Managed Kubernetes takes the undifferentiated heavy lifting out of the way
Running Kubernetes is still a lot of work, and requires deep domain expertise. More importantly, it takes time to design, implement and get into production. While the benefits of Kubernetes are massive, managing Kubernetes isn’t just set-it-and-forget-it.
Every business must give thought to the buy vs. rent paradigm. It comes down to evaluating cost and risk, and judging whether they’re outweighed by the advantages of a particular solution.
Building your own Kubernetes deployment is daunting. The consequences of making the wrong choices are long-lasting and can impact application availability, performance, and agility. While building a solution in-house may be cheaper, your design might be of lesser quality or have flaws that will only be realized once you’re in production.
And really, what is the business problem you’re trying to solve with Kubernetes? It probably has to do with developer velocity, creating flow and reducing the work in progress. Having a sub-optimal platform will hurt those goals. This is the true value of a managed service: making sure the service delivered is top-notch. The service provider makes sure their Kubernetes environment is highly available, resilient, flexible, upto-date, secure, and efficient. Their job is to remove the toil and hassles of Kubernetes.
The chief goal of a managed k8s platform should be to help enterprises deploy containerized apps with a guaranteed 24x7x365 SLA. The platform should also work across any infrastructure: on-premises
data centers, public clouds, and at the edge – as shown below.
Managed Kubernetes Architecture
Feature #1 Automate and Eliminate Operational Complexity
The managed platform should provide comprehensive Day-Two operations for Kubernetes production clusters, with guaranteed 99.9% uptime availability. PMK’s management plane performs around-the-clock, automated, real-time monitoring and anomaly detection. Alerts are automatically generated, which trigger automated troubleshooting and remediation processes.
A zero-touch upgrade process and instant patching of security vulnerabilities is another desired capability.
Such a platform should provide a simple-to-use self-service portal and a full API that allows developers and operations teams to deploy multi-cluster Kubernetes minutes, on any infrastructure, with a simple wizard. Administrators can centrally manage clusters on different cloud providers and data centers via the dashboard.
Developers can connect to their clusters through the UI or the built-in CLI accessible from the portal. You can also access your Kubernetes dashboard with a single click. Developers can deploy application templates or related services and processes via the App Catalog.
Managed Kubernetes Dashboard
Feature #2 PROVIDE A Single Pane of Glass across clouds
The simple wizard process makes it quick and easy to get a cluster up and running. For on-premises deployments, adding nodes is a matter of an API call to the underlying IaaS. For cloud-based deployments, this step is automated. A simple graphical wizard helps first-time users make the right choices, with clear explanations for options like running workloads on master nodes, the container and service CIDR IP Blocks, privileged mode, and more.
Creating a new Kubernetes cluster
Feature #3 Built-in Application Catalog
A Managed Kubernetes needs to provide a built-in application catalog with hundreds of applications from the Kubernetes community.
Platform9 Kubernetes App Catalog
Feature #4 Use Helm Charts TO Automate CI/CD Tool Deployments
Helm enables you to quickly and reliably provision container applications through their easy install, update, and removal. It provides a vehicle for developers to package their applications and share them with the Kubernetes community. It allows software vendors to offer their containerized applications at a push of a button. Through a single command or a few mouse clicks, users can install Kubernetes apps for dev-test or production environments. Most of the popular CI/CD toolsets are available as Helm charts.
The App Catalog provides easy access and push-button deployments for Helm charts. You can use an App Catalog UI to select and deploy your favorite CI/CD pipeline tools (e.g., Jenkins, Spinnaker, Artifactory, JFrog Xray, etc.) You can search for it, one-click deploy it, or configure it.
Kubernetes Helm Repository in Platfom9 Managed Kubernetes
Platform9 Managed Kubernetes includes a Web-based CLI for simple access to command-line tools like kubectl and Helm.
The CLI allows access to those tools in situations where there’s no terminal available. It’s also accessible via mobile devices. This is great for a quick fix of an issue, or for activities like checking cluster and node health.
Platform9 Managed Kubernetes CLI
Feature #5 Managed Prometheus Monitors Your Applications
Prometheus provides Dev and Ops teams with easy deployment and configuration of the Prometheus stack and the Alert Manager as a multi-tenant service. The service is HA-ready, with SLA all handled automatically, with no need for Admin intervention. Developers have 100% self-service option to deploy any number of Prometheus instances and configure the monitoring rules and capacity usage.
Managed Prometheus
FULLY OPEN OR NOT
We at Platform9 deliberately chose an upstream, open-source version of Kubernetes for deployment and operations. Being CNCF certified also means that applications written for and tested on Platform9 Managed Kubernetes will run on any other open source-certified Kubernetes, promoting portability and avoiding lock-in to proprietary distributions.