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Mohan Atreya

Amazon EKS v1.26 Clusters using Rafay

In our recent release in May, we added support for a number of new features and enhancements. One of these was support for new EKS cluster provisioning based on Kubernetes v1.26.

Customers have shared with us that they would like to provision new EKS clusters using new Kubernetes versions so that they do not have to plan/schedule for Kubernetes upgrades for these clusters right away. On the other hand, they want to be extremely careful with their existing clusters and plan/test in-place upgrades for these. There is no benefit in rushing this and impacting mission critical applications etc.

Based on this feedback, starting this release, we plan to introduce support for new Kubernetes versions for CSPs (i.e. EKS, AKS and GKE) in two phases. In the first phase, which will come very quickly, we will support new cluster provisioning for the new Kubernetes version. This requires us to extensively validate support for ALL supported interfaces in the platform (See details below). We will follow up with a Phase 2 which will bring support for zero touch in-place upgrades.

Important

Support for zero touch, in-place upgrades in Rafay from EKS v1.25 to v1.26 will follow in a few weeks. This requires us to add support for new preflight tests etc and perform extensive testing and validation.

Azure Linux Container Host for AKS Clusters

In late May 2023, Microsoft announced General Availability of Azure Linux Container Host. This is based on the "CBL Mariner" OSS project maintained by Microsoft.

  • It is an operating system image that is optimized for running container workloads on Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS).
  • The OS image is maintained by Microsoft and based on Microsoft Azure Linux, an open-source Linux distribution created by Microsoft.
  • It is lightweight, containing only the packages needed to run container workloads.
  • It is hardened based on validation tests and is compatible with Azure agents.

Developer Self Service via Cluster Templates

Our recent release update in May adds support for a number of new features and enhancements and we have written about the these enhancements and new features in our blogs. This blog is focused on Cluster Templates for GKE that enables customers to implement a Developer Self Service for Kubernetes clusters.

We added support for cluster templates in early 2022 starting with support for Amazon EKS initially, then followed by cluster templates for Azure AKS and with this release, cluster templates for Google's GKE. Common Use Cases for Cluster Templates are "Ephemeral Clusters" for lower environments such as:

  • Developer Test Beds
  • QA environments
  • Product support to replicate customer issues

Amazon EKS v1.25 using Rafay

Our recent release update in May to our Preview environment adds support for a number of new features and enhancements. We will write about the other new features in separate blogs. This blog is focused on our turnkey support for Amazon EKS v1.25.

Both new cluster provisioning and in-place upgrades of existing EKS clusters are supported. As with most Kubernetes releases, this version also deprecates and removes a number of features. To ensure there is zero impact to our customers, we have made sure that every feature in the Rafay Kubernetes Operations Platform has been validated on this Kubernetes version.

This release will be promoted from Preview to Production in a few days and will be made available to all customers.

Note that no action is needed on the part of our SaaS customers with the new release. Once the rollout is completed, all they need to do is learn about the new features and determine how and when they would like to use them.

Kubernetes v1.26 for Rafay MKS

Our recent release update in May to our Preview environment adds support for a number of new features and enhancements. We will write about these in separate blogs. This blog is focused on support for Kubernetes v1.26 with Rafay MKS (i.e. upstream Kubernetes for bare metal and VM based environments).

Both new cluster provisioning and in-place upgrades of existing clusters are supported. As with most Kubernetes releases, this version also deprecates and removes a number of features. To ensure there is zero impact to our customers, we have made sure that every feature in the Rafay Kubernetes Operations Platform has been validated on this Kubernetes version. This will be promoted from Preview to Production in a few days and will be made available to all customers.

Kubernetes v1.26 Release

Solutions for Key Kubernetes Challenges for AI/ML in the Enterprise - Part 2

This is part-2 of our blog series on challenges and solutions for AI/ML in the enterprise. This blog is based on our learnings over the last two years as we worked very closely with our customers that make extensive use of Kubernetes for AI/ML use cases. In part-1, we looked at the following:

  • Why Kubernetes is particularly compelling for AI/ML.
  • Described some of the key challenges that organizations will encounter with AI/ML and Kubernetes

In this part, we will look at some innovative approaches by which organizations can address these challenges.

Key Kubernetes Challenges for AI/ML in the Enterprise - Part 1

This blog is based on our learnings over the last two years as we worked very closely with our customers that make extensive use of Kubernetes for AI/ML.

This is part-1 of a two part series. In part-1, we will

  • Start by looking at why Kubernetes is particularly compelling for AI/ML.
  • Describe some of the key challenges that organizations will encounter with AI/ML and Kubernetes

In part-2, we will look at ways by which organizations can address these challenges.

Announcing our April 2023 (v1.24) Release

A few weeks back in early April 2023, we upgraded our Preview environment to v1.24 of the Rafay Kubernetes Operations Platform. Our sincere thanks to our customers and partners that have been actively testing the new functionality. We have received timely feedback that we have been able to incorporate into our product documentation and into the platform as well.

Today, we upgraded our Production environment to this release. As always, our customers will have seamless access to the new functionality with no interruptions to their applications or clusters. In this blog, I will describe some of the new features that are part of this release.

April Release v1.24