Trow

Image Management for Kubernetes

We're building an image management solution for Kubernetes (and possibly other orchestrators). At its heart is the Trow Registry, which runs inside the cluster, is simple to set-up and fully integrated with Kubernetes, including support for auditing and RBAC.

Why "Trow"

"Trow" is a word with multiple, divergent meanings. In Shetland folklore a trow is a small, mischievous creature, similar to the Scandanavian troll. In England, it is a old style of cargo boat that transported goods on rivers. Finally, it is an archaic word meaning "to think, believe, or trust". The reader is free to choose which interpretation they like most, but it should be pronounced to rhyme with "brow".

Use Cases

The primary goal for Trow is to create a registry that runs within Kubernetes and provides a secure and fast way to get containers running on the cluster.

A major focus is providing controls for cluster administrators to define which images can run in the cluster. Trow can prevent unauthorised and potentially insecure or malicious images from touching your cluster.

Features include:

allowing operations such as approve/deny lists for images and external registries (implemented)
full auditing and authentication of image access (in progress)
distributed architecture for HA and scalability (planned)

Install

If you want to quickly try out Trow on a development cluster (either local or remote), follow the quick install instructions.

This screencast shows how quick it is to get started:

Normal installations and all production installations should follow the standard installation instructions. The standard install requires a sub-domain that can pointed at the registry. The install is based on Kustomize, making it simple to install and maintain, and ideal for clusters following the GitOps model.

Note that Trow is currently alpha and you can expect to find rough edges.

Tests

There is a reasonably large test suite, which can be run with the docker/test.sh script.

Docs

Work has started on a User Guide. Currently this explains how to persist images and how to list repositories and tags via curl.

Notes

The project currently runs on Rust Nightly.