Community: WG Checkpoint Restore Charter

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

WG Checkpoint Restore Charter

This charter adheres to the conventions described in the Kubernetes Charter README and uses the Roles and Organization Management outlined in wg-governance .

Scope

The Checkpoint/Restore Working Group aims to solve the problem of transparently checkpointing and restoring workloads in Kubernetes, a functionality discussed for over five years . The group will deliver the design and implementation of Checkpoint/Restore functionality in Kubernetes, serving as a central hub for community information and discussion. This initiative addresses a wide range of problems, including fault tolerance, improved resource utilization, and accelerated application startup times.

In scope

Identify core Kubernetes checkpoint/restore use cases (e.g., live migration, fault tolerance, debugging, snapshotting) and gather stakeholder requirements.
Investigate and propose Kubernetes APIs for checkpoint/restore operations.
Work with SIGs for the best integration of checkpoint/restore functionality and APIs.
Provide guidance for developers on checkpoint-friendly app design and recommendations for operators on feature management.
Work closely with relevant upstream projects (CRI-O, containerd, CRIU, gVisor) for alignment and integration.
Revisit the existing implementations to find and remedy possible inefficiencies. One example is the existing checkpoint archive format which has already been identified as being a major source of slowdown.

Out of scope

Not focused on general OS-level checkpointing outside Kubernetes pods/containers.
Will not dictate internal application checkpointing logic; focuses on Kubernetes platform orchestration of *container/pod state.

Stakeholders

Stakeholders in this working group span multiple SIGs that own parts of the code in core kubernetes components and addons.

SIG Node
SIG Scheduling
SIG Auth
SIG Apps

Deliverables

The list of deliverables include the following high level features:

In the early stage, we mainly want to offer a well-defined location for the community to find information, ask questions, and discuss the next steps of enabling checkpoint and restore in Kubernetes.

Later:

Ability to checkpoint and restore a container using kubectl
Ability to checkpoint and restore a pod using kubectl
Integration of container/pod checkpointing in scheduling decisions

Roles and Organization Management

This WG adheres to the Roles and Organization Management outlined in wg-governance and opts-in to updates and modifications to wg-governance .

Additionally, the WG commits to:

maintain a solid communication line between the Kubernetes groups and the wider CNCF community

Timelines and Disbanding

As a first mandate, the WG will propose a draft roadmap and identify key tasks in the first quarter of operation.

After that, the WG will facilitate collaboration among community members to explore possible APIs and draft proposals for their integration into Kubernetes, which will then be presented to the relevant SIGs.

Achieving the aforementioned deliverables, also mentioned in the In Scope section, will allow us to decide when to disband this WG. There is no expectations that the Working Group will be converted into a SIG long term.

Kubernetes Contributors – WG Checkpoint Restore