Managed Kubernetes: Understanding Your Options in the Cloud

Kubernetes is a popular container orchestration platform used by many professionals for software development, administration, and security. Containerisation is especially popular for cloud-native applications, and environments that require continual updates. However, Kubernetes management can be complex, especially for enterprise-level operations. 

In this article, you will learn about managed Kubernetes, including definitions, features, and top solutions. 

KaaS is a third-party, managed Kubernetes (k8s) offering designed to make implementing k8s easier. With KaaS, you get access to all of the benefits of k8s but your vendor manages some or all of the configuration, deployment, and maintenance. Some vendors also provide hosting for deployments. 

These services enable organisations that do not have the expertise or willingness to manage k8s on their own to smoothly orchestrate container deployments. KaaS provides the same scalability, self-healing, and workload management settings with the addition of personalised support and often pre-built template configurations.

While it may be tempting to deploy Kubernetes on your own, this can be a daunting process if you do not have in-house expertise or dedicated staff. Kubernetes is notoriously complex to set up and maintain, presenting a barrier to many organisations. KaaS can provide a solution to these issues. 

Kubernetes isn’t a magic bullet but it can help you deploy applications and services faster than your existing methods. It can also help you ensure better availability than traditionally deployed services. Using a managed service, you can achieve these benefits without added burden on your developers or operations teams. 

After your vendor has deployed, teams can begin immediately using k8s managed containers with minimal effort. Since KaaS typically includes monitoring and service level agreements, you can be sure that your deployments are secure and remain operational. This is ideal for smaller organisations that may not have the staff or time needed to manage k8s on their own. 

Open-source can be great. It enables flexibility and cost savings that proprietary solutions can’t match. However, it also requires much more effort on the organisations part to operate and maintain. These solutions also do not come with the dedicated support that enterprise software does. 

KaaS vendors can provide this lacking support and can often help you integrate other open-source tools you may be using. For example, Jenkins or other continuous integration / continuous deployment tools. Additionally, vendors often offer additional tooling to simplify monitoring and reporting functions. These services can help you customise the open-source framework of k8s to more closely meet your needs. 

If you’ve decided that a managed platform is the right choice for you, you have several options to choose from.