ksime

ksime is a software framework designed for the deployment and management of distributed computing resources in cloud environments. The name is an abbreviation of Knowledge‑System Integration Management Engine. It was first introduced in 2018 by the research group at the Institute for Distributed Systems, who described ksime as a lightweight runtime that abstracts the complexities of resource orchestration across multiple heterogeneous platforms. The framework is built on top of container and virtual machine technologies and exposes a declarative configuration language that allows administrators to specify desired state for workloads, storage, and networking. ksime automatically performs scheduling, fault tolerance, and auto‑scaling based on real‑time metrics. In practice, it has been used in academic research on large‑scale data analytics as well as in commercial settings for deploying micro‑service architectures. Compared to other orchestration tools such as Kubernetes or Docker Swarm, ksime focuses on minimal runtime footprint and a plug‑in architecture that enables integration with legacy systems. Its API is exposed through a REST interface and it includes a command‑line utility for version control of deployment definitions. The project is released under an open‑source license and hosts a community of developers that contribute modules for database integration, monitoring, and policy enforcement. Adoption of ksime has been documented in case studies published in the Journal of Cloud Computing and in proceedings of the International Conference on Distributed Systems.