Orchestrating Non-Kubernetes Resources with Syntasso Kratix Enterprise

Modern internal platforms are more than just Kubernetes clusters. Developers depend on a wide range of services, many of which live outside Kubernetes. Whether it’s cloud databases, GitHub repositories, networking infrastructure, virtual machines running in vSphere, or mainframe systems, today’s platform teams are expected to provide consistent, self-service access to all of it.

That’s why we built Syntasso Kratix Enterprise (SKE) to support the orchestration of any resource—Kubernetes-native or not—with governance, automation, and scale in mind.

Orchestrating Non-Kubernetes Resources with Syntasso Kratix Enterprise

Moving Beyond Kubernetes-Only Thinking

While Kubernetes offers a powerful control plane, it’s not the whole story. Take NatWest, for example: when they first adopted Syntasso Kratix Enterprise (SKE), they weren’t looking to orchestrate Kubernetes workloads—they were looking to simplify and secure how they provisioned and governed non-Kubernetes resources across their organisation.

This included:

• Cloud-native services like databases and messaging platforms,

• Identity and access configurations in external systems,

• And provisioning virtual machines.

  
  

By adopting SKE, NatWest was able to unify the developer experience, apply consistent governance, and avoid duplicating orchestration logic across teams and tools.

Example: Provisioning VMs with vSphere and Kratix

Let’s look at a concrete example. Say your team needs a new VM for running legacy workloads or specialised services. In SKE, this might look like:

1. A developer submits a request for a vSphereVirtualMachine resource via their internal platform portal, such as Backstage.

2. Kratix captures the request, executing any defined pre-validations against company policy (e.g., tenancy, resource limits), and queues the request.

3. Once confirmed as a valid request, the VM team’s defined Promise kicks off a provisioning workflow using tools like Terraform, Ansible, or direct vSphere API calls.

   1. It is particularly powerful that the VM team can build and maintain this process themselves since Kratix provides a framework for platform co-creation, often referred to as platform democracy.

   2. This focus on co-creation enables teams maintaining legacy technologies to contribute easily to the platform directly in any tools they are familiar with, rather than depending on a centralised team to manage their requirements.

4. The workflow result is an automatically created, configured, and registered VM in the appropriate systems (such as cost control, observability, security, etc).

5. Once deployment is complete, the result is pushed back to Kratix for visibility.

6. And this is only the beginning.

   1. These VMs may live for many months or even years, so Kratix supports ongoing maintenance and improvements through drift detection and reconciliation, upgrade rollouts, and compliance reporting.

   2. This ensures that all of your IT estate is managed and upgraded consistently, i.e. “fleet management”.

      
      

All of this happens behind a simple, declarative interface, allowing platform users to stay productive and platform teams to stay in control.

Syntasso Kratix Enterprise: Built for the Full Platform Surface Area

Whether you’re provisioning a VM, configuring DNS, or deploying an application into Kubernetes, you want compliance rules and user experience to be consistent. SKE provides complex organisationswith  a unified orchestration layer.

Key features include:

• Promise-based abstractions that decouple requests from implementation, enabling small platform teams to evolve their offering without needing to change much larger user bases.

• Multi-tool orchestration, integrating scripts, Terraform, Ansible, Crossplane, APIs, CLIs, and more to allow teams to use the right tool for the job.

• Secure multi-tenancy and policy enforcement leaning on best in class cloud native technologies such as virtual environments and Kyverno.

• Workflow distribution across Kubernetes and non-Kubernetes targets, including reusing existing workflow engines such as GitHub Actions, Temporal, and more.

• GitOps-friendly delivery for scalability, security, and auditability.

  
  

Why Platform Teams Choose SKE

Traditional internal platforms often rely on CI/CD systems filled with ad-hoc scripts or brittle pipelines to manage non-Kubernetes infrastructure. This creates drift, silos, slows down delivery, and introduces risk.

With SKE, platform teams can:

• Treat all resources declaratively, not just Kubernetes ones.

• Decouple infrastructure maintenance from application deployment, and roll out an infrastructure security patch without redeploying an unchanged application.

• Compose full environments, including mainframes, cloud services, VMs, secrets, SaaS tools, and workloads.

• Scale orchestration safely, across thousands of teams or services.

• Accelerate developer onboarding with reusable patterns and self-service.

Final Thoughts

This new push towards Platform Engineering shouldn't create yet another isolated solution. To create a truly generational shift in value, orchestrating non-Kubernetes infrastructure can't require workarounds, special privileges, or tribal knowledge.

With SKE, platform teams deliver everything developers need—from a Kubernetes namespace to a vSphere VM—in the same secure, governed, and scalable way.

It’s not just about Kubernetes. It’s about meeting developers where they are, with the tools and services they actually use.

Want to see Syntasso Kratix Enterprise orchestrating your non-Kubernetes estate? Book a demo or explore the SKE documentation.