DigitalOcean, the cloud for developing modern apps, announced that its managed Kubernetes service is now available with production-ready functionality and full customer support. Since launching its early access release in May of this year, 30,000 developers and teams have already signed up for access. Starting today, the service is available to all developers worldwide.

"Kubernetes promises to be one of the leading technologies in a developer's arsenal to gain the scalability, portability and availability needed to build modern apps. Unfortunately, for many it's extremely complex to manage and deploy," said DigitalOcean VP of Product Shiven Ramji. "With DigitalOcean Kubernetes, we make running containerized apps consumable for any developer, regardless of their skills or resources. We do this by automating the management of Kubernetes clusters and the provisioning of nodes to make it faster and easier to run containerized apps. We also infuse guided UI experiences and open APIs to provide the right level of support throughout the developer's journey."

With the May early access release, DigitalOcean focused on simplifying the most critical needs of developers when deploying Kubernetes containerized apps: node provisioning, durable storage availability, security, and scalability. This included fully configured worker nodes based on any Droplet size, seamless integration with flexible block storage, worker node protection with firewalls, and integration with Load Balancers for simple, robust and secure app scaling. Continuous integration and continuous delivery workflows could also be implemented in a matter of seconds to further streamline the development process.

The new release builds upon these capabilities, adding new features based on early customer feedback that further simplify the provisioning and management process. These include:

• Guided configuration experiences, to assist users as they provision, configure and deploy clusters;
• Open APIs, to enable easy integrations with developer tools, and include the ability to programmatically create and update cluster and nodes settings;
• Expanded version support, including Kubernetes version 1.12.1 and support for 1.13.1 coming soon.
  

"DigitalOcean's focus on simple features that just work and high value-pricing at scale has resulted in an effortless deployment of Kubernetes," said Zach Schrier, CEO, Mineteria. "The product has been absolutely instrumental for my team in simplifying our technology stack and focusing on our business."

The DigitalOcean Kubernetes limited release is now available worldwide. The general release is planned for early 2019 with additional new features. Standard pricing applies for Droplets, storage or load balancing services dedicated to a developer's Kubernetes cluster. For more information and details on the availability of specific features, please reference the blog here: https://blog.digitalocean.com/digitalocean-releases-k8s-as-a-service.