Overview

This section provides an introduction to the Nirmata Kubernetes management platform.

The Nirmata Platform

The Nirmata platform is designed ground-up for cloud-native applications. Nirmata supports open container technologies and 100% upstream OSS Kubernetes for scalable and efficient application management on any public or private cloud, and even bare-metal servers.

Nirmata is designed to complement and complete Kubernetes for enterprise DevOps teams. Nirmata provides value “below” Kubernetes for application-aware infrastructure management, manages Kubernetes components, and provides value “above” Kubernetes for application delivery and workload management.

The Nirmata solution is non-intrusive and easy to use. It integrates with your current tools and does not try to hide, or abstract-away, the powerful abstractions provided by Kubernetes and the Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) layers.

In many ways, Nirmata acts as an “out-of-band” management system. With Nirmata you can focus on higher-level policy-based development and operations workflows, but can also directly use the underlying systems whenever needed.

This unique architectural approach allows full visibility and control, and yet provides the benefits of a complete platform. You can configure your cloud or data center resources, using each provider’s security and management best practices and then use Nirmata to orchestrate and manage applications across providers.

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Nirmata provides the following features:

For IT Ops and Platform Teams

  • Single management and control plane across multiple Kubernetes clusters and across cloud providers.
  • Automated Kubernetes cluster installation, upgrades, and operations on any cloud. Nirmata can also discover existing Kubernetes clusters, for complete visibility and management.
  • Integrations with all major public and private cloud providers, to allow composing clusters from heterogeneous resources, and to fully automate container host management.
  • Elastic cluster sizing based on usage and custom metrics.
  • Policy-based integrations for networking and storage.
  • Security integrations for end-to-end control, governance, and compliance.
  • Centralized Role Based Access Control (RBAC) with Single Sign On (SSO) integrations.
  • Centralized policy engine to inspect and patch workloads based on environments.
  • Flexible isolation policies across applications, environments, and clusters.
  • Built-in and fully integrated monitoring, alarms, and automated remediation.

For Developers

  • Complete visibility and lifecycle management of applications and environments.
  • Simplified Kubernetes YAML management with validation. Rapidly model traditional applications, or compose microservices-style applications from Helm charts or image repositories.
  • Secure native access to Kubernetes APIs with full support of all workload constructs including Custom Resource Definitions (CRDs).
  • Integrate with existing build tool and image registries to automate “commit-to-deploy” pipelines.
  • Central and secure access to applications, logs, events, and more for rapid troubleshooting.
  • Cloud shell to access any container, without requiring cumbersome VPN or host SSH access.

Deployment Models

The Nirmata platform is available using the following deployment models:

The Nirmata Cloud Edition

The Nirmata Cloud Edition is a highly-scalable and secure cloud service operated by Nirmata. With this model, the Nirmata management plane is cloud-based and your Kubernetes clusters can be located anywhere - even in your Data Center or Private Cloud. With Nirmata’s dial-out connectivity, no firewall or VPN configuration is required to securely manage your clusters.

The Nirmata Private Edition

The Nirmata Private Edition is your own installation of the Nirmata platform that runs in your public or private cloud, and is managed by your operations team. With this model, the Nirmata management plane resides on-premises in your data center or cloud.

Selecting the right deployment model

Both deployment models offer the same features and capabilities, but require different levels of operations and management expertise. The Nirmata Cloud Edition is fully-managed by the Nirmata operations team, while the Nirmata Private Edition requires operations of the Nirmata platform in addition to Kubernetes clusters.

You can choose the model that best fits your business needs. With both models models, your applications always run securely on your servers.