SUSE Private Registry: A safe Harbor for your containers.

We are excited to announce that the SUSE Private Registry is now Generally Available. This robust solution, based on the highly successful open-source project Harbor, is set to become a critical component of the SUSE Rancher Prime cloud-native portfolio.

SUSE Private Registry provides an on-premises, cloud-native container image management platform designed to enable the reliable deployment and operation of containers. Its primary purpose is to securely store, manage, and distribute container images and other OCI artifacts.

The Need for a Private, Trusted Registry

In today’s complex cloud-native environment, managing the software supply chain is paramount. Organizations require a definitive answer to key questions, such as: where are containers pulled from, who built them, and do they contain vulnerabilities?

The adoption of a private registry addresses several critical challenges:

• Critical Building Block: A registry is a basic necessity in any containerized environment.
• Single Source of Truth: It serves as a centralized source for all artifacts, ensuring consistency across development, staging, and production environments.
• Security and Integrity: It ensures security and integrity by providing the tools necessary to control which container images are admitted into your cluster.
• Air-Gapped Environments: The Private Registry is the cornerstone of an air-gapped strategy, enabling the secure transfer and distribution of necessary software components to isolated networks via replication.

Core Capabilities of SUSE Private Registry (Powered by Harbor)

The SUSE Private Registry is built upon Harbor’s extensive features and is tightly integrated with the SUSE ecosystem to simplify secure workflows.

Store (OCI-Compatible)

Unifies container and artifact management by storing all OCI-compliant content in one place and automatically mirroring approved sources, ensuring developers always pull from a verified, consistent location.

SUSE Private Registry login

Distribute & Replicate

Enables policy-based replication between instances, allowing secure distribution of images to other environments, including air-gapped or edge locations with no internet access.

SUSE Private Registry flow

Secure

Provides layered security features, including: 

• Vulnerability Scanning: Supports scanning to identify known CVEs (including support for NeuVector / SUSE Security).
• Image Signing: Uses digital signatures (cosign) to attest to image provenance and integrity.
• Access Control: Features Role-Based Access Control (RBAC), LDAP/AD, and OIDC support.

The SUSE Difference: Integration and Enterprise Reliability

The SUSE Private Registry provides key enterprise benefits that differentiate it.

Seamless Rancher Prime Integration

It is designed specifically for Rancher Prime, offering additional integrations for an out-of-the-box seamless experience. Deploying the Private Registry is streamlined via a Rancher-enhanced Helm chart.

Trusted, Curated Content

The SUSE Private Registry works directly with the SUSE Application Collection, which provides a curated, trusted, and tested repository of open-source applications built on the SUSE Linux BCI base images to ensure reduced container size and minimal CVEs. This enterprise-grade content offers confidence in deployment by supplying images that are continuously updated and include critical security assets such as SBOMs (Software Bill of Materials) and SLSA Level 3 provenance.

Predictable Lifecycle and Support

Unlike upstream projects, the SUSE Private Registry follows Rancher Prime’s predictable release cycle, which consists of a minor release every approximately 4 months, with 6 months of full support and 12 months of maintenance support. It is backed by enterprise-grade L1-L3 support.

Community-Validated Quality

SUSE Private Registry is underpinned by its foundation on Harbor, which is a CNCF-graduated and actively maintained project widely used in production environments. To ensure enterprise reliability, we conducted an Early Access Program (EAP) to specifically validate the product’s quality and performance in real-world environments.

The ability of the Private Registry to integrate fully into the development pipeline, acting as a control point for secure artifacts (many sourced from the Application Collection), accelerates innovation while mitigating risks associated with untrusted upstream content.

Next Steps

By providing a trusted, on-premises solution for securely storing, managing, and distributing container images, the SUSE Private Registry ensures operational predictability and robust supply chain security across your environment.

Ready to simplify your cloud-native operations and gain a single source of truth for your artifacts? Don’t hesitate to contact our sales team to discover how the SUSE Private Registry seamlessly integrates with your Rancher Prime environment.

Learn more about the SUSE Rancher Prime portfolio by contacting your Account Executive or visiting our website at suse.com.

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