Red Hat has gotten together with close pals AWS, Google Cloud and Microsoft to create a public registry for Kubernetes Operator-backed services.

OperatorHub.io, according to the blogpost announcing the move, will offer developers and Kubernetes admins “curated Operator-backed services for a base level of documentation, active communities or vendor-backing to show maintenance commitments, basic testing, and packaging for optimized life-cycle management on Kubernetes.”

Operators are described as “a method of packaging, deploying and managing a Kubernetes-native application” while a Kubernetes application is one that is “both deployed on Kubernetes and managed using the Kubernetes APIs and kubectl tooling.”

The Operator can take care of “sometimes routine, mundane and complex” tasks needed to run an application on Kubernetes, including updates, backups and scaling, and scanning for “things out of place”.

Given that implementing Kubernetes is not exactly child’s play, Operators have been embraced by users, but as the backers of the hub say, finding them, and ensuring they meet quality standards remains a challenge.

So as well as solving the former, the hub’s backers will work towards the latter by ensuring listed Operators meet a “series of basic tests”, including showing cluster lifecycle features, approved packaging and “acceptable documentation”.

The Operator concept was introduced by CoreOS Inc back in 2016 as a way to streamline deploying applications onto Kubernetes clusters. CoreOS was subsequently taken over by Red Hat last May, and the new owner continued to push the concept.

Red Hat is itself in the throes of being taken over by IBM, with the deal set to close sometime in the second half of this year, but as today’s deal shows, the Operator pattern has gained industry-wide support. At launch, yesterday, the hub listed 12 operators including AWS, Couchbase, etcd, MongoDB, Prometheus and Redis, three of which were provided by RedHat.