Overview

Spegel enables nodes to share images with each other.

Kubernetes does a great job at distributing workloads on multiple nodes. Allowing node failures to occur without affecting uptime. A critical component for this to work is that each node has to pull the workload images before the container can start.

The images may be pulled from geographically close registries within the cloud provider, public registries, or self-hosted registries. This process has a flaw in that each node has to make this round trip separately. Even if the data they download is identical.

What is Spegel Enterprise?

Spegel Enterprise is extension of the popular and proven Spegel OSS adding features specifically tailored for large scale deployments. Along with expanding the feature set in Spegel it adds Optik, a tracker and coordinator. Optik enables features like pre-seeding images and tighter integrations with Kubernetes to ensure your cluster can run even when external infrastructure isn’t.

How does Spegel Enterprise work?

Spegel Enterprise is made up of two components. Spegel and Optik a tracker that has a global perspective and orchestrates Spegel instances. Optik is both a Kubernetes webhook as well as the rendevouz point for bootstrapping the DHT.

When an image is pulled the request is first redirected to the local Spegel instance. Each instance is a member of a DHT, enabling quick lookups of images. If another instance has the required image the request is forwarded and served from the Containerd image cache. If the image cannot be found in any instance it will fallback to pulling from the upstream registry.

Who is Spegel Enterprise for?

Spegel Enterprise is for any company that needs the proven benefits of Spegel tuned for large scaled deployments and critical environments.