Why is the LSST Science Platform built on Kubernetes?

TL;DR

The paper explains why Kubernetes was chosen for deploying the LSST Science Platform, detailing the reasoning, deployment principles, and how others can adopt similar practices for astronomy software.

Contribution

It demonstrates the use of Kubernetes and Helm for deploying the LSST Science Platform and provides guidance for external groups to customize and deploy their own instances.

Findings

Kubernetes offers scalable and flexible deployment for LSST Science Platform.

Using Helm simplifies deployment and customization.

The approach can be adopted by other astronomy software projects.

Abstract

LSST has chosen Kubernetes as the platform for deploying and operating the LSST Science Platform. We first present the background reasoning behind this decision, including both instrument-agnostic as well as LSST-specific requirements. We then discuss the basic principles of Kubernetes and Helm, and how they are used as the deployment base for the LSST Science Platform. Furthermore, we provide an example of how an external group may use these publicly available software resources to deploy their own instance of the LSST Science Platform, and customize it to their needs. Finally, we discuss how more astronomy software can follow these patterns to gain similar benefits.