SUSE, a global enabler in innovative, reliable and enterprise – friendly open source solutions, has unveiled SUSE Rancher 2.6, the latest version of the Open Source Kubernetes Management for Businesses from SUSE. SUSE Rancher 2.6 is the first major release of SUSE linked to Rancher since its acquisition of Rancher Labs in December 2020.
“The popularity of Kubernetes and container solutions is booming, the environments are more sophisticated and no slowdown is in sight,” said Thomas Di Giacomo, Head of Technology and Products at SUSE. “We recognize that SUSE Rancher plays an important role in this growth, having a proven track record as a leading Kubernetes management technology and customer solution for thousands of businesses. An essential part of its success is its openness and interoperability. We continue to see that customers innovate best when they have the freedom to choose the products they believe best suit their needs, with the flexibility to easily define and adapt their IT strategy. SUSE and SUSE Rancher 2.6 give businesses the ability to easily build, scale, and transform their infrastructures with Kubernetes. ”
SUSE Rancher 2.6 offers major platform-wide updates that will help enterprise customers better manage their growing Kubernetes environments. The enhancements include a redesigned platform experience with a new clean user interface and improved logical workflows, full lifecycle management of Kubernetes clusters hosted in Microsoft AKS and Google GKE in addition to existing Amazon EKS capabilities, as well as new security, risk and compliance functions.
Steve Delaney , enterprise cloud architect at Schneider Electric, a multinational energy and automation company, said: “In 2020, our Rancher platform saw a 92% increase in the number of integrated projects, and in 2021, we see the same high level of engagement. SUSE Rancher 2.6 will further fuel demand with the addition of support for AKS and EKS, while providing our operations team with a single stratum to support this growing demand.”
Important new benefits that SUSE Rancher 2.6 brings to customers include:
Save time and resources by simplifying users’ Kubernetes deployments and managing their clusters. Professionals building or managing growing environments now have access to a new, clean user interface and revamped workflows across the platform.
This reduction in visual noise, redesigning dashboards and improving the experience of managing one and more clusters in a single storefront allows users to save time and resources. to manage the operational requirements of clusters, regardless of where they are hosted.
Greater choice and greater freedom of infrastructure through full lifecycle management of clusters hosted in Microsoft AKS and Google GKE, which builds on SUSE Rancher’s existing support for clusters hosted in Amazon EKS. Users of multi-cloud environments can now easily manage, secure and operate their clusters hosted in SUSE Rancher.
Existing hosted clusters can also be imported and managed with the same skill level as clusters deployed by SUSE Rancher. Users thus benefit from true interoperability within their multi-cloud environments by allowing them to freely choose the infrastructure and technological solutions adapted to their business.
SUSE continues to accelerate technology partnerships with major vendors of Greater confidence in building scalable applications and environments with enhanced security and compliance capabilities. To help users harden their existing and new cluster environments, SUSE Rancher 2.6 has started integrating with SUSE Linux Enterprise Base Container Images ( SLE BCI) in order to offer a free, open, flexible and secure base. SUSE Rancher 2.6 also offers enhanced audit trail traceability to help operators meet audit compliance requirements.
A technical overview of GitOps provisioning with the Cluster API is also available in SUSE Rancher 2.6 to give IT operators the ability to create custom cluster models to reduce the risk of user error and standardize deployments.
SUSE Rancher is a 100% open source and completely vendor independent product. It gives users the flexibility and the ability to manage their containers on any certified Kubernetes distribution. SUSE Rancher helps IT professionals meet the operational and security challenges of managing certified Kubernetes clusters in the data center, cloud, and edge. It also provides DevOps teams with built-in tools to build and run containerized workloads at scale.
