Kubernetes: Helm vs Crossplane vs kro (Honest Comparison)

Description

🔥 48% of Kubernetes users struggle with tool choice. AWS just adopted kro - is this the Goldilocks solution? In this episode: 00:00 - News: Shai-Hulud npm supply chain attack (500+ packages compromised) 02:30 - News: Ingress-nginx retirement (March 2026) 03:30 - News: Netflix Maestro 100x faster 04:00 - The 48% Problem: Tool fatigue is crushing platform teams 05:00 - Helm: Why it's "too simple" (architectural limitations) 06:30 - Crossplane: Why it's "too complex" (XRD/Composition model) 08:00 - kro: ResourceGraphDefinition deep dive 09:30 - CEL expressions: syntax, operators, functions 11:00 - Resource graph: topological sorting and dependencies 12:00 - Status aggregation and developer experience 13:00 - Viktor Farcic's criticism (honest take) 14:00 - GitOps integration: Argo CD and Flux 15:00 - Real-world use cases and migration paths 16:30 - Decision framework walkthrough 18:00 - When to use kro (and when NOT to) Key takeaways: ✅ 48% of K8s users struggle with tool choice (up from 29%) ✅ Decision framework: Cloud resources → Crossplane; K8s composition → kro ✅ CEL expressions: same syntax as K8s validation rules and Gateway API ✅ GitOps integration: kro CRDs work naturally with Argo CD and Flux ✅ Viktor Farcic criticism: "No compelling improvement" - fair, but fills a gap ✅ Wait for v1.0 before production - currently alpha (v1alpha1) Resources: 📚 kro GitHub: https://github.com/kubernetes-sigs/kro 📚 CNCF Blog: https://www.cncf.io/blog/2025/12/15/building-platforms-using-kro-for-composition/ 📚 AWS EKS Capabilities: https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/announcing-amazon-eks-capabilities-for-workload-orchestration-and-cloud-resource-management/ 📚 InfoQ Analysis (Viktor Farcic): https://www.infoq.com/news/2025/02/kube-resource-orchestrator/ 📚 Spectro Cloud 2024 Survey: https://www.spectrocloud.com/news/spectro-cloud-releases-2024-state-of-production-kubernetes 📚 Episode page: https://platformengineering.org/podcasts/00060-kro-goldilocks-kubernetes-composition News Segment Links: 🔗 Shai-Hulud npm Attack Postmortem: https://trigger.dev/blog/the-shai-hulud-2-0-attack-postmortem 🔗 Ingress-nginx Retirement: https://github.com/kubernetes/ingress-nginx/issues/12094 🔗 Netflix Maestro 100x Faster: https://netflixtechblog.com/maestro-netflixs-workflow-orchestrator-ee13a06f9c78 #kubernetes #platformengineering #kro #crossplane #helm #devops #eks #aws #cloudnative --- Platform Engineering Playbook - Your guide to building effective developer platforms. Subscribe for weekly episodes on Kubernetes, DevOps, SRE, and platform engineering.