For more than five years, DC/OS has enabled some of the largest, most sophisticated enterprises in the world to achieve unparalleled levels of efficiency, reliability, and scalability from their IT infrastructure. But now it is time to pass the torch to a new generation of technology: the D2iQ Kubernetes Platform (DKP). Why? Kubernetes has now achieved a level of capability that only DC/OS could formerly provide and is now evolving and improving far faster (as is true of its supporting ecosystem). That’s why we have chosen to sunset DC/OS, with an end-of-life date of October 31, 2021. With DKP, our customers get the same benefits provided by DC/OS and more, as well as access to the most impressive pace of innovation the technology world has ever seen. This was not an easy decision to make, but we are dedicated to enabling our customers to accelerate their digital transformations, so they can increase the velocity and responsiveness of their organizations to an ever-more challenging future. And the best way to do that right now is with DKP.
Sep 06, 2017
Edward Hsu
D2iQ
4 min read
Mesosphere created DC/OS to help users to run any of the modern software tools they choose with ease -- be they data services, developer tools, or the latest machine learning/AI libraries -- on any type of infrastructure, public or private. We've reached a new milestone in that mission with our latest release of DC/OS.
Our enterprise customers and vibrant user community are trying to do several things. First, roll out container as a service (CaaS) that integrates with existing infrastructure services to empower developers. Second, keep up with the fast-changing set of technologies (particularly around data services and AI/Machine Learning tools) so data scientists can unlock new business opportunities. Lastly, deliver secure and resilient applications to capture new value.
Mesosphere DC/OS 1.10 helps our customers more easily accomplish all three of these objectives. This version introduces freedom of choice for container orchestration and extends that choice for data services. More importantly, DC/OS 1.10 uses automation to help you more easily operate data-intensive applications that are high-performance, resilient and secure on any infrastructure.
Let's walk through some of the key features of 1.10.
Freedom of Choice and Kubernetes on DC/OS (Beta)
DC/OS 1.10 extends the freedom of choice for data services to container orchestration. Kubernetes on DC/OS [Beta] brings the Google Cloud Kubernetes experience of to any infrastructure, using the pure community open source distribution of Kubernetes, and runs Kubernetes applications alongside big data services on a single elastic infrastructure.
Production-Ready Data Services and Enhanced Partner SDK
If application-aware scheduling is the hidden power of DC/OS, then the DC/OS Partner SDK is how the power gets unleashed. Using the SDK, Mesosphere and our open ecosystem of partners can easily integrate new technologies, and provide a public cloud-like experience through intelligent automation.
In fact, pretty much anything that you'd expect an expert admin to do, we can define and automate as part of DC/OS service definition. No need to buy a pile of technical books and spend weeks learning to implement and scale new services every time a new tool is required. DC/OS takes these best practices and builds them into the deployment automation for every service. Examples include deployment, management at runtime, config updates, scale-out, backup/restore, and of course software updates. In DC/OS 1.10 we've dramatically improved the SDK to make it easier than ever to create production-certified DC/OS services.
Partner SDK Enhancements
We have rolled out SDK enhancements that simplify integration of new services, and enable advanced capabilities such as service upgrades, file-based secrets, and Container Network Interface (CNI) integration. This makes it easy to add new services to DC/OS catalog, while providing a strong baseline of reliability and robustness.
Production-ready Data Services
This latest release includes production-ready deployments of Apache Cassandra, Apache Kafka and Apache HDFS, Confluent Kafka, and Datastax DSE. These data services have been integrated with and are fully certified on the Mesosphere DC/OS Partner SDK. This enables them to leverage many of the advanced security and networking capabilities of DC/OS, simplifying administration and operation.
Live Data Service Upgrades
In-place upgrades of data services, including step-by-step deployment, pause/resume, and rollback when necessary. Reliably and quickly benefit from new software releases while reducing risk, downtime and maintenance windows
High-Performance Networking
Serving users at scale requires modern networking capable of dynamic scaling of app and data services. DC/OS networking includes native service discovery, load balancing, and built-in overlay networking. With DC/OS 1.10, we are introducing a brand new edge load balancer, delivering guaranteed performance and isolation for external facing applications.
DC/OS Edge-LB is a high performance L4/L7 ingress load balancer that works on-premises and in the cloud, making it easy and secure to expose any applications or service inside a DC/OS cluster to the outside world. Specifically, DC/OS Edge-LB:
- Supports multiple pools to guarantee performance and isolation
- Can easily be automated through the API or the CLI
- Integrates with file based secrets and DC/OS CA for generating and storing SSL certificates
Increased resilience and reduced risk of downtime
DC/OS is used in many mission-critical and real-time applications, and this release introduces more enhancement to improve the resiliency and reliability of the applications and the underlying infrastructure.
Universal Container Runtime
Universal Container Runtime (UCR) extends the Mesos container runtime to run Docker containers. UCR allows Docker workloads to benefit from years of reliability and production readiness of the Mesos runtime, resulting in maximum uptime for mission critical applications. UCR is now generally available to all DC/OS users.
- UCR enables users to access many of advanced DC/OS features such as Pods, and GPU-based scheduling
- Other enhancements to the Universal Container Runtime and Pods include bridge networking, file based secrets and Container Network Interface (CNI) integration
Pre- and Post-Upgrade Checks
DC/OS provides the ability to perform in-place and non-disruptive upgrades, and DC/OS 1.10 adds automatic health checks before and after upgrades at the node and cluster level for validation. Nodes and clusters are checked for proper configuration, giving the operator even greater confidence on the production readiness of their infrastructure.
REX-Ray Upgrade
DC/OS 1.10 also includes the latest version of REX-Ray (V0.9), which simplifies the management and allocation of persistent storage for stateful workloads like database across many hosts. REX-Ray is an open source storage management solution for containers from {code}, Dell Technologies' open source organization.
Advanced Security and Compliance
DC/OS 1.10 provides developers and operators many tools to simplify building and running a multi-tenant infrastructure without compromising security or compliance:
Custom Certificate Authority Integration
Integration with a user's in-house certificate authority to provide a verifiable chain of trust, improving security posture and simplifying compliance.
File-Based Secrets
Securely store and dynamically distribute sensitive files (such as kerberos keytabs or ssh keys) to applications and services. Enables applications like Apache Spark and SSL gateways to benefit from the automation built into DC/OS without compromising security.
Security Folders Integration for Data Services
Manage and define access to DC/OS data services with a combination of access control lists and security folders, simplifying access control and multi-tenancy.
Getting Started
DC/OS 1.10 is available for download today. Enterprise customers can upgrade following these instructions. If you are looking to try DC/OS, this tutorial can guide you through.
