Kasten Extends Data Management Reach Across Kubernetes Clusters

Kasten has expanded the number of templates it makes available for its K10 Enterprise Data Management platform as part of an ongoing effort to make it easier to move data between different distributions of Kubernetes.

Gaurav Rishi, head of product for Kasten, says that capability is critical if organizations are going to realize the portability benefits that Kubernetes enables. While standardizing on Kubernetes should prevent organizations from becoming locked into any platform, organizations still need a way to migrate data whenever required, he notes, adding data migration also plays a significant role in enabling organizations to comply with data sovereignty requirements.

The latest version of K10 adds support for Azure disks, Google Compute Engine (GCE) Persistent Disks and Amazon Web Services (AWS) Elastic Block Store (EBS) services alongside a range of existing storage and database platforms.

In addition, K10 now supports role-based access controls that Rishi says can be employed via self-service capabilities across a diverse IT team.

Most organizations initially focus on providing backup and restore capabilities using K10 to protect persistent data from being accessed by stateful applications. However, Rishi notes it’s not long before IT teams employ K10 to address a range of data management tasks from policies to enforcing regulatory mandates to automated disaster recovery processes.

Rishi says many of these tasks are now being assumed by IT teams that need access to data management tools that run natively on Kubernetes. As the responsibility for IT tasks continues to shift left toward DevOps teams, the need for data management tools that make it easier to automate tasks across namespaces, clusters, regions, infrastructure providers and different Kubernetes distributions is becoming more apparent.

Much of that need is being driven by an increasing preference to store data on persistent storage residing directly on a Kubernetes cluster versus an external array that needs to be managed using separate tools. In contrast, the K10 tools are designed from the ground up using Kubernetes application programming interfaces (APIs), says Rishi.

In theory at least. Kubernetes is expected to accelerate the rate at which organizations adopt hybrid cloud computing. Kubernetes provides a common platform through which the management of IT can be centralized regardless of whether clusters are deployed on-premises or in multiple public clouds. In practice, however, proprietary extensions to those platforms can thwart an organization’s ability to move data. That’s a critical requirement in an era when a major cloud platform provider such as Amazon or Microsoft might move into an adjacent area that competes with the core business of an organization using one of its core cloud services.

It’s still early days in terms of how IT teams will determine how best to go about managing data across fleets of Kubernetes clusters. However, once an organization gets past figuring out how to back up and restore data from and to a Kubernetes cluster it’s only a matter of time before a range of more complex data management issues present themselves.