NATO Federated Coalition Cloud with Kubernetes: A National Prototype Perspective

In NATO, the IST-168 research task group (RTG) “Adaptive Information Processing and Distribution To Support Command and Control” aims to investigate cloud computing at the tactical edge from a coalition force perspective. From recent developments in cloud computing and DevSecOps stemming from civilian use, but also with increasing adoption for military applications, virtualization of infrastructure and containerization of software is currently a preferred approach to cloud computing. Containers provide a lightweight approach to packaging and orchestrating software components and services. Kubernetes is a tool for orchestrating and managing deployment, scaling and migration of such containers. In the NATO IST-168 RTG, the emphasis is on interoperability and interconnecting different nations’ Kubernetes clusters. The work described in this paper presents Norway’s contribution to the RTG.