Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes
Single Pane of Glass (Single Pane View or Single Pane of Management Control) is the goal of several IT Operations Managers. It integrates all parts of heterogeneous and or homogenous IT systems.
A Cloud Computing Console such as Azure Portal, Google Cloud Console are good examples of Single Pane of Glass. These GUI tools gives ‘one view’ for virtual machines, storage, network, development tools and other.
I had an opportunity to design and implement Oracle Virtual Directory (OVD) for Ministry of Health, BC a decade ago. This tool from Oracle provides a consolidated management view of various security data stores (LDAP and XML) without synchronizing or moving the data from its native locations. We were able to build a consolidated view for Active Directory, Oracle Internet Directory and few RDBMS data stores using OVD.
The growth of MultiCloud adoption spreads applications across various network segments that are very complex to monitor and manage. Cloud managed Kubernetes services such as AWS Elastic Kubernetes Service, Azure Kubernetes Service and Google Kubernetes Engine provides their management console to customers to manage their Containers. It poses challenges in provisioning, security approvals, technical support, compliance with data residency requirements and billing. Moreover, a MultiCloud customer must have well-trained resources and retain them to stay profitable.
If any organization is just getting started with Kubernetes MultiCluster environment the following concerns are to be evaluated:
- Manage the life cycle of Kubernetes MultiCluster regardless of their physical location
- Monitor and Manage the ‘lities’ of Kubernetes MultiCluster or Federated Kubernetes Cluster
- Automate provisioning, and deprovisioning of Kubernetes Clusters
- Compliance with standard and custom policies
- Governance to practice and implement Configuration, Problem and Security
- Automate the DevOps pipeline, and deployment of workloads based on KPI’s
I found Kuberiter 3 years ago with the idea of provisioning and managing Kubernetes Clusters in AWS, Azure and GCP without the need of logging into their Cloud portals. Kubernetes IT Ops can login into our portal, connect those Clouds securely then start provisioning, operating and deploying their applications.
Kuberiter is a Single Pane of Glass for AWS Elastic Kubernetes Service, Azure Kubernetes Service and Google Kubernetes Engine.
Similarly, Red Hat provides a tool called ‘Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes’.
Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes
Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes offers end-to-end management visibility and control to manage your cluster and application life cycle, along with security and compliance of your entire Kubernetes domain across multiple data centres and public clouds. Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes controls clusters and applications from a single console, with built-in security policies.
It supports the following Kubernetes Cluster service models:
- OpenShift on Amazon Web Services
- Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform on IBM Cloud (ROKS) (Kubernetes 1.17, and later)
- Red Hat OpenShift Kubernetes Engine
- Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4.6.1, and later, on IBM Z
- IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service (Kubernetes 1.18, and later)
- Google Kubernetes Engine (Kubernetes 1.17, and later)
- Azure Kubernetes Service (Kubernetes 1.19.6, and later)
- Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (Kubernetes 1.17.6, and later)
- Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform on VMware vSphere
- Azure Red Hat OpenShift
- Red Hat OpenShift Dedicated (Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform version 4.5.16, and later)
- Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform on OpenStack (OpenStack version 16.1, or later)
Components and Capabilities
Running on Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform, Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes includes capabilities to unify the MultiCluster management, provide policy-based governance, and extend application lifecycle management.
Features
Cluster Management
- Create, update and deletion of Kubernetes clusters across multiple private and public clouds
- To search, find, and modify any Kubernetes resource across the entire managed domain
- To swiftly troubleshoot and resolve issues across federated Kubernetes clusters
Policy-based Governance
- Risk and compliance that centrally sets and enforces policies for security, applications, and infrastructure
- Visual display of auditing and configuration of applications and clusters
- Visual compliance metrics
Advanced application lifecycle management
- Define and deploy applications across clusters based on policy
- Quickly view service endpoints and pods associated with application topology with dependencies
- Automatically deploy applications to specific clusters based on channel and subscription definitions
- Automate day-2 configurations like networking, databases, and more with the integration of Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform
MultiCluster observability for health and optimization
- Overview of MultiCluster health and optimization using out-of-the-box MultiCluster dashboards with the ability to store long-term data
- Easily sort, filter, and do a deep scan of individual clusters or, at the aggregated MultiCluster level
- Get an aggregated view of Cluster metrics
- Troubleshoot faster using the Dynamic Search and Visual Web Terminal capabilities
Red Hat OpenShift Platform Plus builds on the capabilities of OpenShift Container Platform with, Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes, Red Hat Advanced Cluster Security for Kubernetes, day-2 management capabilities, and a global container registry. With OpenShift Platform Plus, organizations can more consistently protect and manage applications across open hybrid cloud environments and application life cycles.
Read about Red Hat Advanced Cluster Security for Kubernetes here.
Conclusion
Gone are the days that requires multiple tools and resources to achieve the desired IT outcome. Today is the age of “single pane of glass” where it is made possible to accommodate not just security and development but management and operations from scope to end. Kuberiter and RedHat products are the key because they do heavy lifting for Kubernetes Clusters across Clouds and On-Premise.
Lawrence Manickam is the Master Cloud Architect Trainer in RedPeppy, E-Learning division of Kuberiter.
Please visit https://RedPeppy.com to register for my premium Cloud native courses such as Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA) and Certified Kubernetes Security Specialist (CKS).
