Feb 18, 2021
Andrew Atkinson
D2iQ
3 min read
The latest versions of Konvoy and Kommander are now generally available: the D2iQ Kubernetes Platform (DKP) continues on its relentless roll.
DKP is the leading independent Kubernetes platform for enterprise grade production at scale and Konvoy and Kommander are the reason why. You can learn more about Konvoy here, Kommander here, and our general approach here.
As always, while there is quite a lot going on in this release and the best way to find out about all of it is to contact us, let’s look at some of the highlights:
Flexible Kubernetes Day2Ops: when one size doesn’t fit all
Getting Kubernetes to work in production on Day 2 takes more than just Kubernetes itself—networking, monitoring, and logging are just some of the key requirements that must be added to core Kubernetes and selecting and integrating them can be a source of pain for users. D2iQ provides an opinionated distribution that includes these key platform services (also known as addons) already integrated and tested with D2iQ Konvoy.
As the centralized control plane for multiple clusters, D2iQ Kommander provides centralized visibility, management and governance for any CNCF compliant Kubernetes cluster, including DIY (or do it yourself clusters), other distributions, or Kubernetes in the cloud (such as Amazon’s EKS). With Kommander 1.3, users now have the flexibility to select which platform services they wish to use with 3rd party clusters. Kommander uses federation under the hood to distribute the services and ensure consistency across managed clusters.
This flexibility was requested by customers who wanted to federate just some of the platform services provided by Konvoy and Kommander, either to reduce resource requirements for small clusters (like non-production dev clusters or clusters on the edge) or because they had different components they preferred to use. Although we provide our opinionated distribution, we recognize that one size doesn’t fit all and selecting the best components for your particular use case may differ.
We are happy to be able to add features that simplify Day 2 operations for our customers in any way possible--whether it is by providing our own “best of” technology choices or by simplifying the use of the technology they are already using. This new feature should be particularly helpful for those customers running in the public clouds, as it provides them with exactly the degree of Day 2 capability they need and want to supplement what the cloud providers have to offer.
Secure Multi-Tenancy
As Kubernetes adoption grows within the enterprise, new users, teams, and applications will be onboarded to shared clusters. This new version of Kommander now supports the configuration of Network Policies of all project namespaces, to restrict access according to the cluster and application topology--in essence, providing network isolation of workloads at a granular level for multi-tenancy use cases. This feature enables operations teams to improve their security posture, an area that is getting increased attention in the cloud native world.
Multi-Cluster Cloud Native App Delivery
Kubernetes adoption is really focused on improving the speed and agility of delivering new digital services. This focus puts application delivery in a cloud native setting front and center in terms of delivering true business value. GitOps is the most advanced approach to automating the delivery of applications—which should be aware of the underlying cloud native platform capabilities. This version of D2iQ Kommander integrates best of breed GitOps technology as a first-class citizen, enabling continuous delivery/deployment as a feature of Kommander projects. Application delivery just got a whole lot simpler with continuous delivery to multiple clusters from a single control plane!
Evolution of the Kubernetes Distribution
For D2iQ Konvoy, the big story for this release is the availability of a FIPS-compliant build of the product for those customers with heightened security requirements, whether in the public sector or in regulated industries. We have enhanced our built-in infrastructure automation with a new provider for VMware environments. Konvoy now supports the ability to dynamically create VMware virtual machines, to better enable those of our on-prem customers with a large VM footprint. Rounding out the release is support for Kubernetes 1.19, to incorporate the latest functionality and bug fixes from the community, and a refresh of the most critical platform services (addons) to the latest versions.
This is, of course, just a selection of the goodness in the latest releases. Contact us to find out more. And look for our next release in a few months—the rocket ship is accelerating to escape velocity. Stay tuned!
