Google LLC said today that it’s bringing some more automation to its popular Google Kubernetes Engine service to relieve some of the headaches around infrastructure management and let users focus more on their workloads.

GKE is a cloud-based management and orchestration service for Docker containers, which are used to host the components of modern, agile applications. It serves as a platform for building and running those apps at scale, and handles many of the associated tasks involved, such as spinning up new containers, container pods, services and load balancers, in just a few clicks. It also makes it possible to resize containers, update and debug them in the event of any issues, and provide essential security features.

In a blog post, GKE Group Product Manager Drew Bradstock said users can now opt to use a fully managed version of GKE with the new Autopilot mode that’s generally available starting today.

“With its optimized, ready-for-production cluster, Autopilot offers a strong security posture and ops-friendly configuration, drastically reducing the need to learn the nitty-gritty details of cluster configuration,” Bradstock said. “By managing the entire cluster infrastructure, Autopilot also reduces Day 2 operational and maintenance costs, while improving resource utilization.”

One of the main benefits of GKE Autopilot mode is that Kubernetes clusters will be spun up based on “battle-tested and hardened best practices.” Rather than configure clusters themselves, users can choose from several options that have been optimized for production. At the same time, the required cluster infrastructure is provisioned automatically based on the workload specifications.

GKE Autopilot also ensures a strong security posture by implementing hardening guidelines and best practices, locking down individual nodes, reducing the size of each cluster’s attack surface and minimizing any configuration mistakes.

Autopilot mode also takes care of node management, including provisioning, maintenance and lifecycle management, Bradstock said. Meanwhile, pricing becomes more simplified too, since the underlying compute infrastructure is provisioned and scaled based on each workload’s specifications. Customer just pay for the pods they use and are billed per second based on the virtual processor, memory and disk resources those pods need, eliminating the risk of unused capacity.

Early adopters told Google they were impressed with GKE Autopilot so far. “GKE Autopilot is the real serverless K8s platform that we’ve been waiting for,” said Boris Simandoff, general manager at Via Engineering Group Inc. “Developers can focus on their workloads, and leave the management of underlying infrastructure to Google SREs.”

The launch of GKE Autopilot means the service now has two modes of operation. For those users that need to customize their Kubernetes cluster configurations or manually provision and manage the cluster’s node infrastructure, GKE Standard mode remains the best option, Bradstock said.

Analyst Holger Mueller of Constellation Research Inc. said that with Kubernetes now maturing as the de factor platform for container orchestration, tech providers such as Google are looking to ramp up adoption of their respective frameworks by simplifying things as much as possible.

“Google, as the parent of Kubernetes, deserves special attention and people have high expectations from it,” Mueller said. “Early indications suggest Google is living up to those expectations with GKE Autopilot.”

Image: Google