Delivering more flexible and tailored cloud-native management with the latest version of Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes

Today, we’re pleased to announce the general availability of Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes 2.2, which delivers even greater integration and customization to how enterprises manage cloud-native workloads and environments. This latest release simplifies and streamlines operations and captures additional performance metrics to ensure optimization of Red Hat OpenShift clusters.

Introduced in the summer of 2020, Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes enables organizations to manage multiple Kubernetes clusters and automate multi-cluster application deployments across the hybrid cloud. As the industry’s leading enterprise Kubernetes platform, Red Hat OpenShift is a crucial component in how organizations build a more agile hybrid cloud, and Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes helps these enterprises get the most out of these deployments by extending and scaling Red Hat OpenShift clusters. 

Bringing cloud-native closer to existing environments, all while reducing management complexity 

Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes bridges gaps that come with legacy infrastructure by expanding where Red Hat OpenShift and Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes can run. Organizations can use existing IT resources while still gaining innovative management capabilities, like provisioning Red Hat OpenShift on managed clusters, on-premises, bare metal or in public clouds, regardless of IT environment mix.

For organizations looking to reduce management complexity while still maintaining the benefits of enterprise Kubernetes, Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes 2.2 includes additional support for importing managed Kubernetes clusters like Azure Red Hat OpenShift, Red Hat OpenShift Dedicated, and on-premises Red Hat OpenShift clusters on OpenStack and IBM system Z. This enables IT teams to focus on building and scaling the next-generation of applications with greater support in the process, in addition to providing greater flexibility to use the technology to which they’re already accustomed.

Multi-cluster observability that fits organizational data needs

Building on Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes’ ability to bring a centralized point of control to manage Kubernetes clusters, take inventory and view cluster health and performance, users can now organize and elevate vital data for a more optimized view. For fleet management, teams can customize their Grafana dashboards for a centralized view of metrics, reducing the operational complexity for multi-cluster operations. 

Importing custom metrics allows for a more informed analysis of status per cluster and pattern detection of alerts that users deem more important. This helps IT teams to confirm whether applications are operating at their best and in the capacity that matters to them, by making these crucial metrics as accessible as possible. This customization can help provide the observability needed to drive the proper tracking and management of multiple clusters across the open hybrid cloud and the enterprise as a whole.

Expanding application footprints while remaining compliant at scale

With support for open source projects like Open Policy Agent, Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes helps protect organizations against ill-intentioned or accidental configuration drift. Red Hat includes Open Policy Agent as part of Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes, which includes new policies that can deploy Open Policy Agent and policies across the cluster fleet, centralizing existing investments customers may already have in Open Policy Agent. 

The policy-driven automation and application lifecycle management for Red Hat OpenShift deployments enables IT operations teams to better maintain compliance with industry or regulatory standards, furthered by greater policy enforcement to help prevent violations. Customers can now use the Compliance Operator for Red Hat OpenShift to scan security policies against their environments and surface the compliance results in Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes. 

Additionally, customers can deploy applications to a more compliant and more secure cluster fleet, by feeding the information from Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes into Argo CD, a popular GitOps project. This allows Argo CD to deliver content as clusters come online or get imported. Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes policies work in tandem with Argo CD to make sure compliance and configuration are managed and maintained at scale for tighter CI/CD alignment. 

Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes 2.2 extends the power of centralized, automated cluster management to existing IT environments and operations while also providing new tools to maintain compliance and policy enforcement. As Kubernetes deployments scale with user demand, the ability to more clearly manage and observe these mixed environments is imperative to avoid unintended sprawl or non-compliant deployments. Paired with Red Hat OpenShift, Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes brings manageability to cloud-native innovation, even at scale.

To learn more, check out how Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes extends the value of Red Hat OpenShift by deploying apps, managing multiple clusters, and enforcing policies across multiple clusters at scale.