Cloud Drops Episode #003 - Kubernetes Documentary, Rakuten acquires Robin, Platform9 and more

Welcome to Cloud Drops Episode 3 — our round-up of the most important cloud native news from across the ecosystem. This week: the Kubernetes Documentary, Rakuten's acquisition of Robin.io, Platform9's latest moves, and other headlines worth your attention.

The Kubernetes Documentary

Honeypot.io released the Kubernetes Documentary — a two-part film covering the origins and growth of Kubernetes from a Google internal project to the de facto container orchestration standard. The documentary features interviews with original Kubernetes contributors including Joe Beda, Brendan Burns, and Craig McLuckie, as well as CNCF leadership and community members.

It's worth watching for historical context on how Kubernetes was built and why key design decisions were made. Understanding the original intent behind Kubernetes architecture helps senior engineers make better decisions about how to use (and not abuse) the platform. Watch it on YouTube — both parts are free.

Rakuten Acquires Robin.io

Rakuten Symphony acquired Robin.io, the Kubernetes storage and infrastructure platform company. Robin.io builds specialized Kubernetes distributions focused on 5G/telco workloads and data-intensive applications. The acquisition gives Rakuten Symphony — which provides telecom software and services — stronger cloud native infrastructure capabilities for its global telecom operator customers.

This is part of an ongoing consolidation trend in the Kubernetes infrastructure space. Specialized Kubernetes distributions targeting vertical use cases (telco, AI, edge) are increasingly attractive acquisition targets as enterprises demand purpose-built platforms with vendor support rather than assembling their own stacks.

Platform9 Updates

Platform9 — the managed Kubernetes platform — continues to expand its multi-cloud management capabilities. Their approach: bring managed Kubernetes semantics (automated upgrades, built-in observability, vendor support) to clusters running on any infrastructure — bare metal, VMware, and public clouds. It's particularly relevant for organizations with on-premises infrastructure that want a managed Kubernetes experience without migrating to public cloud.

Other News This Week

• Helm v3.11 released with improved OCI registry support and chart provenance verification improvements
• Cilium 1.13 released with improved network policy logging and Gateway API support improvements
• Argo Workflows 3.4 added support for artifact streaming and improved artifact garbage collection

Stay current on cloud native developments by subscribing to Cloud Drops. We cover the Kubernetes ecosystem news that matters for engineering teams building and operating cloud native platforms.

Cloud Drops Episode 003 – Summary

Topics Covered

• Honeypot’s Kubernetes Documentary (Parts 1 & 2)
• Rakuten Symphony’s acquisition of Robin.io
• CNCF landscape updates: Knative’s move to incubation
• Kubernetes deprecating Dockershim and moving to containerd/CRI-O

Big Stories This Week

1. The Kubernetes Documentary (Honeypot)

Honeypot’s two-part Kubernetes Documentary traces how Kubernetes evolved from Google’s internal systems (notably Borg) into the de facto standard for cloud-native infrastructure. It highlights:

• Origins at Google – How lessons from Borg and Omega influenced Kubernetes’ architecture.
• Container Orchestration Wars – The competitive phase between Kubernetes, Docker Swarm, Mesos/Marathon, and others.
• Kubernetes as the Winner – Why its architecture, community, and governance model helped it dominate.

Why it matters for practitioners

The documentary explains the rationale behind key Kubernetes design choices:

• Declarative APIs – Desired state is described via YAML/JSON; the system converges towards that state.
• Control Loop Reconciliation – Controllers continuously compare actual vs. desired state and reconcile differences.
• Extensibility Model – Custom controllers, CRDs, and operators allow teams to extend Kubernetes without forking it.

Teams that understand these “whys” can:

• Design architectures that align with Kubernetes’ reconciliation model.
• Build robust operators and controllers instead of relying on brittle scripts.
• Make better trade-offs around multi-tenancy, reliability, and scalability.

2. Rakuten Symphony Acquires Robin.io

Rakuten Symphony has acquired Robin.io, a company focused on application-aware storage and data management for Kubernetes.

What Robin.io brings

• Application-aware storage – Storage policies and operations (provisioning, snapshots, backups, migration) tied to the application, not just raw volumes.
• Stateful workload focus – Databases, message queues, analytics engines, and data pipelines running on Kubernetes.

Why this acquisition matters

• Stateful on Kubernetes is mainstream – Running databases and data platforms on Kubernetes is no longer experimental; it’s production reality.
• Ecosystem investment is accelerating – More vendors and platforms are investing in:
• Stateful sets and advanced storage orchestration
• Data protection, backup/restore, and DR for Kubernetes
• Performance and QoS for data-heavy workloads

THNKBIG supports enterprises in this space through our cloud-native consulting practice, helping design and implement stateful workload architectures on Kubernetes. Talk to us.

3. Knative Accepted as a CNCF Incubating Project

Knative, a Kubernetes-based serverless platform, has been accepted as a CNCF Incubating Project.

Key capabilities

• Scale-to-zero – Automatically scale workloads down to zero when idle, reducing costs.
• Event-driven model – Trigger workloads based on events (HTTP, messaging, cloud events, etc.).
• Kubernetes-native – Built on Kubernetes primitives, allowing teams to stay within the Kubernetes ecosystem.

Why it’s important

• Offers serverless-style development (focus on code, not infrastructure) without locking into proprietary FaaS platforms.
• Fits organizations that want:
• Kubernetes as the control plane
• Portability across clouds and on-prem
• A consistent operational model for both long-running and event-driven workloads

4. Kubernetes is Moving on From Dockershim

Kubernetes has confirmed the removal of Dockershim in v1.24, requiring clusters to use a Container Runtime Interface (CRI)-compliant runtime such as containerd or CRI-O.

What this means

• Docker as a runtime shim is deprecated and removed from core Kubernetes.
• Clusters must migrate to:
• containerd (commonly used and supported by many managed Kubernetes offerings)
• CRI-O (purpose-built for Kubernetes)

Action items for teams

• Audit current clusters to identify if Dockershim/Docker is still in use as the runtime.
• Plan and test migration to containerd or CRI-O.
• Update operational tooling (logging, monitoring, debugging workflows) to work with the new runtime.

Key Takeaways

• Episode focus – Cloud Drops Episode 003 highlights the Kubernetes Documentary, Rakuten’s Robin.io acquisition, and broader CNCF/Kubernetes ecosystem changes.
• Historical context matters – The Kubernetes Documentary is essential viewing for teams building on Kubernetes; understanding the project’s origins clarifies why its APIs, control loops, and extensibility model look the way they do.
• Stateful workloads are first-class – Rakuten’s acquisition of Robin.io underscores that databases, queues, and data platforms on Kubernetes are now core, production workloads, not experiments.
• Serverless on Kubernetes is maturing – Knative’s CNCF incubation status validates Kubernetes-native serverless as a serious, community-backed option.
• Runtime changes require action – The Dockershim removal in Kubernetes 1.24 forces teams to complete their migration to containerd or CRI-O and adapt their operational practices accordingly.