Rancher sets sights on Kubernetes improvements

SUSE has introduced SUSE Rancher 2.6, the latest release of SUSE's open source enterprise Kubernetes management platform. SUSE Rancher 2.6 is the first major Rancher-related release from SUSE since its acquisition of Rancher Labs in December 2020.

“Kubernetes and container solutions are booming in popularity, environments are becoming more sophisticated, and there is no slowdown in sight,” said Thomas Di Giacomo, SUSE Chief Technology and Product Officer. “We recognize that SUSE Rancher is a big part of that growth, having proven itself as a leading Kubernetes management technology and customer solution for thousands of enterprises. A key part of its success is its openness and interoperability. We continue to see customers innovate best when they have freedom to choose the products they believe best fit their needs, with flexibility to easily define and adapt their IT strategy. SUSE and SUSE Rancher 2.6 give businesses the opportunity to simply build, scale and transform their infrastructures with Kubernetes.”

SUSE Rancher 2.6 features major updates across the platform that will help enterprise customers better manage their growing Kubernetes environments. Enhancements include a redesigned platform experience complete with a new crisp user interface with improved logic-based workflows, full lifecycle management of hosted Kubernetes clusters in Microsoft AKS and Google GKE alongside existing Amazon EKS capabilities, plus new security, risk and compliance features.

Steve Delaney, Cloud Enterprise Architect at multinational energy and automation company Schneider Electric, said, “In 2020, our Rancher platform experienced a 92% increase in the number of projects onboarded, and in 2021 we’re seeing the same high level of engagement. SUSE Rancher 2.6 will further stoke demand with the addition of AKS and EKS support, while at the same time offering our operations team a single pane of glass through which to support this growing demand.”

Important new customer benefits provided by SUSE Rancher 2.6 include:

• Savings in time and resources with further simplification of users’ Kubernetes deployments and management of their clusters. Professionals who build within or manage growing environments now have access to a new crisp user interface and rearchitected workflows across the platform. This reduction in visual noise, redesigned dashboards and improved single- and multi-cluster management experience within a single pane of glass enables users to save time and resources needed to manage the operational requirements of clusters regardless of where they are hosted.

• Broader choice and infrastructure freedom with full lifecycle management of clusters hosted in Microsoft AKS and Google GKE, adding to SUSE Rancher’s existing support for hosted Amazon EKS clusters. Users with multi-cloud environments can now easily manage, secure and operate their hosted clusters within SUSE Rancher. Existing hosted clusters can also be imported and managed with the same proficiency level of SUSE Rancher deployed clusters, giving users true interoperability across their multi-cloud environments by empowering them to freely choose the right infrastructure and technology solutions fit for their organization. SUSE continues to accelerate technology partnerships with leading infrastructure providers in the pursuit of helping enterprises scale faster.

• Greater confidence to build applications and scale environments with strengthened enterprise security and compliance capabilities. To help users fortify their existing and new cluster environments, SUSE Rancher 2.6 has begun integration with SUSE Linux Enterprise Base Container Images (SLE BCI) to deliver a free, open, flexible and secure foundation. SUSE Rancher 2.6 also now features enhanced audit log traceability to help operators satisfy audit compliance requirements. A technical preview of GitOps provisioning with Cluster API is also available in SUSE Rancher 2.6 to give IT operators the ability to create custom cluster templates to help reduce user-error risk and standardize deployments.