Rancher 2 Rebases on Kubernetes for Container Orchestration

Container management vendor Rancher Labs is embracing Kubernetes for its upcoming Rancher 2.0 release.

Rancher Labs got started back in September 2014, and the company debuted the first generally available Rancher container management system release in March 2016. The 2.0 version is now available in preview release, providing users with a number of new enhancements.

Shannon Williams, co-founder of Rancher Labs, explained that Rancher is open source and the 2.0 preview benefits from the insights and contributions of a broad community.

"We have built Rancher 2.0 to be agnostic at the orchestration level," Williams told ServerWatch. "We had some users that were using Kubernetes, other users were using Docker Swarm, and some customers were using our own orchestrator called Cattle."

Williams added that in looking at Rancher's users, 95 percent were running either Kubernetes or Cattle. So with Rancher 2.0, the plan was to bring Cattle together with Kubernetes, bringing the things users really liked while also making Kubernetes the default orchestration layer.

Overall, Williams said the upcoming Rancher 2.0 release takes the container management platform from being very open at the orchestration level to being more aligned with Kubernetes. He added that by focusing on Kubernetes, Rancher Labs can now free up more areas of innovation, including centralized logging and tools for Continuous Integration/Continuous Development (CI/CD).

With Rancher 2.0, there is an expanded ability to manage clusters. Williams noted that Rancher has always had the ability to manage clusters created by users with Rancher, but now in the upcoming 2.0 release, users will be able to manage external Kubernetes clusters as well.

"As we see a Kubernetes-as-a-Service offering emerging, we want to be able to serve those environments," Williams added.

Sean Michael Kerner is a senior editor at ServerWatch and InternetNews.com. Follow him on Twitter @TechJournalist.