Kubernetes revolutionized container orchestration, but managing it is still a complex and time-consuming process. That’s why Managed Kubernetes-as-a-Service offerings have emerged to provide K8s expertise and empower tech teams to focus on innovation rather than infrastructure maintenance. Far from replacing Site Reliability Engineers (SREs) or in-house teams, Managed Kubernetes-as-a-Service delivers and manages production-grade infrastructure, allowing SREs to enhance their capabilities and concentrate on high-value business differentiation instead.

Flexibility of Managed Kubernetes-as-a-Service

Managed Kubernetes-as-a-Service is a white-glove service that solves multiple adoption, management, and scale challenges that organizations often encounter with Kubernetes. To deliver this service, Fairwinds leverages years of infrastructure expertise and combines it with best-in-class tooling and software to architect, build, and manage production-grade Kubernetes infrastructure. While Fairwinds’ SREs handle the intricate details of cluster setup, maintenance, and scaling, your engineering team can focus its efforts towards accelerating the projects that enable your organization to stand out from the competition.

Managed K8s-as-a-Service offers many advantages, including:

• Access to Slack and ticketing systems to ensure simple communication with Fairwinds experts, plus documentation to ensure alignment on technical requirements
• Production and pre-production clusters are managed as Infrastructure as Code (IaC)
• Ongoing maintenance of cluster add-ons and operator tools
• An infrastructure repository and gap analysis
• 24×7 monitoring and incident response for your infrastructure
• Vulnerability and security monitoring and patching
• Q&A support with regular syncs to share updates and track progress against goals

It’s important to note that Managed Kubernetes-as-a-Service isn’t the same as the managed Kubernetes offerings from cloud service providers. Microsoft Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS), and Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) all help with some of the complexities of Kubernetes, such as handling the Kubernetes control plane and underlying physical infrastructure. These offerings also include tools within their respective ecosystems that make it easier to deploy and manage containerized applications. Keep in mind, though, that AKS, EKS, and GKE each have different strengths and weaknesses, so you’ll want to choose the service that best meets the needs of your organization. Fairwinds Managed Kubernetes-as-a-Service supports all of these providers and can help you choose the best one for your organization’s unique needs.

Empower Your SRE Team

Kubernetes itself gets major upgrades three times a year, and the effort to upgrade is not insignificant. In-house teams usually need to dedicate weeks of effort to researching updates, applying them, and testing changes. Add-ons also frequently need to be updated, requiring even more research and testing. By taking over these routine tasks, Managed Kubernetes-as-a-Service actually empowers these specialists in software engineering and systems administration to focus on more strategic business initiatives, enabling:

• More Innovation: By offloading infrastructure management, SREs can dedicate more time to improving application performance, implementing advanced deployment strategies, and optimizing cloud resources.
• Enhanced Productivity: Managed Kubernetes-as-a-Service incorporates the tooling and individual Kubernetes expertise as well as providing recommendations that help streamline operations, allowing in-house SREs to work more efficiently. By providing the Kubernetes help you need, SREs can focus on helping developers quickly, reliably, and safely deploy applications.
• Increased Operational Efficiency: By including 24/7 infrastructure monitoring and support, these managed services complement the SRE team’s efforts to maximize system reliability, performance, and scalability.
• Strengthened Security Posture: It’s easy to make a misconfiguration in Kubernetes or miss a newly disclosed vulnerability. Fairwinds’ Managed Kubernetes-as-a-Service combines software and a team of experts to improve security by preventing the release of misconfigurations, scanning for CVEs, and applying patches in coordination with in-house teams as appropriate to minimize risk. Our approach also ensures that security is always top of mind when making architectural decisions, from encryption to secrets storage to role-based access control.
• Demonstrated Compliance: With a Managed Kubernetes-as-a-Service provider, vulnerability remediation for high and critical CVEs is swift and documented, making it simpler to show compliance to regulators in your industry.
• Kubernetes Expertise: Managed Kubernetes-as-a-Service offers access to Kubernetes experts who can assist with complex issues, effectively extending your team’s capabilities. Using proven methodologies, Fairwinds SREs create customized environments that are designed to ensure that your infrastructure aligns with your business goals.

“We appreciate the partnership with Fairwinds for helping us manage our multitude of clusters and providing the guidance to achieve our internal Kubernetes maturity initiatives. Their expertise allowed us to accelerate our Kubernetes journey while ensuring our systems are secure, efficient, and compliant.”

–Technology Leader, Food Company

Focus on Your Business

Clients in multiple industries have leveraged Managed Kubernetes-as-a-Service to transform their operations because it resolves multiple pain points that are common in organizations adopting Kubernetes. By eliminating the need to architect, build, and maintain Kubernetes infrastructure from the ground up, companies can focus on building out their differentiators and optimizing development processes and release times instead of maintaining infrastructure.

Managed Kubernetes-as-a-Service is not a replacement for your SRE team, but rather a powerful way to amplify their capabilities. By offloading the complexities of Kubernetes management, Managed Kubernetes-as-a-Service frees your tech team to focus on innovation, optimization, and delivering value to your business. As containerization and Kubernetes continue to dominate the tech landscape, Managed Kubernetes-as-a-Service can give your organization a significant competitive edge.

*** This is a Security Bloggers Network syndicated blog from Fairwinds | Blog authored by Andy Suderman. Read the original post at: https://www.fairwinds.com/blog/managed-kubernetes-as-a-service-force-multiplier