SUSE Releases Rancher Enterprise Edition 2.6 for Localization

Rancher Enterprise Edition first started in the "Rancher China" period. After SUSE completed the acquisition of Rancher, SUSE's localization tendency has also continued this strategy, and local customers also prefer this open source product landing model. Compared with other SUSE products, Rancher Enterprise Edition is a special existence. It is a secondary R&D transformation of the local R&D team based on the Rancher Global Community Edition, and has achieved a complete localization iteration. Respond quickly and fix product problems raised by local customers. At the same time, the Enterprise Edition is not a single engineering product, but a continuous iterative product.

As the first version of the Enterprise v2.6 series, v2.6.3-ent has gone through a relatively long development cycle since December last year. During the development cycle, the v2.5 and v2.4 versions still need to be developed synchronously, and at the same time, the stability problems of the early community version of v2.6 need to be avoided. We finally choose to release the enterprise version on the v2.6.3 open source baseline. Enhanced features on the basis of maintaining the capabilities of the community version, and fixed several bugs.

The main features of benchmarking community edition

The Enterprise Edition is functionally a superset of the Open Source Edition without disrupting the inherent experience of the original Open Source product. What we hope to convey to users is that the basic logic of Rancher Enterprise Edition is to provide more flexible, fast localization support, and sustainable localization product features. At some point in the future, users can switch from the enterprise version back to the open source version after paying a certain technical cost. In addition to bug fixes for some common local functions, compared to the open source version, some of the features of the enterprise version are as follows:

Keep the Cluster Manager experience

The Community Edition v2.6 uses the Cluster Explorer as the main interface, which greatly changes the experience for enterprise users; at the same time, it also blocks the direct access to the Cluster Manager. Taking into account the technical cost brought by enterprise users switching UI styles, the enterprise version deliberately opens the direct channel of Cluster Manager access, and conducts continuous maintenance on it to reduce the upgrade cost for users of the old version.

Open Harvester Explorer Experience

In the Cluster Explorer UI, by default, Harvester clusters only allow VM management, not container management. On the Feature Flags page, enable the specific feature explorer-harvester-cluster to open the container management of the Harvester cluster.

Once this feature is turned on, it can be managed in EXLORER CLUSTER.

For the same Harvester cluster, users can manage VMs from the virtualization management perspective, and switch to the EXPLORER perspective to perform common container management.

Continue to maintain localization features

For the previously accumulated localization features, the Cluster Manager in v2.6.3-ent version is basically kept, and some functions have been migrated in Cluster Explorer. For Cluster Manager, more new features will not be added in the future, and the main focus is on stability maintenance; for Cluster Explorer, after the smooth transition of Cluster Manager, it will become the main landing window for new functions in the future. The following are some advanced localization features, please refer to the manual for more features:

Future Product Thinking

Enhance the performance and stability of multi-cluster management

Whether in the past, present, or future, multi-cluster management has always been Rancher's housekeeping skill and should not be missed. In the past, Rancher may have paid more attention to the diversity of cluster management, but in the future, it will pay more attention to the stability and performance of larger-scale scenarios. Such problems arising from product iterations will be treated with the highest priority.

Enterprises promote digital transformation by embracing cloud-native, and at present, cloud-native cannot leave the blessing of Kubernetes, and the management ability of Kubernetes clusters in the enterprise version is a basic requirement. Its performance and stability are related to the safety of the superstructure.

Last year, Rancher's local R&D team conducted an in-depth performance tuning for the enterprise version, and conducted in-depth implementation with some large-scale users in China, and the management scale exceeded 5000+ nodes.

This year, we have also established independent test engineering teams around the world, who will cover functional modules with more automated tests, while maintaining the Long Living environment for more rigorous failure simulation tests. While attaching importance to functional iteration, we also pay more attention to product stability and quality. These improvements in product quality will naturally carry over to the Enterprise Edition.

docking with localized Arm ecology

Support for localized Arm will become a continuous work. At the R&D level, more enterprise version components will be gradually incorporated into the Arm support system, from the basic support of core components to the full-stack localized Arm support.

Increase research and development support value-added products1623bf3d0d4ce8

With the gradual maturity of the basic management functions of Kubernetes clusters, more and more value-added products have surfaced, and new areas of Kubernetes commercialization competition in the future will also focus on this. The product boundaries of the enterprise version will also be clarified, more value-added functions will be presented in a modular UI, and subsequent iterative upgrades of new functional modules will be more flexible, which is also the advantage of the technical architecture upgrade brought by the new UI of Cluster Explorer. .

The main personnel of the Harvester engineering team are basically in China, and they have greater advantages in customer docking and support for technical issues.

At the same time, with the acquisition and integration of NeuVector and the product output of Edge Computing from Global, the Enterprise Edition will appropriately strengthen the relevant integration to meet the product needs of local customers.

Cluster Manager or Cluster Explorer？

After the release of Rancher 2.6 Community Edition, the UI experience has undergone major changes. Many users miss the Cluster Manager experience, which led to this topic.

From the perspective of the Rancher engineering team, we want to keep innovating and breaking new ground, not doing things that are out of the way. Part of the success of Cluster Manager comes from a simplified experience that properly simplifies and shields Kubernetes' new API features and focuses on the main functions commonly used by users. However, with the continuous development of the industry, the proportion of skilled technical personnel in Kubernetes continues to increase, and the simplification and packaging of Cluster Manager make it difficult for many technical personnel to maintain and use flexibly. Driven by the voices of commercial customers and the global community: we switched the UI framework from Ember to Vue; switched the API model from Norman to Steve, the latter can be more dynamically connected to the Kubernetes API, while the former's secondary development and expansion costs are very high ; At the same time, it also reshapes the UI experience to make it more Kubernetes Native.

This change in the community edition reshapes the entire user experience, and it will indeed bring a lot of impact to users who have been using Rancher for a long time. However, Cluster Explorer will gradually develop and mature, and we will also submit support for UI plug-in extensions in the future. At that time, Cluster Explorer will definitely bring greater convenience and flexibility.

Enterprise version users do not have to struggle with this style change in the short term, and the local R&D team still opens the Cluster Manager in the product.

to consult

Finally, partners who are interested in Rancher Enterprise Edition are welcome to add Rancher Assistant WeChat to get in touch with official sales. At the same time, the Rancher Global community edition is still the main selling force in overseas markets, and community users do not have to worry about the sustainability of the community edition.