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Get up and running with enterprise-grade Kubernetes in any cloud or on-prem Free
Trial


CHOOSING AN ENTERPRISE KUBERNETES MANAGEMENT PLATFORM


FOUR CONTAINER ORCHESTRATION PLATFORM MUST-HAVES

June 22, 2017  |  by Kublr Team 
        

[Updated in October 2019]

Under pressure to deliver applications faster and ensure 24/7 runtime,
organizations are increasingly adopting a cloud native technologies to deliver
applications quicker and in an automated fashion. By now, most agree that
Kubernetes should be at the core of your stack. But what are your options and
what should you be looking for?

While it all started in the cloud — the cloud made automation, self-service and
the standardization of testing, deployment, and production possible — cloud
native is by no means cloud-bound. Today, everyone seems to want cloud-like
services in their own data center, and cloud native technologies make that for
the first time possible.

Tools like Kubernetes and Docker deliver a lot (yet by no means all) of the
desired functionalities by default.

Docker, for example, is the best way to distribute software in a DevOps-enabled
environment. It provides a thin layer of isolation and uses resources more
efficiently than virtual machines do. Immutable and independent from the
underlying infrastructure, Docker runs the same way on a developer machine as it
does in a production environment.

Kubernetes is by now the indisputable container orchestration leader. Why? The
answer seems to come down to community building. The Kubernetes open source
community is vast and includes Google, Red Hat, Canonical, CoreOS, and
Microsoft, to name a few. This has given the open source project the legs it
needed to grow and mature faster than any other product on the market. And of
course, being open source, it’s independent of corporate planning or
constraints.

As the market continues to mature, organizations that adopt cloud native
technologies will reap the rewards — transforming their IT operations,
augmenting collaboration between ops and development, and increasing the overall
agility of the business as a whole (here’s a tip: while it may seem
overwhelming, there is no need to go all in at once, you can modernize your
application iteratively).

But there are some hurdles along the way.


KUBERNETES CHALLENGES AND MISCONCEPTIONS

As much as it is beloved, managing Kubernetes is a time-consuming process
requiring highly-skilled staff and a lot of time and effort. Why? Because
Kubernetes is not a full-fledged enterprise-grade, ready to use platform. Like
most cloud native technologies, it’s only a piece in the puzzle that you mix and
match with different other pieces to build a platform that meets your needs.
That’s why most enterprises — with the notable exception of software companies
who dispose of a large, highly skilled IT team — generally select a
vendor-supported enterprise platform.

 

Yet, many enterprises do still make the critical mistake of underestimating the
level of effort involved in the configuration and additional development to
adapt Kubernetes to their needs. Like Docker, Kubernetes has many default
features that create the impression of ease-of-use. To the untrained eye,
Kubernetes looks like it can be up and running in hours or days, but this is far
from true for production environments where additional functionality is needed —
security, high availability, disaster recovery, backups, and maintenance —
everything you need to make Kubernetes “production-ready.”

The result is that organizations that go the Kubernetes route quickly realize
that they are unable to deliver it without bringing in skilled and costly
external resources.


SOME NOTABLE VENDOR DIFFERENCES

The market is evolving fast and you do have multiple choices. New Kubernetes
management solutions are continuously appearing, yet they vary wildly. Finding
the right tool with the needed flexibility to adapt in an ever-changing IT
landscape can be a challenge. At first, the market may seem really crowded, but
it isn’t, at least not as much if you break it down by capabilities you need.
Here are three examples:

Simplified user interface (UI). Some vendors focus mainly on the UI to ease
deployment on any infrastructure. While a pretty UI is nice, it won’t solve the
fundamental problem of creating a production-ready environment. You’re still
getting the same open-source Kubernetes — a cluster that is ready for your
experimentation but isn’t ready to run in production.

Self-healing. Nearly every platform will promise you self-healing. But what most
enterprises new to Kubernetes don’t realize, is that there are multiple layers
to self-healing. There is self-healing infrastructure, cluster, pods, and
Kubernetes. Kubernetes itself ensures only self-healing pods. For reliable
applications, you’ll need self-healing on all levels.

Infrastructure provisioning. Kubernetes can’t provision infrastructure by
default, so if a node crashes, there is no way for Kubernetes to provision a new
one. All Kubernetes can do is re-organize pods within available nodes. Yet, if
there isn’t enough available resources, there is nothing it can do. And here’s a
little dirty secret, most solutions on the market do not (yet) provision the
infrastructure.

Unfortunately, these significant differences are not always clearly stated on
vendor websites. It’s left up to you to ask the right questions which,
admittedly, can be challenging if you’re just wrapping your head around
Kubernetes. Hopefully, this article will help you do that.


KUBERNETES PLATFORM MUST-HAVES

Here are some of the most important things to keep in mind as you shop for the
right Kubernetes platform, and some potential pitfalls to look out for.

1. PRODUCTION-READINESS

This is key. Kubernetes configuration can be complex and resource intensive, so
you don’t want any of the configuration hassle left up to you. Production-ready
means all features enterprises need to run reliable, secure clusters should be
fully-automated. But beware, you’ll see lots of production-readiness promises
that won’t stand the test. It’s really left up to you, to ask the right
questions.

Here’s a quick Kuberentes production-readiness checklist:

 * Security. Kubernetes itself has strong security features but look for a
   provider that can connect these features to your enterprise system.
 * Full automation. The solution should handle all management tasks on the
   cluster. Automated backup, recovery, restore, etc. If it’s not automated, it
   falls to you to do it, which can quickly strain your resources and budget.
 * High-availability, scalability, and self-healing. Remember our note above
   about self-healing and infrastructure provisioning? While Kubernetes does
   provide these abilities for your applications, it doesn’t for your cluster.
   That’s something your platform must take care of.

2. FUTURE-READINESS (BEWARE OF OPINIONATED OPEN-SOURCE)

Considering the pace of technology change, it would be naive to think that your
requirements today won’t change soon. Future readiness is thus a key ability
that will allow you to pivot with market demands. Here are a few considerations:

Hybrid and multi-cloud. As the cloud and software become more sophisticated,
where you host your apps will increasingly impact system performance. According
to 451 Research, more than half of all enterprises have chosen hybrid cloud and
multi-cloud as their ideal IT architecture, and about 63% are using two or more
clouds.

One of Kubernetes’ key benefits is that it allows you to abstract from cloud or
data center providers and build a common infrastructure between clouds, cloud
regions, and the data center. Your apps can run anywhere and everywhere without
the need to adapt them to a new hosting environment. However, this involves
extensive configuration of Kubernetes and its underlying infrastructure which
isn’t supported by all vendors. Make sure your Kubernetes platform can support
these capabilities and help you configure them when you need them down the road.

Keeping the open source promise. A major benefit of open source is that it is
open and flexible allowing rapid change of course when the market demands. Yet,
many vendors are creating a new breed of opinionated open source offerings.
While they make leveraging open source really easy, that convenience has a
price: lock-in. And as we all know, lock-in significantly slows the pace of new
technology adoption. Make sure your platform doesn’t  tie you to a specific
technology stack or infrastructure. Chances are your requirements will change
again soon and you must be able to take advantage of new technologies as they
hit the market, or risk to fall behind as the competition is able to adapt
faster than you are.

Configurability. The whole idea about leveraging a vendor supported Kubernetes
platform is that everything is pre-configured. Agreed. But you will need the
ability to override parameters eventually. No platform can preconfigure for all
possible use cases. And, while you may start with simple use cases that work
perfectly with the default configuration provided by your vendor, you will
mature and start using Kubernetes in more advanced use cases (e.g. data science
workloads, edge computing, stateful applications, etc.). You’ll want the ability
to change parameters to fit your needs.

3. EASE OF MANAGEMENT

Especially when you’re getting started, it’s important to allow IT to adopt
Kubernetes quickly, even if they haven’t yet build the internal expertise.

User-friendly UI. User-friendly UI is especially critical for enterprises new to
Kubernetes. They simplify a lot of the deployment by offering convenient
dropdown menus that make it nearly impossible to create a faulty cluster. This
will allow your organization to adopt Kubernetes quickly while they start
building their internal expertise.

Command line and API for advanced users. Once organizations mature, you’ll have
team members that will prefer work via command line.

Intelligent monitoring and alerts. Kubernetes generates a mass of raw data that
you must translate to understand what’s going on with your cluster. Early
detection and intervention are essential to preventing disasters. If you can’t
decipher what Kubernetes is telling you, you have a problem. By incorporating
automated intelligent monitoring and alerts, such a solution can provide key
information on status, errors, events, and warnings so that your team has the
insight it needs to take action.

4. SUPPORT AND TRAINING

Finally, as your organization begins to acquire Kubernetes skills, it’s
important to have a vendor that can provide 24/7 support and training to ensure
your Kubernetes journey is a smooth one.


LESSONS LEARNED

Enterprises are rushing to adopt Kubernetes and benefit from its speed and
agility promise. Yet, we are seeing numerous teams who don’t fully understand
their own requirements, aren’t asking the right questions, and end up with a
tool that doesn’t meet their needs. Others understood their needs but bought a
solution with one use case in mind just to realize it doesn’t fit the
requirements of subsequent projects.

Our recommendation is to do your homework, understand the differences, and
define your requirements which should include future readiness. Your goal should
be to find a platform that adapts to your requirements, not the other way round.

by Kublr Team  | June 22, 2017  | 
        



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