Kubernetes’ place in the essential toolkit for enterprise IT has been well-established. What may be less widely known is that the container orchestration technology is now surrounded by an entire ecosystem of management tools.

These include capabilities for cost optimization, pre-configured development environments, command line packages and cluster management. There’s a lot involved, and a robust combination of complexity and functionality now surrounds the popular Kubernetes space.

“Every one of our customers, every one of the prospects that I talk to out there in the industry, they’re all evaluating Kubernetes,” said Peter Fray (pictured), field chief technology officer and head of field engineering at Platform9 Systems Inc. “As they are on that journey, they’re realizing that Kubernetes is not just a tool, but it’s an entire ecosystem of tools that they need to implement.”

Fray spoke with John Furrier, industry analyst for theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming video studio, and they discussed key trends in the evolution of Kubernetes as a critical solution for enterprise IT. (* Disclosure below.)

Rise of KubeVirt

Implementation of an entire ecosystem of tools can be a daunting task, which is why Platform9 has built its business around support for various initiatives that address the needs of development teams. One of these involves virtualized workloads and a growing interest in shifting workloads to containers. Gartner Inc. predicted that by 2025, 85% of global organizations will be running containers in production.

This means that tools for transitioning workloads from virtualized machines to containers will attract interest. One of these is KubeVirt, an open-source project designed to run virtual machine workloads on top of Kubernetes.

“Kubernetes with the KubeVirt project allows you to run virtual machines inside the Kubernetes cluster,” Fray said. “Platform9 supports KubeVirt, allowing you to run that kind of workload side by side with your containerized workload.”

Running on a single solution without having to pay for another virtualized environment presented enterprises with an attractive cost savings. Increases in network throughput were a benefit as well, according to Fray.

“One of our customers just recently moved some Palo Alto Network firewalls,” Fray said. “They managed to increase their throughput on the virtual machines 3x from two gig to six gig throughput. We were able to migrate that in just a matter of minutes, and it was very impressive.”

Entire cluster saved

Rapid adoption of Kubernetes, along with its inherent complexity, has placed firms such as Platform9 in a position as guardian against catastrophic mistakes. Fray described the experience of one customer whose engineer decided to enter a very powerful instruction on the Kubernetes command line.

“He was a young engineer with Kubernetes; he wasn’t familiar with the command line, and he fell into one of the possible traps that are out there,” Fray stated. “He literally wiped out that entire Kubernetes cluster in a keystroke. Because we had backups of their environment, we were able to restore that in less than two hours. The company was fine.”

Stories such as this one underscore the importance of remote management. Large distributed computing environments may not necessarily have the support or expertise to handle the intricacies of Kubernetes cluster deployments. Platform9 offers around-the-clock remote monitoring with a team of Kubernetes experts available when an issue arises, Fray explained.

“We have some customers that are very large, distributed edge-type customers where they have multiple Kubernetes clusters deployed regionally around the United States and around the world,” he said. “When you start looking at managing at scale, that magnifies all the problems that you’re going to have. So you need to have a way of remote managing everything.”

Platform9 has also found that remote management can be helpful in environments such as the retail sector. Merchants in this space need foot traffic to drive sales, and they are becoming more reliant on technologies such as facial imaging to do it.

“The retail space [is] trying to reinvigorate how to get feet in their stores, and they’re trying to do that through technology,” Fray said. “Makeup stores are trying to use your facial image from in the store to show you what makeup might look like. In order to innovate, you can’t have … applications that can be updated once a month or a year. All of this needs to be done remotely through continuous delivery mechanisms to be able to allow you to be effective and efficient in delivering those unique experiences.”

Here’s theCUBE’s complete video with Peter Fray:

(* Disclosure: Platform9 Systems Inc. sponsored this segment of theCUBE. Neither Platform9 nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: Peter Fray