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Eirini

Eirini is a Cloud Foundry component that enables Cloud Foundry application workloads to run as Kubernetes-native containers using the Kubernetes orchestration layer instead of the traditional Diego architecture.

  • Runs Cloud Foundry application instances as Kubernetes pods (container orchestration)
  • Implements staging and lifecycle management for Cloud Foundry apps on Kubernetes (platform runtime)
  • Integrates with Cloud Foundry’s Cloud Controller and routing stack to preserve the Developer Experience (DevEx) (PaaS integration)
  • Uses Kubernetes constructs for scheduling, scaling, and health management of application instances (infrastructure orchestration)
  • Provides an option to operate Cloud Foundry on top of existing Kubernetes clusters (hybrid PaaS-on-Kubernetes deployment)

More About Eirini

Eirini is a project within the Cloud Foundry ecosystem that allows Cloud Foundry application workloads to be scheduled and managed by Kubernetes rather than the Diego runtime. It targets organizations that want to retain the Cloud Foundry DevEx and Application Programming Interface (API) while standardizing on Kubernetes as the underlying container orchestration platform (container orchestration).

Within a Cloud Foundry deployment, Eirini integrates with the Cloud Controller (platform runtime) so that developers continue to use the same workflows, such as pushing applications, binding services, and managing routes. When an application is pushed, Eirini handles the staging process to produce an OCI-compliant container image (container build and lifecycle) and then uses Kubernetes primitives such as pods, deployments, and replica sets to run and scale the application instances (workload scheduling and scaling).

Eirini interacts with the Cloud Foundry routing tier (application networking) so Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) and Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) traffic can be directed to application instances running as Kubernetes pods without requiring changes to application configuration. It is designed to work with standard Kubernetes clusters, which allows platform teams to colocate Cloud Foundry workloads with other Kubernetes-based workloads or reuse existing cluster infrastructure (infrastructure consolidation).

From an architectural perspective, Eirini introduces components that translate Cloud Foundry concepts—such as processes, instances, and health checks—into Kubernetes objects and behaviors (platform abstraction). This includes reconciling desired state from Cloud Foundry with the actual state in the Kubernetes cluster and reporting back application status, logs, and events through the Cloud Foundry control plane (observability integration).

Enterprises use Eirini when they want Cloud Foundry’s opinionated application platform model while adopting Kubernetes as a common runtime standard across teams and environments. It fits into categorization schemes as a Cloud Foundry runtime backend that leverages Kubernetes (PaaS runtime on Kubernetes), supporting use cases such as multi-cloud deployments, on-premises (on-prem) Kubernetes clusters, and integration with Kubernetes-native tooling for operations, security, and monitoring (platform and operations tooling interoperability).