Red Hat is expanding the application workload reach of Kubernetes in the latest version of its OpenShift Container Platform.
The latest version, 3.5, is said to offer expanded support for traditional applications along with new security enhancements and more Kubernetes capabilities.
Container security has always been one of the main talking points about the technology, and now that the tech is moving more into production environments, the conversation around multiple levels of container security is increasing.
Red Hat feels that it’s got this covered in the 3.5 release by enhancing certificate management so that only authorised users and platform components are able to take actions in the Kubernetes cluster. The latest version includes the ability to provide warnings based on certificates expiring and for a rolling refresh of security certificates.
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Red Hat has also decided to improve Secrets management by adding support for more granularity in determining who owns a given Secret.
The open source company believes that while cloud-native application strategies are taking hold in enterprises for building mission-critical services, there’s still a need for them to receive a return on existing IT investments.
Basically, the company is keen to make sure that existing applications aren’t left behind so a single point of management is necessary, which is what OpenShift provides, but it’s had some new capabilities added to make it even more useful.
Ashesh Badani, general manager, OpenShift, Red Hat, said: “While containerized applications and associated infrastructure present a clear vision of enterprise IT’s future, traditional applications still function as the workhorse for modern businesses and cannot be left behind as enterprises add next-generation services to their technology mix.
“Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 3.5 providers a Kubernetes-based platform for traditional and cloud-native applications with all of the tools, security features and capabilities required to retain existing IT investments while planning for future needs and business growth.”
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First there is Kubernetes StatefulSets, available in Tech Preview, which is designed to bring Kubernetes automation features such as scaling and declarative health management to traditional stateful services. The idea is to allow these traditional services to run in containers rather than directly on virtual machines or physical servers.
Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 3.5 will now also provide a new Java container image for cloud native workloads, this should help developers to focus on coding while the platform takes care of things like compiling, building and assembling of the runnable artefact.
The final addition is an expansion of the developer toolbox, which will see the latest version also support Red Hat Software Collections and curated versions of the latest developers tools and languages such as Redis, MySQL and PHP, to name just a few.
