D2iQ Simplifies Management of Fleets of Kubernetes Clusters

D2iQ has updated its Kubernetes management platform to make it simpler to transition from managing a single cluster to managing fleets of clusters. The updates are compatible with multiple distributions of Kubernetes, including instances running on the top three leading cloud service providers.

In addition, the company has enhanced the analytics tools it provides to include the ability to validate workloads against the Center for Internet Security’s CIS Benchmark.

Finally, version 2.5 of the D2iQ Kubernetes Platform (DKP) adds enhanced monitoring, security and networking via support for the Istio service mesh, a pre-configured developer environment, support for the Rocky Linux operating system and the ability to run DKP on VMware vSphere running on the latest version of the Ubuntu operating systems.

D2iQ CTO Deepak Goel said DKP addresses the challenges IT teams are encountering as they attempt to manage Kubernetes environments at scale. While individual clusters have become easier to manage, the overall application environment is only becoming more complex, he added.

In fact, many of the modules being deployed on Kubernetes are far more complex than the platform itself. It’s that complexity that is holding up development and deployment of many cloud-native applications, noted Goel. The operational aspect of DevOps in these environments has become so large that less time is being spent on application development, he added.

The goal now should be to make it possible for developers to spend more time writing code because the shift left movement has essentially overestimated the tolerance developers have for managing infrastructure, said Goel. Nor should it be the job of a developer to troubleshoot the platforms running their code in a production environment, he noted.

In general, it’s also now critical for IT organizations to enable administrators to be able to manage Kubernetes environments as well, said Goel. There isn’t enough DevOps expertise available, so a management framework needs to make it possible for software engineers and IT administrators that lack programming skills to work collaboratively alongside each other, he added.

Unfortunately, many of the sins of the IT past are being made again. IT organizations are now running clusters based on different versions of Kubernetes that might stretch as far back as version 1.12 when version 1.27 of Kubernetes was just released. It may not make sense of every IT organization to be current on the latest version, but there are undoubtedly security issues that were addressed between the version many of them are now running and subsequent updates.

The primary reason most organizations are not regularly updating Kubernetes is, naturally, they are concerned applications will break when some application programming interface (API) has either been updated or deprecated. However, that upgrade fear can be minimized by relying on a management framework that makes it simpler to upgrade and, if necessary, roll back an update, noted Goel.

There is, of course, no shortage of options for managing Kubernetes environments these days. The decision that needs to be made now is whether organizations prefer to centralize the management of those clusters regardless of distribution versus being locked into a control plane that is optimized for only one.

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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