Recently, Rancher Labs announced a preview to a new release of its container management software and called it the first container management platform to work with any Kubernetes cluster. To find out more, I spoke with Sheng Liang, CEO and co-founder
of Rancher Labs.
VMblog: Can you begin by giving us an overview of Rancher?
Sheng Liang: Absolutely. We created Rancher as a way for
developers and DevOps teams to easily deploy, manage and use containers in
production. To further container adoption within the enterprise, the market
needed a robust yet easy to use container management platform. With Rancher,
we're providing just that. We've included everything needed to run Docker and
Kubernetes in production, across multiple clusters and clouds. Since launching,
we've received over 60 million downloads and with the addition of enterprise-class
support, its quickly become the platform of choice.
VMblog: You recently announced Rancher 2.0, can you share with us what's new
in this latest version?
Liang: Yes, we are thrilled to be introducing a
technology preview of Rancher 2.0. With this latest version, we're making it
possible to manage all Kubernetes clusters under the same instance of the
Rancher container management platform. This is a major step forward for
Rancher, as users can now import existing Kubernetes clusters like GKE as well
as stand up and manage their own Kubernetes clusters using Rancher. We're
hoping that by providing powerful capabilities coupled with a simple and
intuitive user experience, we'll be able to even further accelerate adoption of
containers within the enterprise.
VMblog: One of the key features of Rancher 2.0 is the ability to manage
Kubernetes everywhere. Can you elaborate on this?
Liang: Certainly - we are incredibly proud of this
new feature. Cloud providers are offering Kubernetes clusters as a service more
and more, and users no longer need to deploy their own cluster. With Rancher
2.0, users can manage existing Kubernetes clusters from cloud service providers
like Google Container Engine (GKE), as well as clusters running on on-premises
infrastructure. Rancher 2.0 provides a central point of control and visibility
across multiple Kubernetes clusters.
VMblog: That's great. Can you also tell us more about the multi-cluster
management feature?
Liang: Yes, this is another important feature in 2.0.
With this latest version, we're providing centralized management of all
Kubernetes clusters including user authentication, monitoring and health checks.
This provides IT administrators with the increased visibility and control.
Rancher 2.0 leverages the sophisticated Role Based Access Control (RBAC)
capabilities in Kubernetes to provide shared cluster and host access to users -
another feature our users are excited about.
VMblog: What can we expect to see next from Rancher Labs? Anything else you'd
like to share with VMblog readers?
Liang:
The Rancher 2.0 release is an early technology preview. There's still lots of
unfinished work, and we will be releasing new features every few weeks. We are
still adding features like HA deployment, RBAC and authentication, integrated
CI/CD, monitoring, and logging, etc. We expect to release a fully-supported GA
version of the product early next year.
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