CHRIS WARD

WRITER, SPEAKER, AND DEVELOPER

A Roundup of
Managed Kubernetes
Platforms

CO D E S H I P.CO M - B LO G .CO D E S H I P.CO M - R E S O U RC E S .CO D E S H I P.CO M

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About the Author.

Chris Ward is a technical writer, speaker, and developer.
His mission is helping others understand technical
subjects through technical writing, blogging, networking
and educating people through presentations and
workshops.

Codeship is a fully customizable hosted Continuous

Integration and Delivery platform that helps you
build, test, and deploy web applications fast and with
confidence.

Learn more about Codeship here.

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A Roundup of Managed
Kubernetes Platforms
In the race of container orchestrators, Kubernetes is
surging ahead. However, people are often stuck on the
step of getting their infrastructure to production. In this
eBook you will get an overview of Managed Kubernetes
Platforms and their basic features.

Since I first started to write about Kubernetes, the industry

has progressed massively. As you will see, I found a lot of
companies willing to offer you solutions for helping you get
Kubernetes into production.

My criteria for inclusion in this eBook was companies that

let me try their service easily. I excluded anyone with a
'contact us for a trial' or 'contact us for more information'
button, and I wanted to see what they offered myself.

To reduce repetition, pretty much every provider offers all

the base features Kubernetes offers, plus constant updates.
ABOUT THIS EBOOK

In this eBook you will get an overview of Managed

Kubernetes Platforms and their basic features.
Learn about services like Google Cloud Platform (GCP),
AKS (Azure), Stackpoint, and others!

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Google Cloud
Platform (GCP)

I would hazard a guess that GCP was never that high on

people's list for a cloud provider until Google released
Kubernetes. It's reasonable that the best-managed
option would originate from the company behind the
birth of the project.

The GCP Kubernetes engine offers similar integration

with other GCP products, much like many of the other
large cloud providers in this article. In GCP's case, this
includes:

 Authentication and access rights

 Logging and monitoring
 Hybrid networking
 A custom container-optimized OS
 Private image repositories and image builder

AKS (Azure)

Microsoft's Azure Container Service (curiously called

'AKS') is in public preview, so it's not recommended you
use it in production, but it should be good enough to
evaluate. It supports:

 Multiple Kubernetes versions

 Switching between Docker, DC/OS, and Kubernetes

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orchestration at will; the crucial factor is running

containers
 Integration with the Azure container registry, container
monitoring solution
 Access to all the Kubernetes APIs and toolchain via the
az CLI tool or the Azure portal

Stackpoint

Stackpoint helps you install and manage a Kubernetes

cluster hosted with AWS, GCE, Azure, and Digital Ocean.
The setup process is quick and straightforward, and
Stackpoint has a library of preconfigured images straight
to your cluster during the setup phase, and from a
graphical interface once the cluster is running.

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Stackpoint provides their own GUI to access high-level

details and links to the default Kubernetes GUI and
kubectl tool for everything else.

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AppsCode

I'm sneaking AppsCode into this list — while their cluster

management solution lies behind a Request a Demo
button, they also have a suite of open-source tools
available for all sorts of Kubernetes-related tasks. And
stringing some of them together, you can probably create
similar solutions.

Openshift

Red Hat's OpenShift is one of the more veteran and

comprehensive Kubernetes solutions, with a lot of
development and community work from Red Hat thrown
in for good measure. It's a standalone Kubernetes
distribution, adding dozens of developer- and ops-related
tools to make using Kubernetes more productive.

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OpenShift comes in four varieties, and the names and

differences are a little confusing, so hold on there:

 OpenShift Origin: the open-source, do-what-you-want

upstream version
 OpenShift Enterprise that has its own sub-versions:
 OpenShift Online: on-demand and in a public cloud
 OpenShift Dedicated: a private, high-availability cluster,
hosted on AWS or GCP but operated by Red Hat
 OpenShift Container Platform: an enterprise private
PaaS in your data center or private cloud

Confused? Well, don't worry too much about what version

is right for you. Here's a quick roundup of some of the
features OpenShift brings to Kubernetes:

 Custom domain routing and software-defined network; an

image library of prepackaged applications to install onto
your cluster, checked and tested by Red Hat
 Integration with other Red Hat platforms such as JBoss
and RHEL

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 "Code and push" deployments from version control straight

to running on a cluster
 Multiple environments and release management
 A GUI to access most functionality, a CLI tool, and
integration with some (enterprise friendly IDEs)

IBM Cloud Container Service

IBM Cloud's Kubernetes offering is a simple affair, perfect

for anyone looking for bare-bones Kubernetes cluster. You
can access and manage your cluster through the default
Kubernetes CLI and the IBM cloud CLI (for authentication
and other IBM-specific tasks) and a basic GUI.

Much like some of the other cloud offerings in this list,

using the IBM Cloud Container Service gives you easy
integration with their other services, and in IBM's case, the
most tempting of these is the infamous Watson.

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Ubuntu

Canonical offers an Ubuntu-optimized version of

Kubernetes for simple deployment to AWS. It doesn't add
much to default Kubernetes beyond a simplified semi-
graphical installation interface, but if you're an existing
user of the Ubuntu ecosystem, then you might find it a
comfortable fit.

Containership

I had featured Containership before in my Docker hosting

roundup, when they were using a custom orchestrator,
and they have also added support for Kubernetes.
It works similarly to some of the other providers on
this list, helping you create and manage multi-cloud
infrastructures. However, it offers other providers not
found on many others in this list such as Digital Ocean,
Packet, and Linode.

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In addition to creation and management, Containership

offers access to private image repositories, snapshotting
your cluster and a preconfigured library of services to
install to your cluster (again including lesser known
options).

GoPaddle

Taking a different but potentially confusing approach

to managing your Kubernetes cluster, GoPaddle uses a
visual UML-style service designer that you then push to a
provider. I don't know how useful it is, but after reviewing
so many dashboards and lists for this article, it was a
refreshing change.

Beyond this, GoPaddle offers the features you will find

in many of the other services listed here, including
authentication, logging, continuous integration, and with
one additional bonus, support for Terraform templates.

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Nirmata

Nirmata offers the option to connect preexisting

Kubernetes clusters, or have the platform set up a vanilla
one for you. You can deploy your cluster to a variety of
public and private clouds.

It offers the typical authentication, logging and

prepackaged images of many of the other options in this
article, plus GUI-accessible resource policies and a simple
dashboard view of cluster state(s).

Kubermatic

Kubermatic offers deployment to AWS and Digital Ocean,

with an easy-to-use GUI for creating and managing
clusters with logging and metrics built in. Their core
software is also open source, and they are one of the few
European companies on this list.

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Joyent Triton

Joyent is one of a handful of the smaller companies

steadily and successfully running cloud-native
deployments for the past few years, so adding a
Kubernetes offering is an obvious move. Similar to
GoPaddle, Triton uses Terraform templates under the
hood that you can change to suit your needs.

Triton lets you install a cluster to their own public or

private cloud, as well as GCP, AWS, VMWare, Azure,
and your servers. The installation process is one of the
more complicated on this list but leverages a lot of
familiar DevOps tools, so may suit some of your existing
workflows better.

Tectonic

Tectonic from CoreOS takes a similar approach to

Triton, using Teraform templates to deploy their take
on Kubernetes to bare metal machines, AWS, or Azure.

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Naturally Tectonic runs CoreOS with all the benefits

to Kubernetes and container-based applications that
involves.

Chinese Clouds

I also came across a handful of large Chinese companies

that had Kubernetes-based offerings that I couldn't
effectively test as I don't speak any Chinese languages (I
do hope to change that in 2018). While they often offer
English language versions, typically once you were a
few levels deep, the Chinese origins showed and I was
confused. If you're interested, here are the ones I found:

 Tencent Cloud
 Alibaba
 Huawei

In Early Access

I came across a handful of services that weren't ready

yet, but by the time you read this, they might be.

Pivotal Container Service

At the time of writing, Pivotal Container Service was not
yet publicly available, but if you are entrenched in the

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Pivotal/VMWare ecosystem, then it might be ready for

you when you are.

Amazon EKS
AWS is top of many developers' lists when it comes to
hosting, and they typically offer a solution for every need
you might have. Their Kubernetes offering is in an invite-
only preview, so it's hard to provide a comprehensive
review. From what I can tell, it will offer features such as:

 Integration with the other myriad tools of AWS for load

balancing, authentication, availability zones, service
isolation, private network access, and logging
 Automatic updates, patching
 Access to the kubectl CLI

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More Codeship Resources.

Continuous Deployment for

Docker Apps to Kubernetes.
EBOOKS

In this eBook you will learn how to set up Continuous

Deployment to Kubernetes for your Docker Apps.
Download this eBook

Breaking up your Monolith into

Microservices.
EBOOKS

In this eBook you will learn about the basics of

"decomposing" a monolith into microservices.
Download this eBook

Deploying Docker Apps to AWS.

In this eBook you will learn how to set up Continuous
EBOOKS

Deployment to Amazon Web Services for your

Docker Apps.
Download this eBook

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About Codeship.
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