FAQs on Day 2 Kubernetes with Nirmata

What does Nirmata mean?

Nirmata is an Indo-Aryan word, in languages like Hindi and Gujarati,  that means Architect or Director.

What problem does Nirmata solve?

Nirmata allows enterprises to focus on their applications, rather than infrastructure.

As software becomes increasingly critical to our lives the challenge of managing mission-critical applications becomes greatly exacerbated. We believe that applications should be decoupled from infrastructure and that developers should be free to innovate without getting bogged down by infrastructure and security concerns.

Cloud-native applications are being built with Kubernetes and containers, but remain complex to deploy and manage. As enterprises adopt multiple cloud providers, for flexibility, reliability, and regulatory requirements, the problems compound.

Nirmata solves these problems by providing a highly scalable, always-on, management that deploys, manages the lifecycle, constantly monitors, and automatically tunes your Kubernetes workloads and clusters. In a nutshell, Nirmata provides fully automated multi-cluster and multi-cloud Kubernetes management for enterprise development and operations teams.

How do I get started with Nirmata?

You can get started with Nirmata for free via the full-featured 15-day trial. All you need is access to cloud providers or a node that can run Kubernetes. To get started, sign up here. For more information on getting started, view our help documents and the getting started video.

Is Nirmata a PaaS?

Nirmata offers application deployment and management services, like a Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS). However, Nirmata has a fundamentally different architecture than traditional platforms like Red Hat’s OpenShift and Pivotal (now VMware Tanzu).

Traditional platforms are opinionated by definition; they abstract cloud provider resources and standardize on infrastructure, security, and operating systems. This approach limits portability and reduces flexibility. Moreover, most traditional platforms are heavyweight monolithic systems that are complex to install and operate.

In contrast, Nirmata is built using cloud-native principles and uses an API-driven microservices-style architecture designed for flexibility, security, and scalability. Nirmata was designed for remote centralized management of complex systems and can manage thousands of Kubernetes workloads via a single management plane. 

With Nirmata, enterprises can compose their own Kubernetes stack using best-in-class components for each function of the cloud-native stack. This allows for easy adoption of new technologies, which is critical in the rapidly changing cloud-native environment. 

Nirmata does not provide a Kubernetes distribution, but is certified with upstream open-source Kubernetes, and provides “out-of-band” management for Kubernetes. This means there are no additional vendor-driven abstractions or middleware layers, and users can directly work with Kubernetes native tools and interfaces. 

Traditional PaaS solutions are rapidly retrofitting their solutions to add open container support, but you still do not get a container-native experience! Nirmata is built ground-up for open containers and hence is lightweight, non-intrusive, and easy to use.

Is Nirmata a SaaS?

Nirmata is available as Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and on-premises software.

The Nirmata Cloud Edition is a SaaS that is operated by Nirmata with 24×7 global support and enterprise SLAs. Nirmata Cloud Edition can securely manage clusters in any data center, private cloud, virtual private cloud (VPC), or edge deployment without requiring firewall reconfigurations or complex networking.

The Nirmata Private Edition is a copy of Nirmata that you can install and operate on any cloud or datacenter. This is suitable for highly-regulated environments without internet connectivity and for service providers who require advanced multi-tenancy.

Why does Day 2 Kubernetes matter?

While Kubernetes is relatively simple to spin up anywhere, making clusters and Kubernetes workloads production-ready requires complex configuration, And, this complexity grows exponentially after the initial deployment, and without the right automation and tooling in place. Day 2 Kubernetes refers to the ongoing operations & management of Kubernetes workloads and clusters. You can read more about Day 2 Kubernetes in these blog posts:

Which public cloud providers does Nirmata support?

Nirmata currently supports the following public cloud providers:

  • Amazon Web Services
  • Microsoft Azure
  • Google Compute Engine
  • Oracle Cloud Services

In addition, Nirmata can be used with any physical or virtual host, using the ‘Other’ cloud provider. However, certain advanced features in Nirmata leverage cloud provider APIs.

We are constantly adding new cloud providers, so If you are interested in seeing support for other public clouds, please reach out to us at customer-success@nirmata.com so we can prioritize your request.

Does Nirmata support private cloud providers?

Yes, Nirmata has integrations for:

  • VMware vSphere
  • Nutanix
  • Diamanti

If you are interested in seeing support for other private clouds, please reach out to us at customer-success@nirmata.com so we can prioritize your request.

Does Nirmata support deploying containers on bare metal?

Yes, Nirmata supports managing Kubernetes clusters and workloads on bare metal. The only requirement is to install the secure Nirmata CAPI Agent on the bare metal host that you would like to deploy containers on.

For more details see:http://docs.nirmata.io/en/latest/CloudProviders.html#bare-metal-servers

How are customers using Nirmata?

Our customers are using Nirmata in several innovative ways. Here are some examples:

  • Product teams managing multiple cloud provider managed Kubernetes clusters (e.g. EKS)  across several regions.
  • Enterprise platform and IT Operations teams providing hybrid multi-cloud and enterprise-wide Kubernetes-as-a-Service (KaaS) to several product teams.
  • IT teams managing complex 3rd party applications that are delivered as Kubernetes workloads.
  • Managed Service Providers (MSPs) delivering Kubernetes services to their enterprise customers.
  • Technology companies providing managed services to their customers.
  • SaaS companies installing and operating multiple customer environments.
  • Retail business delivering in-store applications across thousands of stores.
  • Device and Equipment manufacturers who are embedding Kubernetes and want cloud based management solutions.

See our solutions page for more details