Mirantis to support Different Kubernetes Distributions

Mirantis recently announced its support for different distributions of Kubernetes in addition to its own Kubernetes distribution.

Termed as “Bring-Your-Own-Distro” (BYOD) support offering for brownfield Kubernetes implementations, the announcement noted that Mirantis will support any Kubernetes distribution that is vendor-neutral as well as conformant to its general constraints outlined in the Mirantis service agreement.

Executive Opinion

Mirantis co-founder and CMO, "The idea of monetizing open source software through an opinionated, pre-packaged distribution is a construct of the IT-driven world that we lived in 20 years ago. Today we live in the developer-driven world and Kubernetes is built for developers first, and IT second. Developers don’t need a third party vendor to push a pre-packaged, opinionated Kubernetes their way. All they need is occasional high-quality support from open source software experts. This is what we aim to deliver with BYOD Kubernetes support."

Kubernetes-as-a-Service (KaaS) 

The announcement noted that Mirantis Kubernetes-as-a-Service is capable to orchestrate existing brownfield K8s clusters. The terminology, "Brownfield" generally refers to existing deployments while "Greenfield" generally refers to fresh deployments. The latest BYOD support offering is a precursor to the Kubernetes-as-a-Service (KaaS)

According to Mirantis, Kubernetes-as-a-Service (KaaS) addresses key challenges with running Kubernetes on-premises with pure open source software such as,

1. Distribution-agnostic K8s cluster management capabilities utilizing Cluster API and Kubespray, with self-service API and web-based UI
2. Control and delegate access to K8s clusters and namespaces using existing Identity Providers with IAM integration based on Keycloak
3. Backend-agnostic Load Balancing and Storage capabilities for K8s through integration with OpenStack Octavia and Cinder APIs
4. Native integration with Istio service mesh and Harbor image registry   

Mirantis stated that it will offer SLA-backed support to enterprise development teams using conformant and vendor-neutral distributions of Kubernetes.