SUSE enhanced the security, performance and scalability of its Rancher container management platform with the release of Rancher 2.7.2., and while those major updates don't “sound sexy,” they're “unbelievably important from a platform standpoint,” SUSE GM of Enterprise Container Management Peter Smails told SDxCentral.

In a bid to make Kubernetes container management readily accessible and to lead the hybrid, multicloud and multi-cluster management space, SUSE's platform needed to be more extensible. The extensibility updates released today tie into the company's strategy of open interoperability, Smails said.

“If you look at the competitive landscape, there's a tale of two camps, right? You've got camps that are very strong on proprietary vertical integration. And then you've got us. We're the other guys. And we're focused on bring[ing] interoperability.”

To that point, SUSE today announced platform architecture investments that improve both performance and scalability for the Rancher platform. And to address the growing number of production workloads running in Kubernetes or container environments, “security becomes very key,” Smails said.

“In the unsexy part, we addressed a handful of vulnerabilities that we had recognized” within Rancher. “So that obviously strengthens our security,” Smails explained. SUSE also refactored its base container images (BCIs) that are built into the platform and based on Suse Enterprise Linux.

That vertical integration, according to SUSE, “is a good thing,” Smails explained. “When you need that immutability, that's the place where you do want to have a controlled environment.” Rather than going an open source or third-party route, “refactoring that BCI around SUSE Enterprise Linux is important,” he argued.

In addition, SUSE added role-based access control (RBAC) policies across different products to create more consistency around executing RBAC in different environments. “That consistency strengthens our security posture,” Smails explained.

Rancher's update also includes a new user interface (UI) capability separate from Rancher Manager that allows users to independently extend and enhance Rancher's default UI to better integrate the platform with their environments.

“We're all about the ecosystem,” Smails said. “With us, you can have any color you want, practically speaking, so it's all about open interoperability. ... We wanted to put more control into the hands of [independent software vendors] and our customers that essentially want to create customized experiences or valuate integrations directly to the [Rancher] UI,” he explained.

The Kubewarden extension, for example, provides Kubernetes lifecycle and policy management across Rancher clusters, and the Elemental extension helps operators manage cloud-native OS and edge devices inside Rancher. The Harvester extension lets operators load virtualized Harvester storage clusters into Rancher for inspection and management.

Those three extensions are certified, supported and now generally available.

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“The message is all about not locking people in [and] letting people create, letting people innovate. And it's a really fitting metaphor because that's what we're trying to do with UI extensions,” Smails noted. Rancher “is really about putting the power in peoples' hands to go [and] create new things – obviously based on the Rancher platform,” he added.

While some may argue “he who builds the largest ecosystem wins,” SUSE sees itself adding value by creating flexibility, breadth and depth between Rancher and the existing cloud-native ecosystem.