SUSE, a global leader in innovative, reliable and secure enterprise-grade open source solutions, today announced the release of Rancher 2.7.2. The latest update to the most widely adopted Kubernetes management platform includes extensibility enhancements designed to foster even stronger eco-system adoption. SUSE also expanded the enterprise-grade value of its open source commercial subscription for Rancher with the latest release of Rancher Prime, as well as delivered updates to its popular open source projects like Rancher Desktop, and re-launched its free training portal, Rancher Academy.
“As the Kubernetes ecosystem expands and becomes more complex, innovation, interoperability, and simplicity have never been more important. Our free-to-use Rancher UI extension framework empowers users and independent software vendors (ISVs) to create customized user experiences, significantly enhancing the operationalization of their entire Kubernetes environment,” said Peter Smails, General Manager of Enterprise Container Management at SUSE.
Smails believes that Rancher’s UI extension framework will be especially popular with SUSE’s global network of technology partners. The SUSE One Partner Program now incorporates the ‘Tested & Certified – Rancher Extension’ certification, which allows partners to build and host extensions from within Rancher’s application catalog and validate its reliability through this new certification criteria. The updated program encourages more collaboration and interoperability across the Rancher partner ecosystem and is backed by support from the Rancher Prime subscription.
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Customizing the Kubernetes experience for Rancher users
SUSE continues to extend its leadership position as the world’s most widely deployed Kubernetes management platform with the release of Rancher 2.7.2. The new Rancher UI extension framework decouples the UI functionality from Rancher Manager and provides users with the ability to independently extend and enhance the Rancher UI. This gives users the capability to build on top of the Rancher platform and better integrate Rancher into their environments by building custom, peer-developed or Rancher-developed UI extensions.
Available today are three Rancher-developed extensions, including:
- Kubewarden Extension, which delivers a comprehensive way to manage the lifecycle of Kubernetes policies across Rancher clusters.
- Elemental Extension, which provides operators with the ability to manage their cloud-native OS and Edge devices from within the Rancher platform.
- Harvester Extension, which helps operators load their virtualized Harvester cluster into Rancher to easily manage and inspect.
SUSE’s strategy for Rancher is to provide the core power of hybrid and multi-cloud multi-cluster management, and for extension providers to deliver a highly customized user experience to their customers within the same pane of glass.
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Maintaining momentum across innovation projects
SUSE’s commitment to open source innovation does not stop with Rancher. SUSE continues to use its extensive portfolio of open source projects as an innovation sandbox, with recent updates including:
- Rancher Desktop 1.8 now includes configurable application behaviors such as auto-start login and all applications settings configurable via the command line tool rdctl and new experimental updates.
- Kubewarden 1.6.0 now allows DevSecOps teams to write Policy as Code using both traditional programming languages and domain specific languages.
- Opni 0.9 has several observability feature updates as it approaches its planned GA later in the year.
- S3GW (S3 Gateway) 0.14.0 has new features such as lifecycle management, object locking and holds, and UI improvements.
- Epinio 1.7 now has a UI with Dex integration, the identity service that uses OpenID Connect to drive authentication for other apps, and SUSE’s S3GW.
Continued investment in community education
Rancher Academy, the free educational platform designed to help users get started with Rancher and Kubernetes, is back with more courses covering topics such as Kubernetes, Container Fundamentals, Rancher Multi-cluster Management, Container Security, and more.
“Cloud-native expertise remains one of the biggest inhibitors to Kubernetes’ adoption,” said Tom Callway, VP Product Marketing & Community at SUSE. “By re-launching Rancher Academy, our aim is to help demystify the complexities of cloud-native platforms like Kubernetes and break down the barriers faced by users when deploying new workloads. With Rancher Academy, the Rancher users now have a free, high quality educational resource to increase their Kubernetes knowledge, helping users build faster and more securely.”
Enhancing performance and resiliency for Rancher Prime customers
Following Rancher Prime’s availability in December 2022, SUSE added new value-added components to the enterprise commercial subscription designed to help enterprise customers improve performance and resiliency of their enterprise-grade production clusters.
Through the latest Rancher Prime capabilities, customers will be able to:
- Experience trusted delivery and extensibility: In conjunction with a trusted, private registry delivery mechanism, the release of the new UI extension framework in Rancher v2.7.2 allows Rancher Prime customers to get SLA-backed support for Policy & OS Management natively within the Rancher platform through Kubewarden and Elemental extensions.
- Solve business challenges with more efficiency. Prime subscribers have access to SUSE’s customer engagement platform SUSE Collective, which now includes access to peers, exclusive roadmap materials, reference architectures, operating at scale documentation, and white glove on demand start-up guides.
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