Kubernetes' workload APIs to driving
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innovation in AI/ML application management, SIG Apps is continually adapting to meet the needs of
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modern application developers and operators. Whether you’re a new contributor or an experienced
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developer, there’s always an opportunity to get involved and make an impact.
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If you’re interested in learning more or contributing to SIG Apps, be sure to check out their [SIG
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README](https://github.com/kubernetes/community/tree/master/sig-apps) and join their bi-weekly
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meetings:
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- [Mailing List](https://groups.google.com/a/kubernetes.io/g/sig-apps)
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- [Slack Channel](https://kubernetes.slack.com/messages/sig-apps)
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