Our customers continue to ask us for a simple, elegant way to run both traditional virtualization and cloud native, container based workloads simultaneously. Integrating a cloud native solution, specifically with Kubernetes, has been complex, difficult to manage at scale, and often requires many different tools and products manually put together into a single “stack solution”.
Since its introduction over three years ago, Nutanix Karbon has simplified Kubernetes deployments by providing a complete solution to easily integrate the storage, monitoring, logging, and alerting layers of a full cloud native stack with no vendor lock-in. By combining HCI (hybrid cloud infrastructure) with cloud native architecture, our customers have achieved operational and financial success:
- 85% less unplanned downtime
- 58% more efficient IT infrastructure management
- 477% average 5-year ROI, breaking even in 5 months
- 82% faster deployment
- 62% lower 5-year cost of operations
Source: IDC, Sponsored by Nutanix, Organizations Leverage Nutanix Enterprise Cloud as Scalable, High-Performing, and Cost-Effective Infrastructure Foundation, Jan. 2020.
Today, we are excited to announce the release and general availability of Nutanix Kubernetes Engine® 2.5, formerly known as Nutanix Karbon.
Nutanix Kubernetes Engine (NKE) 2.5 is packed with exciting new features and enhancements, as well as a number of fixes to enhance the customer experience. We will be highlighting a couple of features in this article but for more detailed information check the release notes.
New Advanced Kubernetes Management (Tech Preview)
As part of the NKE 2.5 release, we’ve added a significant number of new Kubernetes infrastructure management capabilities. Enabling Advanced Kubernetes Management allows users granular insight, not only into key Kubernetes entities like Pods, Deployments, and Stateful/Replica Sets, but into deployed Helm Charts and applications.
Please refer to the article Gain visibility with Nutanix Kubernetes Engine’s (NKE) Advanced Kubernetes Management for more information on the capabilities.
Kubernetes 1.22 Support
Kubernetes version 1.22 is now officially supported by NKE. Users can ensure full mainstream Kubernetes compliance using the Nutanix® single-click approach and deploy new application stacks on Kubernetes 1.22. Existing Kubernetes clusters can also be easily upgraded.
Containerd
In addition to adding Kubernetes 1.22 support, containerd has been selected as the new container runtime for NKE. The migration from Docker, the current container runtime, to containerd will happen seamlessly for users when existing NKE Kubernetes clusters are upgraded to Kubernetes 1.22. Newly deployed NKE Kubernetes clusters running version 1.22 will by default use containerd.
Passthrough GPU support via User Interface
Passthrough GPU support was one of the key features in Karbon 2.4. Karbon 2.4 allows users to add GPU node pools to Kubernetes clusters via karbonctl CLI commands. NKE 2.5 brings this functionality to the NKE User Interface for enhanced user experience.
Sign up for an NKE Test Drive
If you’re considering deploying Kubernetes clusters on Nutanix HCI, we encourage you to take NKE for a full test drive! The Nutanix Test Drive program puts you in the driver’s seat on a live cluster, letting you experience how smooth and simple NKE makes Kubernetes cluster deployment, storage configuration, scaling, and upgrades.
Sign up to take a spin!
This post may contain express and implied forward-looking statements, which are not historical facts and are instead based on our current expectations, estimates and beliefs. The accuracy of such statements involves risks and uncertainties and depends upon future events, including those that may be beyond our control, and actual results may differ materially and adversely from those anticipated or implied by such statements. Any forward-looking statements included herein speak only as of the date hereof and, except as required by law, we assume no obligation to update or otherwise revise any of such forward-looking statements to reflect subsequent events or circumstances.