Huawei added support for Kubernetes and containers to its CloudFabric Cloud Data Center platform. That platform will now offer a unified network architecture for containers, virtual machines (VMs), and bare metal servers.

The vendor is working with Red Hat on a plug-in to link CloudFabric to Red Hat’s OpenShift Container Platform. This will allow Huawei customers to automatically identify containerized microservice requirements that are defined in the container platform, convert the requirements into network policies, and automatically deliver those policies.

That platform will use Kubernetes to manage the login and logout of up to 10,000 containers per minute. Users will also be able to check resource availability and perform closed-loop verification after configuration.

Ian Foo, ‎director of network switching, gateway, and security products at Huawei USA, previously told SDxCentral that the company’s CloudFabric for data centers includes everything from the switches to the company’s Agile SDN controller.

CloudFabric competes with cloud data center systems from companies such as Juniper Networks, Arista Networks, and Cisco. A recent Gartner report had those three vendors as “leaders” and “visionaries” in the space, with Huawei occupying the “challengers” and “niche players” role. That Gartner report noted that Huawei’s platform has gained traction in the Asia-Pacific region and parts of Europe but remains limited in North America.

Juniper last month packaged Kubernetes support through OpenShift into its Contrail Edge Cloud platform. Cisco has also integrated Kubernetes support into its CloudCenter management tool.

Huawei has been very active in the Kubernetes community, with Stackalytics showing the company as the third-most active single vendor contributor to the open source platform. Google and Red Hat are the two most active Kubernetes contributors.

Huawei was also one of the initial members of the Cloud Native Computing Foundation’s (CNCF’s) Kubernetes Software Conformance Certification program that it launched last year. That program is designed to ensure compliant APIs can provide consistent Kubernetes services and interoperable support across vendor platforms.