Walrus Goes Open Source: Built on Platform Engineering Concept

Today, Seal Software announced the official open-sourcing of Walrus, an application management platform built upon the concept of platform engineering. It is dedicated to addressing the significant pain points in the realm of application delivery.

Walrus extends cloud-native capabilities and best practices to non-containerized environments. It supports the unified, orchestrated deployment of applications in any form, simplifying infrastructure usage, providing development and DevOps teams with an intuitive, consistent application management and deployment experience, and fostering a seamless and collaborative software delivery process.

After more than six months of development and refinement, Walrus has introduced several user-favored features. These include one-click deployment and cloning of complex application systems, integrated AI-powered large language models for simplifying template code generation, and flexible, powerful application and environment dynamic management capabilities.

Notably, all members of the Seal team come from the core team of Rancher, the most widely used open-source Kubernetes management platform in the industry. Upholding the Seal team's commitment to open-source principles, Walrus is now officially open source under the Apache 2.0 license. We eagerly anticipate delivering a new application deployment experience and reshaping the software delivery landscape.

"Open source has always been at the core of the Seal team's values, and relentless innovation has been our ongoing pursuit," said George Qin, co-founder, and CEO of Seal. "By open-sourcing Walrus, we aim to provide all developers with a straightforward and refreshing application deployment and management experience. We are excited to collaborate with users within the open-source community to explore the full potential of Walrus."

GitHub: https://github.com/seal-io/walrus    
TechDocs: https://seal-io.github.io/docs    

Addressing the "last mile" challenge in DevOps Deployment

While many organizations have embraced the DevOps culture, the complexity of modern software development has surged with the widespread use of distributed systems. This has led to challenges such as unmanageable infrastructure and environments within enterprises and an increasing cognitive load on developers. Implementing DevOps now faces the "last mile" challenge.

Platform engineering marks the next stage of DevOps. It enhances traditional collaboration models and scales DevOps through infrastructure automation, user self-service, and AI-driven application self-delivery, deployment, and management (ADAS).

Walrus lightens the cognitive load on developers by providing flexible and robust application and environment deployment management capabilities. It shields developers from the underlying technical details, allowing them to build, deploy, and run applications independently.

Simultaneously, the DevOps or platform team manages multiple environments, including development, testing, and production, using environment dependency graphs and multi-level variable configurations. This approach enhances infrastructure controllability and visibility.

Crafting a Streamlined and Invigorating Application Deployment Journey

Harnessing Team Excellence

Walrus prioritizes the implementation of team best practices, ensuring a seamless and efficient deployment process. Our service templates adhere to the "DRY" (Don't Repeat Yourself) principle, allowing users to effortlessly reuse them while gradually absorbing the wisdom of development and DevOps teams.

In our latest release, we proudly introduce the Catalog feature, seamlessly integrated with the native Terraform Module repository management mode. This empowers users to tap into a wealth of mature Modules from the thriving Terraform community, effortlessly customizing service templates tailored to their unique application requirements. Moreover, Catalog offers a unified hub for managing service templates, simplifying the entire process.

Furthermore, Walrus seamlessly incorporates a robust AI component in the form of a large language model AI, enabling a harmonious fusion of AI technology and application management through the AI Agent mode. Users now have the remarkable capability to effortlessly generate service template code using natural language. Moreover, they can easily rectify and interpret the code generated, adding an extra layer of simplicity and finesse to the application deployment process.

Eliminating Redundant Configurations

Walrus goes the extra mile in minimizing redundancy with robust features. It empowers users with the ability to perform bulk cloning of services and environments effortlessly. With this functionality, users can seamlessly duplicate existing service configurations into one or multiple target environments.

Furthermore, Walrus offers extensive support for parameter definitions during the cloning process. This allows users to expedite the creation of new environments, leveraging the configurations and services of existing ones. This includes replicating not only application-related services but also vital infrastructure resources within the environment. This streamlines the entire configuration process, enhancing efficiency and reducing duplication.

Upon the creation of a cloned environment, users gain seamless access to utilize it in their application management endeavors. Notably, the cloned services are automatically orchestrated and deployed in accordance with their dependency relationships. This dynamic orchestration eliminates the need for redundant internal configurations, optimizing the workflow, and fortifying the reliability of software delivery.

In essence, this streamlined approach ensures that resources are efficiently utilized, thereby enhancing the overall effectiveness and dependability of the deployment process.

Walrus Roadmap Ahead

Seal remains dedicated to forging a seamless application deployment experience within the realm of software delivery. In the forthcoming months, we are steering the Walrus initiative toward the following pivotal scenarios:

• Addressing Diverse Enterprise Needs: Our focus will extend to catering to the demands of intricate enterprise scenarios. Expect automation in the management of application environment lifecycles, an augmentation of traditional deployment models, streamlining application release workflows and approvals, and the introduction of configuration drift detection mechanisms.

• Elevating Policy Control: We are committed to strengthening our policy control capabilities. This entails automatic prevention or notification of deployment and configuration risks, ensuring airtight security and compliance.

• Advancing AI-Driven Scenarios: Prepare for a more intelligent future with Walrus. We are pushing the boundaries of AI capabilities, including natural language-based application management, AI-powered analysis, and fault localization, fostering an environment of AI-driven intelligence.

Exciting News!    
In addition to our ongoing Walrus efforts, we're thrilled to announce that our AI project is on the horizon and will soon be available as an open-source endeavor. Stay tuned for more updates and innovations in the world of AI with Seal!

Join the Thriving Walrus Community

At Walrus, our mission is to simplify and streamline the application deployment and management experience, empowering development and DevOps teams to eliminate redundancy and elevate the development process.

If you have any inquiries or ideas regarding Walrus, we invite you to be part of our global Discord community, where you can connect with Seal's core team engineers directly!

Join us on Discord: https://discord.gg/fXZUKK2baF

Walrus thrives on community involvement and contributions. If you share our enthusiasm for Walrus, please consider giving us a star on GitHub.

Visit us on GitHub: https://github.com/seal-io/walrus

Stay tuned for our upcoming open-source release, and let's shape the future of software delivery together!