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Platform9 Intros Managed Service Because 'Kubernetes on VMware Is Painful'

• By David Ramel
• 02/08/2019

Platform9 introduced a new managed Kubernetes service to run on VMware systems in order to reduce the complexity of wedding the hot container technology with the leading virtualization software.

That challenge -- found in do-it-yourself approaches or even in existing commercial offerings -- is so complicated that the company concluded: "Even after implementation, Kubernetes on VMware is painful."

Thus the company this week unveiled Platform9 Managed Kubernetes (PMK), what it calls the industry's first managed Kubernetes service to run on the VMware vSphere cloud computing virtualization platform. Kubernetes is an open source container orchestration system commonly used for application deployment, scaling and management that's especially useful for automation functionality that eliminates many of the manual processes involved with those tasks.

The Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Platform9 offers a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)-managed hybrid cloud solution designed to convert existing infrastructure into a cloud platform. That solution reportedly helps organizations manage virtual machines, containers and serverless functions for any environment via the "single pane of glass" approach.

In addition to addressing the complexity of deploying and operating Kubernetes at scale for production, mission-critical workloads, the company said its new offering eases the burden of hiring for scarce Kubernetes skills, provides cost control and governance lacking in other solutions and solves the fundamental problem of "VMware was not designed to run containerized workloads."

"Platform9 Managed Kubernetes lets you be up and running in less than an hour with enterprise-grade Kubernetes on VMware that just works," the company said in a blog post this week. "It eliminates the operational complexity of Kubernetes at scale by delivering it as a fully managed service, with all enterprise-grade capabilities included out of the box: zero-touch upgrades, multi-cluster operations, high availability, monitoring, and more -- all handled automatically and backed by a 24x7x365 SLA."

No pricing details were provided as the company invited anyone interested to contact it about PMK, which comes as part of the company's hybrid cloud solution.