How Rancher Strengthens Kubernetes

Kubernetes is a powerful engine for orchestrating containers. Rancher includes a full Kubernetes distribution, but adds value around Kubernetes in three key areas: Cluster Operations and Management, Intuitive Workload Management, and Enterprise Support.

Cluster Operations
& Management

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Application
Workload Management

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Enterprise
Support

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Cluster Operations & Management

Rancher provides a centralized control plane that unifies management of every Kubernetes cluster running across your organization. Rancher solves operational challenges, such as cluster provisioning, upgrades, user management and policy management.

Deploy & monitor clusters on any infrastructure

Install Kubernetes clusters on bare metal servers, VMware, any IaaS cloud or at the edge in minutes. Rancher also automatically deploys and configures Kubernetes components, such as etcd, and monitors the cluster health with built-in Prometheus.

Makes AKS, EKS & GKE even better

Manage your hosted and on-prem Kubernetes clusters through a single interface. Centrally configure security policy, audit logs and monitor performance. Deploy multi-cluster apps consistently from Rancher’s app catalog. Ensure consistent access control to all your clusters by connecting them with internal identity providers like Active Directory.

Centralized security policy management

Allow admins to define Kubernetes access control, network and pod security policies centrally, assess cluster configurations against CIS best practices, and apply them across any cluster. Ensure compliance and reduce the overhead on individual teams as they adopt Kubernetes.

Integrated Active Directory, LDAP and SAML support

Enforce access control policies for individual users or groups. Admins can enable self-service by delegating administration of Kubernetes clusters and namespaces directly to individual users or teams.

Smart DNS provisioning for every application

Rancher’s Global DNS capability ensures that users can reach your application from the moment it launches, with no extra effort required.

Protect and recover from cluster failures

Run scheduled and ad-hoc snapshots of etcd, writing them to local or S3 storage, with management via both Rancher and the Kubernetes API.

App Workload Management

Kubernetes contains powerful functionality for orchestrating applications and guaranteeing service availability. Rancher adds a complete UI and workload management layer to Kubernetes, that simplifies adoption and integrates CI/CD as well as key open source projects such as Prometheus, Grafana and Fluentd.

Complete UI for workload management

Rancher makes it easy for users to deploy services on Kubernetes and get visibility into everything running on a cluster. Define scheduling rules, health checks, ingress controllers, secrets, storage and other key configuration choices.

User projects spanning multiple namespaces

Allocate multiple Kubernetes namespaces within the same cluster to an individual user or team. Quickly define access control policies, secrets and other configuration items that span multiple namespaces.

Global and private application catalogs

By leveraging Helm, Rancher’s app catalogs increase productivity and reliability for enterprises running complex workloads in a hybrid-cloud, multi-cloud, and multi-cluster Kubernetes environment.

Enhanced observability

Rancher’s built-in Grafana dashboards give enhanced observability into all Kubernetes clusters while ensuring isolation across different projects and users.

Enterprise Support

Quickly adopt Rancher and its integrated cloud-native tooling while complying with corporate security and availability standards. Rancher’s enterprise-grade support services give you the confidence you need to deploy Kubernetes in production at any scale. Rancher’s tightly defined SLAs ensure you get the help you need from our experts when you need it.

100% Free & Open Source

We deploy upstream, open source Kubernetes, so its latest features will always be available for our users. Rancher shapes Kubernetes into an enterprise offering by putting security first and making it easy for businesses to control their clusters from a single interface.

No Vendor Lock-In

We give you the freedom to quickly deploy Kubernetes anywhere, with the configuration that you want. If you ever decide to stop using Rancher, we provide a clean uninstall process for imported clusters so that you can manage them independently, as if we were never there.

24/7/365 Support

For those who wish to go beyond community support, we offer 24/7/365 worldwide support for the Docker Engine, all of Kubernetes and all of Rancher's components. Engaging with Rancher Labs for support of your environment makes us part of your team, committed to your success.