I think it would be a very brave person to claim that Kubernetes, Docker or containers in general was straight forward. There is intrinsic complexity that comes with a containerization and this is no better proven in the increasing ecosystem of management platforms for Kubernetes such as Project Pacific from VMware and others that are in market today. In some ways, the quest for container management platforms reflects the quest for Cloud Management Platforms that abstracted vSphere ESXi and vCenter in order to enable multi-tenant Infrastructure as a Service cloud offerings.
Abstraction layers attempt to remove users from complex tasks and streamline operations.
Complexity is a killer in IT infrastructure and the less complexity that exists the more efficient IT delivery becomes. This is where Portainer comes into play and it is what Neil Cresswell has built the Open Source project around. Portainer simplifies container management in Docker, Swarm, Kubernetes, ACI and Edge environments. It’s used by software engineers to speed up software deployments, troubleshoot problems and simplify migrations. Below is the latest Great Things with Great Tech Episode featuring Portainer where Neils and I dicuss how the company came to be, what it is solving and where is it going.
Portainer 2.0 CE:
Before the latest release of Portainer… and as discussed by Neil in the GTwGT Episode above, they racked up over 2 billion DockerHub pulls and about 500,000 users per month. If that doesn’t tell you there is a market for this stuff, then nothing will! Portainer CE 2.0 includes about 150 new enhancements and is an entirely new image designed as portainer/portainer-ce leading into what will be Portainer Enterprise …which Neil discusses above.
There is a great overview at what’s new in Portainer 2.0 CE here.
