Juniper Networks expanded its Contrail Networking to include better support for Kubernetes environments running on Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud, and virtual machines (VMs). The move continues the vendor's push toward deeper Kubernetes integration.

The Contrail Networking platform provides multi-tenancy to a single Kubernetes cluster and also a consistent networking and security experience for multi-cluster deployments running in different environments. This includes different clouds and bare metal servers.

The AWS update is a new container networking interface (CNI) plugin for AWS’ Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS). This allows Kubernetes pods running in EKS to have the same IP address inside of a pod as they do on a virtual private cloud (VPC) network.

The Contrail CNI also works with AWS’ recently launched EKS Anywhere service to manage the required virtual networking into a data center environment.

Contrail now also integrates into Google’s Anthos managed Kubernetes platform. The integration allows Contrail to provide the same virtual networking across Kubernetes-managed multi-cluster deployments running in different environments. Users can create different policies for enforcement for the traffic running between those environments.

Contrail Networking can now also manage network policy for VMs running with the open source KubeVirt platform. KubeVirt – or the Kubernetes virtualization API – provides a unified approach for developers to support containerized workloads and also VM-based workloads that cannot be easily integrated into a containerized environment.

The Contrail Networking expansion there allows developers to use the same virtual networking and security policy across Kubernetes clusters, between clusters, and full VMs.

Juniper Networks rival VMware last month shined light on its updated Container Networking offering that gained the open source Antrea networking product. That product was established as a purpose-built Kubernetes networking platform for public and private clouds that is built on Open vSwitch and can run in any Kubernetes environment.

The new product works with VMware’s NSX-T platform to support container connectivity for Kubernetes clusters in a software-defined data center. It can also work with VMware’s Tanzu Kubernetes Cluster on vSphere and other public clouds.

Scott Sneddon, senior director and evangelist for cloud at Juniper Networks, earlier this year told SDxCentral that the vendor has a twofold strategy to address multiple orchestration and enterprise challenges in Kubernetes as telecommunication architectures migrate into the cloud-native space. He explained that multicloud doesn’t necessarily mean multiple public clouds, but a mix of VMware infrastructure, bare metal assets, or OpenStack components.

“Supporting Kubernetes is really important for that vision in that we expect that a lot of our customers, especially our enterprise customers, are going to be trying to tackle that multiple orchestrator challenge,” Sneddon said. “If we can bring some level of consistency and simplicity in that environment, we think we can add some value and have a benefit.”

To this end, Juniper supports Kubernetes at both ends of that stack through its portfolio of Contrail software that spans the enterprise data center (Contrail Enterprise Multicloud); the wide-area network (Contrail SD-WAN); the telco cloud (Contrail Cloud); and the edge — base stations, hub sites, and switching sites (Contrail Edge Cloud).

And that portfolio is being used out in the wild. For example, AT&T uses Contrail to combine physical routers and switches to scale network infrastructures beyond the data center and orchestrate virtual networks within its cloud infrastructure.