Platform9 Expands Scope of Kubernetes Services Portfolio

Platform9 today expanded the reach of its Kubernetes managed services offerings to now include support for a revamped integrated development environment (IDE) and an instance of the Argo continuous delivery (CD) platform.

Chris Jones, group product manager for Platform9, says the goal is to make it possible for IT teams to spend more time building applications rather than managing the underlying infrastructure by leveraging a software-as-a-service (SaaS) environment maintained by Platform9.

Previously, Platform9 had limited the scope of its managed services portfolio to Kubernetes clusters. However, as organizations start to build and deploy a wider range of cloud-native applications, many of them are now looking to an external service provider to manage more than just the core Kubernetes cluster, he says.

As part of that effort, the user interface (UI) for the platform has been revamped to make these services more accessible to a wider range of developers and IT administrators, says Jones. For example, Kubernetes objects such as pods, services, and ReplicaSets are mapped together and, as data loads, errors are exposed inline via each dashboard view.

The IDE provided by Platform9 provides simplified views to pods, logs and events and automatically maps them to related objects. YAML files can be edited and updated directly in the cluster. The IDE supports Platform9 clusters in addition to clusters imported from Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform (GCP).

All Platform9-managed clusters are also automatically connected to ArgoCD, which is currently available via an early access program. No installation, configuration or integration is required. Administrators can enable developers to deploy applications without employing Kubectl Apply or Helm Install.

There is also an External Cluster Operator (ECO) feature that creates a secure communication tunnel between Kubernetes clusters running on a cloud service and Platform9. IT teams can then leverage in-cluster monitoring provided by Platform9 alongside ArgoCD to provision applications to any hyperscale cluster.

The company has also added a Catapult remote monitoring capability that adds support for etcd, Kubernetes API Server, Nodes, Workloads, CNI and other add-ons from Platform9.

Platform 9 is also making Managed KubeVirt generally available, which makes it simpler to run legacy applications on virtual machines that have been encapsulated in a container.

Finally, Platform9’s Managed Bare Metal service for Kubernetes now includes Metal Kubed, an application programming interface (API) for managing bare metal servers, in technical preview.

It’s not clear what percentage of Kubernetes clusters might be managed by an external service provider versus an internal IT team. However, the pressure to build and deploy cloud-native applications based on microservices and constructed with containers is building. The challenge is the level of Kubernetes expertise within internal IT teams is not keeping pace. As such, many organizations have little to no choice but to rely on an external service provider—at least in the short term—if they want to keep pace with the rate at which modern applications are now being built and deployed.

Mike Vizard

Mike Vizard is a seasoned IT journalist with over 25 years of experience. He also contributed to IT Business Edge, Channel Insider, Baseline and a variety of other IT titles. Previously, Vizard was the editorial director for Ziff-Davis Enterprise as well as Editor-in-Chief for CRN and InfoWorld.

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