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Kubermatic raises 5.2 million euros in an investment round. The money will be used to further develop Kubermatic’s software: a relatively user-friendly desktop tool for overseeing, updating and configuring Kubernetes clusters.

Kubermatic facilitates the management of Kubernetes, an open-source platform for container orchestration. The latter term has most likely not escaped your notice: Gartner predicts that before the end of 2022, container orchestration will be responsible for the functioning of three-quarters of all applications that organizations work with.

Kicking off with Kubernetes

Kubernetes makes applications independent of cloud environments and operating systems. The process starts with the packaging of all entities traditionally needed to run an application: code, libraries, settings, and so on. The resulting package is called a container. Instead of deploying the container directly to a server and executing the packaged application, Kubernetes introduces an intermediate step. The container merges into a pod. The pod contains instructions for executing the application packaged in a container. As a final step, the pod is moved to a worker node: a virtual or physical machine equipped with instructions to execute the pod. For example, the server in the data center of a public cloud provider or the desktop at a regional office.

Because the pod contains all the information needed to run the application, and the worker node has everything needed to run a pod, the traditional operating system of the final hardware is irrelevant. Said independence is not the only advantage Kubernetes has. Containers, nodes and pods are overlaid by a Kubernetes cluster. The Kubernetes API allows developers to communicate with the cluster. That’s where management begins. Kubernetes clusters allow applications to be flexibly distributed across on-premises and cloud hardware. An example is inputting the desirable resources for an application, after which Kubernetes can draw from a pool of multiple machines to meet the requirement.

The role of Kubermatic

Although the Kubernetes API is approachable with ‘kubectl’ (Kubernetes’ own command-line tool), several organizations are venturing into developing a more intuitive method for Kubernetes cluster management. Among them: Kubermatic, the software developer that announced a $6 million (€5.2 million) investment round.

Kubermatic’s desktop tool serves as a replacement for Kubernetes’ command-line interface. Clusters are visualized. Applications can be scaled up and down from a dashboard. Both ‘kubectl’ and Kubermatic have the Kubernetes API at their core, but while Kubernetes’ command-line interface expresses clusters in lines of text, Kubermatic paints a relatively understandable, visual picture. The organization says the tool can increase the speed of cluster management tenfold.

Tip: Kasten by Veeam launches free curriculum for Kubernetes training