Kublr updated its enterprise-focused Kubernetes distribution. And the Washington, D.C.-based vendor said the distro is enterprise grade and not tied down to any single cloud, platform-as-a-service (PaaS), operating system, or technology stack.

The Kublr 1.8 product's unique play is a self-service control plane that allows for deployment and management of multiple Kubernetes clusters in multiple environments. This allows enterprises to tap Kubernetes features without deep knowledge of how it all works.

Oleg Chunikhin, CTO at Kublr, said the control plane provides built-in, multi-factor enterprise security; configuration management; backup and disaster recovery; and logging and monitoring. The platform update adds support for Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure cloud, and on-premises installations. The 1.8 designation also aligns with updated support for the Kubernetes 1.8 version that was released last fall.

Chunikhin said that unlike other enterprise-focused Kubernetes distros, Kublr offers pre-configured and streamlined configuring that "speeds and eases Kubernetes adoption for the enterprise." He noted Kublr 1.8 also does not require a particular container operating system to run.

"All components needed to run Kubernetes in production are either pre-configured or easily configured out-of-the-box," Chunikhin explained. "Most other solutions still require a fair amount of configuration, which is quite complex, demanding a higher degree of in-house Kubernetes expertise."

Kublr is offering a free demo of the platform that can run from a local machine.

Kublr last November passed the Cloud Native Computing Foundation's (CNCF's) Kubernetes Software Conformance Certification program. That program was launched with the intent to ensure compliant APIs can provide consistent Kubernetes services and interoperable support across vendor platforms.

Kubernetes has rapidly become the default solution for enterprises to tap containers as part of their broader cloud plans. But, questions remain on the amount of assistance needed for those enterprises to actually deploy the orchestrator.

Kamesh Pemmaraju, vice president of product management at ZeroStack, noted in a recent blog post that the ability to scale the use of containers across an organization remains a "pain point."

Pemmaraju specifically cited the ability for enterprises to deploy Kubernetes-orchestrated clusters across a diverse infrastructure base. This includes companies running cloud operations across private cloud, public cloud, and bare metal deployments.

"In this situation, automating infrastructure deployment, setting up, configuring, and upgrading Kubernetes to work consistently is not going to be easy," Pemmaraju explained.

Chunikhin said that Kubernetes is focused on the run-time environment and includes a flexible architecture in terms of configuration and deployment. But, it still needs to be correctly configured to work for enterprises.

"To provide a truly production-ready solution, you need to integrate it with third-party and add-on components," Chunikhin said. "Examples of functionalities that enterprises may require include centralized log collection and monitoring, integration with enterprise [identity and access management], centralized infrastructure management, and operations."

The Kubernetes project, which is housed under the CNCF, has made easing deployment and management a core focus of its most recent code updates. The 1.9 release, which was unveiled in mid-December, included those efforts.

"Rather than adding new features to 'core,' much of the current work involves refactoring the Kubernetes code base so that it is less monolithic," wrote Eric Chiang, senior engineer at CoreOS, in a blog post. "This effort has the dual purposes of making sub-projects easier to consume and maintain and to improve the extensibility of Kubernetes itself."

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