Introducing the Industry’s First Managed Kubernetes Service on VMware
Kubernetes is the #1 enabler for cloud-native applications and is critical to the competitive advantage for software-driven organizations today.
VMware is probably the most popular virtualization infrastructure solution among large enterprises. Many organizations that have on-prem data centers have traditionally been using VMware to manage their IT environment. Unfortunately, VMware was never designed to run containerized workloads. So how do these customers modernize their infrastructure to take advantage of the Kubernetes revolution? How do you innovate? How do you enable your developers, as well as the business?
Kubernetes on VMware is a challenge
DIY Kubernetes is out of the question for VMware-shops for mission-critical applications. But even current commercial offerings in the market for running Kubernetes on VMWare are extremely clunky, hard to implement, and even harder to manage. They often require dedicated and costly additional components (like NSX-T), lengthy professional services engagements for complex integrations (sometimes of as many as 12 different software components and point products in order to provide the complete solution), and they lack some of the mission-critical capabilities that enterprises expect out of the box (including a GUI experience that would be familiar to VMware Administrators for easy configuration of various IT operations and for deploying applications.)
Even after implementation, Kubernetes on VMware is painful.
Kubernetes is complex and notoriously difficult to operate, particularly on on-premises or multi-cloud environments. Day 2 Operations are extremely challenging: how do you handle upgrades to your environment when there’s a new version or a security patch? How do you do monitoring? HA? scaling? compliance?, and more.
The operational pain is compounded by the industry-wide talent scarcity and skills gap. These VMware organizations – like most organizations in the software industry – struggle to hire the much sought-after Kubernetes experts, and they themselves lack advanced Kubernetes experience to ensure smooth operations at scale.
Delivering Production-grade Kubernetes on VMware in a way that doesn’t make VMware Admins run for the hills (or get left holding the bag..) is tough.
But it doesn’t have to be.
Announcing enterprise Kubernetes that just works — on VMware!
I’m excited to announce that today we’re launching the Industry’s first Managed Kubernetes Service for VMware that is:
- Simple to use
- Production-ready from the get-go
- With 24x7x365 SLA guarantee – on your own infrastructure!
Before we dive in, an important distinction:
Those of us who want to leverage Kubernetes in the enterprise know that words like “managed” and “service” (or “as-a-service”) are often thrown around with enterprise Kubernetes solutions. But they describe VERY different levels – and philosophies – of “management”, and of “service”.
We wanted to enable enterprises to easily deploy and operate Kubernetes at scale, on VMware – with no management overhead and no need for advanced Kubernetes expertise.
Given this mission statement — when we say managed, we mean fully-managed. When we say Kubernetes-as-a-Service, we don’t just mean a self-service portal for provisioning clusters (that Admins then need to struggle to manage). We mean that the platform (and our additional layer of Operations team who also monitors the environment) does all of the heavy lifting and ongoing operations – so you don’t have to.
SLAs, without the operational burden:
Platform9 Managed Kubernetes lets you be up and running in less than an hour with enterprise-grade Kubernetes on VMware that just works. It eliminates the operational complexity of Kubernetes at scale by delivering it as a fully managed service, with all enterprise-grade capabilities included out of the box: zero-touch upgrades, multi-cluster operations, high availability, monitoring, and more – all handled automatically and backed by a 24x7x365 SLA.
That is big. It makes Kubernetes a no-brainer, anywhere – providing enterprises with the same experience of the Kubernetes services offered by the public cloud providers, but on their own infrastructure (on-prem, or in the cloud.)
See it in action:
IT Operations and VMware administrators can now enable their developers with simple, self-service provisioning and an automated management experience to deploy multiple Kubernetes clusters with a click of a button, that are operated under the strictest SLAs.
Check out this quick demo to see how easy it is to run Kubernetes on VMware:
Compliance, multi-cloud, and hybrid cloud built-in
Platform9 Managed Kubernetes is infrastructure agnostic, allowing organizations to run Kubernetes instantly, anywhere. It delivers centralized visibility and management across all Kubernetes environments – whether on-premises, in the public cloud, or at the Edge – with quota management and role-based access control. This enables organizations to eliminate shadow IT and VM/Container sprawl, ensure compliance, improve utilization and reduce costs across all infrastructure.
Furthermore, Managed Kubernetes is part of our hybrid cloud platform, which enables organizations to centrally manage VMs, containers and serverless functions on any environment, with a single pane of glass. This provides enterprises a way to easily support Kubernetes at scale alongside their legacy applications, traditional VMs, and serverless functions, for streamlined operations and improved efficiency across all environments and technology stacks.
No Forking!
By delivering 100% upstream open source Kubernetes on VMware with no code forks, enterprises also benefit from the innovation of the open source community and all the Kubernetes-related services and applications, while avoiding cloud lock-in and ensuring portability across environments.
Get Kubernetes on VMware Today!
Learn more about delivering Kubernetes on VMware and how we compare to other solutions.
Register for the Webinar:
I also invite you to register for our upcoming webinar on 2/21 – Modernizing VMware with Kubernetes.
Join us for a deep-dive into use cases and best practices to get even more out of your existing VMware investment.
Before co-founding Platform9, Roopak was a technical lead at VMware, where he helped architect and ship major vSphere products: Update Manager and vCloud Director. Before VMware, Roopak was an early engineer at an early stage Mobile computing startup.
Outside of work, Roopak is a fan of audiobooks, likes cooking, following sports, and keeping up with his kids on the soccer field.
- Announcing Elastic Machine Pool: The most cost-effective Compute Engine for EKS - November 3, 2023
- [Video] KubeVirt – Beyond Containers: Coming full circle back to VMs! - September 12, 2019
- Edge Computing: Challenges and Opportunities - May 14, 2019