7.4. Develop for Operators

Packaging and deploying your application as an Operator might be preferred if you make your application available for others to run. As noted earlier, Operators add a lifecycle component to your application that acknowledges that the job of running an application is not complete as soon as it is installed.

When you create an application as an Operator, you can build in your own knowledge of how to run and maintain the application. You can build in features for upgrading the application, backing it up, scaling it, or keeping track of its state. If you configure the application correctly, maintenance tasks, like updating the Operator, can happen automatically and invisibly to the Operator’s users.

An example of a useful Operator is one that is set up to automatically back up data at particular times. Having an Operator manage an application’s backup at set times can save a system administrator from remembering to do it.

Any application maintenance that has traditionally been completed manually, like backing up data or rotating certificates, can be completed automatically with an Operator.