Starting 2023, I got some questions about if we support Kubernetes infrastructures, and how we support them. For us Kubernetes is an important open source project, because it is still fast growing and adopted more and more by the market verticals, we are active in. Since 2020 we have delivered and expanded our service portfolio for Kubernetes related solutions in the same way we support Linux, OpenStack and Ceph infrastructures.

We deliver our services in a different way than most open source service providers do. Generally, we see that many private cloud open source services are delivered in two ways:

1.     By hiring an open source engineer who sets up the open source infrastructure(s) and hands over before taking another assignment.

2.     By the delivery of software subscriptions from for example Red Hat, SUSE, Mirantis or Canonical.

Don’t get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with these ways of working. Lots of enterprises are very successful working with these solutions to support their open source cloud infrastructures. We just see that these are not suitable for every company using open source.

About the first point: Many of our clients do not hire an external engineer, because they want to be in control themselves. They want to setup and manage the infrastructures themselves and want the option to call an external partner when strictly necessary. For these clients, building up knowledge and maintaining this knowledge is key for future success.

Furthermore, about the second point: Many of our clients work with upstream (unsubscribed) solutions and will not buy subscriptions to support their open source infrastructures; although we do support subscribed open source solutions. Using the fully open source unsubscribed solutions, these users sometimes still have the need to work together with an external partner. Whether this is because they want to migrate to a newer version, add functionality to the solutions, have some minor problems or just want to discuss architecture.

So, we do not hire out open source engineers and we do not deliver support with subscriptions. How do we deliver support you might ask? Well, we see ourselves as a cooperative organization; our teams work closely together with clients by starting up conversations and work until solutions are deployed or problems are solved; both on a technical level as on an operational level. We call this open source infrastructure support, and this is what we deliver for Kubernetes infrastructures, whether these are fully open source, or based on Red Hat OpenShift, OKD or SUSE Rancher.

Our Kubernetes infrastructure support consists of three services:

–       Kubernetes consultancy.

–       Kubernetes Emergency Assistance.

–       Kubernetes Managed Services.

For clients that have a team of Kubernetes engineers, we work together with our consultancy services. With these services we help clients with Kubernetes questions for example about the architectural design, adding features, tweaking or finetuning, performance, et cetera. We receive tickets with questions or requests and follow-up on these.

For our companies who require support with the uptime of the Kubernetes infrastructure(s) and want us to help with the things they cannot figure out themselves, we deliver our Emergency Assistance services. These services provide support by a qualified Kubernetes engineer in a 24*7 time frame. Our clients support the Kubernetes infrastructure themselves but have the option to get external help when an outage or severe problems occur. When we receive an Emergency Assistance call, we respond within 1 hour and work together with the customer until the problem is solved.

We deliver these Emergency Assistance services for both open source Kubernetes infrastructures, as subscribed Kubernetes infrastructures such as Rancher and OpenShift.

Then there are also the Kubernetes users who do not have resources to manage the infrastructure themselves or who need the resources for a different part within the organization. Some of these Kubernetes users chose Kubernetes from the Public Cloud (For example Google, Amazon or Azure), but others want the Kubernetes services to run within their own datacenters whether its bare metal, virtual or LOKI. For these companies we offer Kubernetes Managed Services where we completely manage the Kubernetes infrastructure(s). We do this by delivering solutions such as hardware health monitoring, alerting, preventative improvement analysis, continuous improvement and innovations services, upgrade management, update management, capacity management, et cetera.

So, to answer the question I started with; does Fairbanks support Kubernetes infrastructures, and how? In short: Yes, we do. We deliver services for all types of Kubernetes clusters and clients and do this by the delivery of consultancy, Emergency Assistance and Managed Services.

Are you using subscribed Kubernetes or fully open source? I would love to have a chat with you about your Kubernetes plans or infrastructure(s). Whether it is about the current health, the features or the support program.