Category Archives: Kubernetes

a3 vm, Artificial intelligence, Cloud computing, Digital Transformation, gke, Google Cloud, inference, jax, Kubernetes, kubernetes engine, llm, Platforms, tensor core, tensorflow, tpu v5, tpu v5e

Google Cloud unveils AI-optimised infrastructure enhancements

Google Cloud has announced significant advancements in its AI-optimised infrastructure, including fifth-generation TPUs and A3 VMs based on NVIDIA H100 GPUs. Traditional approaches to designing and constructing computing systems are proving inadequate for the surging demands of workloads like generative AI and large language models (LLMs). Over the last five years, the parameters in LLMs… Read more »

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Alex Polvi, Boris Renski, CoreOS, Docker, Google, Kubernetes, Linux containers, News & Analysis, Open Source, OpenStack, Vendor

Mirantis, CoreOS deliver Kubernetes on OpenStack

Mirantis and CoreOS are partnering on Kubernetes integration with OpenStack

Mirantis and CoreOS are partnering on Kubernetes integration with OpenStack

Pure-play OpenStack vendor Mirantis has teamed with CoreOS to integrate its distribution of the open source cloud software with Tectonic, CoreOS’ commercial Kubernetes distribution.

Tectonic blends Kubernetes, an open source container deployment management service, and the CoreOS software portfolio in an integrated package, including a management console for workflows and dashboards, an integrated registry to build and share Linux containers, and additional tools to automate deployment and customize rolling updates. It runs on-premises or in public and private clouds.

The two companies said the move would improve support and manageability of containers running on OpenStack and bolster their mutual hybrid cloud capabilities.

“Mirantis and CoreOS share a vision of helping DevOps teams create better software faster. Putting Kubernetes on top of OpenStack gives them flexibility in how they build their applications, letting them innovate quickly,” said Mirantis chief marketing officer and co-founder Boris Renski.

“We are thrilled to be working with Google and CoreOS, and look forward to hearing more from them about how enterprises can leverage containers with OpenStack at OpenStack Silicon Valley.”

The move comes nearly half a year after Mirantis announced it would partner with Google to get vanilla Kubernetes integrated with its OpenStack distribution and double down on support for containers more broadly, efforts that have seemingly accelerated since Google announced the official 1.0 launch of Kubernetes last month.

“Now that Kubernetes is production-ready, companies using Tectonic and Mirantis OpenStack can have a Google-like infrastructure at their fingertips,” said Alex Polvi, chief executive of CoreOS. “Mirantis possesses a deep understanding of open source software and their commitment to the open source ecosystem around OpenStack is second to none. It was natural to work with Mirantis to help customers see the benefits of Kubernetes on OpenStack.”

Craig McLuckie, Google, Kubernetes, Laurent Lachal, Mark Collier, News & Analysis, Open Source, OpenStack, ovum

Google joins OpenStack to build bridges between public and private clouds

Google has joined the OpenStack Foundation, a big sign of support for the open source software organisation

Google has joined the OpenStack Foundation, a big sign of support for the open source software organisation

Google has officially signed up to sponsor the OpenStack Foundation, the first of the big three – Google, Microsoft and AWS – to formally throw its weight behind the open source cloud orchestration software. Analysts believe the move will improve support for Linux containers across public and private cloud environments.

Google has already set to work integrating Kubernetes with OpenStack with pure-play OpenStack software vendor Mirantis, a move the company said would help bolster its hybrid cloud capabilities.

While the company has had some engineers partnering with the Foundation on Magnum and Murano, container-focused toolsets baked into the open source platform, Google said it plans to significantly bolster the engineering resource it devotes to getting Linux containers – and particularly its open source scheduling and deployment platform Kubernetes – integrated with OpenStack.

The formal sign of support from such a big incumbent in the cloud space is a big win for OpenStack.

“We are excited about becoming active participants in the OpenStack community,” said Craig McLuckie, product manager at Google. “We look forward to sharing what we’ve learned and hearing how OpenStack users are thinking about containers and other technologies to support cloud-native apps.”

Mark Collier, chief operating officer of the OpenStack Foundation said: “OpenStack is a platform that frees users to run proven technologies like VMs as well as new technologies like containers. With Google committing unequaled container and container management engineering expertise to our community, the deployment of containers via proven orchestration engines like Kubernetes will accelerate rapidly.”

Although Google has a long history of open sourcing some of the tools it uses to stand up its own cloud and digital services like search it hasn’t always participated with many open source forums per se.

In a sense Kubernetes marked a departure from its previous trajectory, and as Ovum’s lead software analyst Laurent Lachal explained to BCN, it seems to be focusing on containers as a means of building a bridge between private and public clouds.

“Google knows that it needs to play nice with cloud platforms like OpenStack and VMware, two platforms that are primarily private cloud-centric, if it wants to get workloads onto its public cloud,” he explained.

“Joining OpenStack is exactly that – a means to building a bridge between private and public clouds, and supporting containers within the context of OpenStack may be both a means of doing that and generating consensus around how best to support containers in OpenStack, something that could also work in its favour.”

“There’s also a big need for that kind of consensus. Currently, everyone wants to join the containers initiatives in the open source project but there isn’t much backing for one particular way of delivering the container-related features users need,” he added.

Docker, Infrastructure as a Service, Kubernetes, Linux containers, Mesos, News & Analysis, Open Source

Containers ready for the primetime, Rackspace CTO says

John Engates was in London for the Rackspace Solve conference

John Engates was in London for the Rackspace Solve conference

Linux containers have been around for some time but only now is the technology reaching a level of maturity enterprise cloud developers are comfortable with, explained John Engates, Rackspace’s chief technology officer.

Linux containers have been all the rage the past year, and Engates told BCN the volume of the discussion is only likely to increase as the technology matures. But the technology is still young.

“We tried to bring support for containers to OpenStack around three or four years back,” Engates said. “But I think that containers are finally ready for cloud.”

One of the projects Engates cited to illustrate this is Project Magnum, a young sub-project within OpenStack building on Heat to produce Nova instances on which to run application containers, and it basically creates native capabilities (like support for different scheduling techniques); it effectively enables users and service providers to offer containers-as-a-service, and improves portability of containers between different cloud platforms.

“While containers have been around for a while they’ve only recently become the darling of the enterprise cloud developers, and part of that is because there’s a growing ecosystem out there working to build the tools needed to support them,” he said.

A range of use cases around Linux containers have emerged over the years – as a transport method, as a way of quickly deploying and porting apps between different sets of infrastructure, as a way of standing up a cloud service that offers greater billing granularity (more accurate / efficient usage) – the technology is still maturing and has suffered from a lack of tooling. Doing anything like complex service chaining is still challenging with existing tools, but that’s improving.

Beyond LXC, one of the earliest Linux container projects, there’s now CoreOS, Docker, Mesos, Kubernetes, and a whole host of container-like technologies that bring the microservices / OS ‘light’ architecture as well as deployment scheduling and cluster management tools to market.

“We’re certainly hearing more about how we can help support containers, so we see it as a pretty important from a service perspective moving forward,” he added.

Cloud & IT Management, Cloud computing, Free, Google, Google App Engine, Kubernetes, LXC, Open Source, Tools

Google Adds Docker Image Support to App Engine, Announces Kubernetes Container Manager

Google continues to up the cloud ante by adding a set of extensions that allow Google App Engine developers to build and deploy Docker images in Managed VMs. Developers can use these extensions to easily access the large and growing library of Docker images, and the Docker community can easily deploy containers into a completely managed environment with access to services such as Cloud Datastore.

From the Google Cloud Platform Blog:

“Based on our experience running Linux containers within Google, we know how important it is to be able to efficiently schedule containers at Internet scale. To that end, we’re announcing Kubernetes, a lean yet powerful open-source container manager that deploys containers into a fleet of machines, provides health management and replication capabilities, and makes it easy for containers to connect to one another and the outside world. We’ll continue to build out the feature set, while collaborating with the Docker community to incorporate the best ideas from Kubernetes into Docker.”

 

Full details here.

Cloud & IT Management, Cloud computing, Docker, Free, Google, Google App Engine, Kubernetes, LXC, Open Source, Tools

Google Adds Docker Image Support to App Engine, Announces Kubernetes Container Manager

Google continues to up the cloud ante by adding a set of extensions that allow Google App Engine developers to build and deploy Docker images in Managed VMs. Developers can use these extensions to easily access the large and growing library of Docker images, and the Docker community can easily deploy containers into a completely managed environment with access to services such as Cloud Datastore.

From the Google Cloud Platform Blog:

“Based on our experience running Linux containers within Google, we know how important it is to be able to efficiently schedule containers at Internet scale. To that end, we’re announcing Kubernetes, a lean yet powerful open-source container manager that deploys containers into a fleet of machines, provides health management and replication capabilities, and makes it easy for containers to connect to one another and the outside world. We’ll continue to build out the feature set, while collaborating with the Docker community to incorporate the best ideas from Kubernetes into Docker.”

 

Full details here.