What is SUSE CaaS Platform? What’s all the buzz about?

Easy to use (Orchestration + Container Host OS + Configuration) = SUSE CaaS Platform

As you know by now, just having a container engine is not sufficient for making a successful container based product ready for production. You need container orchestration, automation, the ability to scale, a registry of images, the ability to run everywhere, security and so on.

The SUSE Team set out to make containers more consumable and ready for enterprises with SUSE CaaS Platform.

The idea is to make it easy and keep it simple.

SUSE CaaS Platform consists of 3 key components.

1. Orchestration
2. OS for Microservices & Containers
3. Configuration

Let’s look under the hood at the technologies involved.

Orchestration is a key functionality needed to deploy containers for production. SUSE CaaS Platform uses open source Kubernetes to provide production grade container orchestration at scale. Kubernetes provides a complete solution for container based workloads, along with features such as self-healing that enables auto-starting, re-scheduling and replicating containers with ease.

Kubernetes is integrated with our container OS – SUSE MicroOS to provide a unified system that is easy to setup and use. SUSE CaaS Platform takes away the complexity in setting up and deploying Kubernetes.

The main features include –

• An Administrator Dashboard – An easy to use UI that helps you to deploy, manage and update cluster nodes.
• Integration with the Datacenter, supporting persistent storage and networking options.
• Follow upstream by using latest Kubernetes releases with ease.

At the heart of SUSE CaaS Platform is the microservices and containers host OS – SUSE MicroOS. This is your starting point. With a one step configuration, SUSE MicroOS provides the necessary agility & performance so you can quickly start and add components as you go along maturing the container application. Having an OS that is focused on the end result and optimized for microservices based containerized apps, is key. The word “Micro” in MicroOS signifies microservices. You don’t have to worry about the security of the underlying OS or performance, just focus on how best to craft your containerized apps. You can run your microservices based applications efficiently by easily connecting a variety of persistent storage options – SUSE Enterprise Storage, local disk or NFS to save logs and configuration details.

SUSE MicroOS solves some of the important pain points that an organization faces when using containers by providing:

• An easy to manage/upgrade OS
• The ability to quickly setup/manage a cluster of nodes
• An always up-to-date Operating System
• Transaction updates

Now let’s discuss the 3^rd technology piece – Configuration.

We need to move away from the configuration of single hosts and instead configure a complete cluster. Handling the complete cluster the same way – with automatic configuration – allows you to concentrate on application development.

SUSE CaaS Platform uses open source Salt to automate the cluster at scale. Salt provides a very scalable, fast and secure way of communicating with systems in real time. Using Salt you can achieve a complete and automatic installation and configuration of components.

Additionally, you can automate using cloud-init to pass configuration data to systems.

Down the road, the plan is to integrate with SUSE Manager so you can have SUSE Manager as a one-step solution to manage your container environment.

Organizations are beginning to embrace containers for production. However, they are looking for ways to quickly enable their teams to develop creative container apps. The SUSE Platform provides that fast lane so you can focus on the creation of innovative container apps and not get bogged down by the hurdles of implementing the container infrastructure.

Here are some helpful links to learn more-

Beta Site

Blogs – Rise of the CaaS Platform, SUSE Container as a Service 1.0 Public Beta Available!

Video – Installing a SUSE Container as a Service Platform 1.0 Beta 2 Cluster

Webinars –  Introduction to SUSE CaaS Platform, Technical insights into SUSE CaaS Platform (Demo of container host OS – SUSE  MicroOS)

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