formae adds Kubernetes support & public plugin hub

Platform Engineering Labs has added Kubernetes support and a public plugin hub to its open-source infrastructure-as-code platform, formae. The update also expands the software's integration with Helm and Terraform variable files.

Users can now manage standard Kubernetes resources and managed versions such as EKS and AKS through formae. The release also adds native support for Helm charts, widely used to package and deploy applications in Kubernetes environments.

Teams can continue using other tools to manage Kubernetes clusters while formae records changes and versions the underlying infrastructure state. Rather than replacing existing operational tools, the software is positioned as a central record across Kubernetes and cloud environments.

The changes extend formae beyond virtual machines and cloud resources into container orchestration, now central to many platform engineering operations. Kubernetes has become standard infrastructure for companies running cloud-native applications, while Helm is a common way to manage deployments and reusable application definitions.

Platform Engineering Labs also introduced a public plugin hub, giving users a central place to publish and install extensions for formae. It follows the launch of the company's plugin software development kit and includes a build and test environment intended to check reliability and compatibility.

The new plugin model is designed to simplify installation and management across teams and environments. That addresses a common issue in infrastructure tooling, where dependencies can become tied to individual projects and create extra administrative work as organisations grow.

Kubernetes move

Adding Kubernetes support is a notable step for the product, bringing one of the most widely used infrastructure layers into the same management framework. Users can now work with both vanilla Kubernetes and cloud-provider variants within the platform.

"k8s was the last major integration we needed to fully catch up with incumbents decades older than us," said Pavlo Baron, co-founder and CEO of Platform Engineering Labs.

"We put significant thought and innovation into our Kubernetes support, making it fully consistent with the rest of formae: go from knowing what to change in infrastructure to actually changing it in no time - without unnecessary effort and with complete safety," Baron said.

Formae can automatically discover resources directly from existing infrastructure, so teams moving from other infrastructure-as-code tools do not need to migrate resources into a new format first. The approach is intended to reduce the rework often involved in switching management systems.

Terraform links

As part of the same update, formae can now consume .tfvars files directly. Those files are commonly used with Terraform to store deployment parameters, and direct support lets teams carry existing configuration values into formae without rewriting them first.

The product is also designed to work with other configuration sources and databases. That suggests Platform Engineering Labs is trying to lower barriers for organisations with mixed tooling estates, rather than requiring them to standardise on a single configuration-management method before adoption.

An external user pointed to the appeal of having infrastructure and Kubernetes resources represented in one place. "k8s and the cloud-native ecosystem have become the backbone of modern platform engineering - but that backbone needs a true system of record," said Marc Schnitzius, platform engineering lead at codecentric.

"formae provides exactly that: a single, continuously codified source of truth across your entire k8s estate and cloud providers. From VM provisioning to k8s resources in one system, this is platform engineering as it should be," Schnitzius said.

Formae is available under the FSL licence through GitHub, with documentation for users and plugin builders, plus community support through Discord.