Hitachi Vantara has launched Hitachi Kubernetes Service (HKS), covering the three main public clouds and on-premises data centres.
The company bought the assets of Containership, a tiny collapsed startup, in March 2020. This gave it the technology to supply storage to Kubernetes-orchestrated containers. HKS builds on this foundation to supply K8s cluster management of application and data containers in a single facility.
Bobby Soni, president, Digital Infrastructure, at Hitachi V, said in a statement: “We are helping simplify and solve the multi-cloud Kubernetes challenge for our customers with the introduction of Hitachi Kubernetes Service. With this enterprise-grade service, our customers now have the freedom of a true agnostic platform, the flexibility of an extensible self-service catalogue, accompanied with world-class training and Hitachi global support to help their development teams drive business results.”
Scott Sinclair, a senior analyst at the Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG), chipped in: “From skills shortages to code abandonment, consistent processes and even training and support, there are many challenges in deploying and managing enterprise-grade Kubernetes in one or more clouds.”
The inference we are meant to draw is that HKS will help enterprise customers deal with these problems.
HKS functionality
Hitachi V has built an open CSI (Kubernetes Container Storage Interface) plugin in order to enable Hitachi Vantara Storage to provide persistent storage for Kubernetes stateful containers.
HKS provides a multi-cloud dashboard with APIs to automate workflows. Hitachi Vantara provides data protection functions through open source technologies integrated with HKS and – soon – through a strategic, as yet un-named partner.
Migration services to Kubernetes containers are available via open source tools integrated with HKS. Additional HKS modules are planned that will specifically support stateless and stateful backup, migration and recovery to provide application, workload and data portability, across hybrid-cloud platforms.
Security is delivered through edge protection of communications with Kubernetes clusters using reverse proxy tunnelling of all core communications with the clusters. No ports are needed to be open to establish, manage and support Kubernetes cluster management.
Hitachi V joins Dell with its Project Karavi, HPE (Ezmeral), Pure Storage, NetApp and other suppliers in providing a Kubernetes management service.
Hitachi Kubernetes Service is available today on AWS, and Google Cloud Platform and Microsoft Azure support will come online in the next few months. HKS includes an application catalogue and training options.
