Draft has been created to help developers with not prior experience with Kubernetes or Docker. It aids them through process and gets them start with tools early in the workflow. The tool analyses applications code when a dev runs it from the command line. Through the analysis, Draft detects the language being used and automatically creates the source files to prepare if to run on Kubernetes. In the documentation for the open source service, Microsoft says this is a valuable tool. The company points out that experienced Kubernetes users can get containers running easily. However, many organizations do not have large numbers of dev’s with this experience. Instead of finding ways to expand knowledge base within an organization, Draft gives customers an effortless way for all dev’s to start working with Kubernetes. “This stuff is way too hard,” says Gabe Monroy, a program management lead at Microsoft. “The conceptual barrier is way too difficult, and people don’t know how to get started with it.” As the idea suggests, using Draft is easy. Once the tool is set up, developers just run it in command lines to let the app create Kubernetes clusters. Microsoft says the true focus of the tool is to deploy apps on remote clusters either on-premises or in the cloud.
Born from Deis
Draft is a fruition of Deis. Microsoft acquired the company back in April and discussed how it would leverage Deis to simplify use of containers: “With this increase in agility and portability, containers are helping to make applications the new currency in the cloud. At Microsoft, we’ve seen explosive growth in both interest and deployment of containerized workloads on Azure.”
