Today marks the release of Kubernetes 1.3, the latest edition of Google’s hit container cluster management solution. The new edition is available on GitHub and also in Google’s Container Engine Service.

With Kubernetes 3.1, the focus is on delivering a more robust and scalable system for managing containers in production – pretty good timing considering several recent studies have said that many enterprises are just beginning to shift away from testing to running full production workloads. Additionally, the new Kubernetes gets support for CoreOS Inc.’s rkt container runtime, as well as those being advanced by the Container Network Interface (CNI) and Open Container Initiative (OCI).

“As our users scale their production deployments we’ve heard a clear desire to deploy services across cluster, zone and cloud boundaries,” wrote Google product manager Aparna Sinha in a blog post. “We’ve also heard a desire to run more workloads in containers, including stateful services. In this release, we’ve worked hard to address these two problems, while making it easier for new developers and enterprises to use Kubernetes to manage distributed systems at scale.”

The update allows users to create services that span multiple clusters, and these can even be hosted across multiple clouds. According to Google, this allows for new hybrid and multi-cloud scenarios, and will enable high-availability clusters that are less vulnerable to outages.

Developers have been given a few treats in the new release too. Those who want to use containers to run stateful applications such as databases can now do so with the benefit of improved autoscaling support, Google said, as they no longer need to worry about cluster size because it will always able to cope with demand.

It’s no surprise that Google has decided to embrace CoreOS’s rkt runtime as an alternative to Docker. After all, Google promotes Kubernetes as an open-platform and understands full well that different users have different requirements.

Google is making Kubernetes 3.1 available on its Container Engine service, which is essentially a managed Kubernetes that runs atop of the Google Cloud Platform. According to Google, Container Engine usage is doubling every 90 days as more users jump aboard, and the latest version of Kubernetes means those users can now run up to 2,000 nodes in a cluster, with services now able to span multiple availability zones.

Image credit: Prasit Rodphan via flickr.com