Ultima Enterprise

Diamanti Press Releases

Deploy and Scale Kubernetes Anywhere Cut Cloud Costs 65%

A turn-key Kubernetes solution that enables best in class storage, network and security services for on-prem and cloud deployments. Deploy, operate, and scale Kubernetes applications in production anywhere in seconds! Lower public cloud costs by as much as 65%

Diamanti Ultima Enterprise Overview

Ultima Enterprise is enterprise-grade Kubernetes distribution from Diamanti that enables companies to achieve best in class storage and network performance for their I/O intensive mission-critical workloads. It includes unmodified upstream Kubernetes to avoid vendor lock-in and adds Diamanti’s storage and network plugins to provide an end-to-end solution that is easy to deploy, manage and update

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What's New

Overlay Network

Ultima Enterprise now supports an Overlay Network (Private Network) feature. This simplifies network administration by providing a cluster-wide, single, private IP address pool from which IP addresses can be assigned per pod. Using this feature, pod-to-pod traffic within a node is forwarded using a private IP address, while pod-to-pod traffic across nodes is forwarded using VxLAN overlay networking. IP address access can be controlled on namespace basis.

Container Storage Interface

The Container Storage Interface (CSI) now provides a way to use compliant block and file storage systems with containerized workloads.

Persistent Volume Provisioning/Resizing

Cluster administrators can now provision both dynamic and static persistent volumes in a cluster and also resize persistent volumes.

Storage Mirroring

Continuous availability is now enhanced through support of three-way synchronous mirroring. Logical disk volumes can now be replicated on separate physical hard disks with each mirror on a single node. The scheduler auto selects and spreads the mirrors on different nodes in the cluster. (You can also choose to disable the auto-selection feature.)

Snapshot Enhancement for Volume Restoration and Data Protection

A volume can now be restored to a point-in-time copy of data using the snapshot feature. Ultima Enterprise supports up to 16 snapshots per volume. To ensure data protection, snapshots created on a cluster cannot be exposed directly to an application. Instead, a Linked Clone Volume (LCV) is created from a snapshot, which is then used by the application.

Backing up Persistent Volume Claims (PVCs)

You can now configure the Backup Controller (which allows back up of application data to a Network File System server) to create a backup of a specific Persistent Volume Claim (PVC), either all PVCs within a specific namespace or all PVCs in the cluster. The persistent volumes associated with the PVCs are then backed up to the specified NFS target.

User Management

You can now on-board a user or group of users to a cluster, authenticating the users and authorizing them to access cluster resources.

RWO/RWX Support for Volumes

The ReadWriteOnce (RWO) access mode can now be used to restrict volume access to a single node. This enables multiple pods on the same node to read from and write to the same volume. This is useful for web and app servers that serve the same files (i.e., shared database) as well as continuous integration (CI) systems, such as Jenkins, which can use a shared volume for artifact storage rather than unnecessarily duplicating data and impacting CI performance.

Run VMs on Kubernetes

Ultima Enterprise enables support for running VMs on the Kubernetes clusters. With this feature, customers can spin up VMs or lift-and-shift their existing VMs running non-containerized workloads to the Ultima Enterprise Kubernetes cluster and run them parallel to their containerized applications. Note that this feature is currently supported only on GCP clusters.

Features

Centralized Multi-Cluster Management

Ultima Enterprise delivers everything you need to run all your Kubernetes clusters with a common workflow on the most appropriate infrastructure (VMs, bare-metal, on-premises or cloud).

Kubernetes Optimized Storage

Ultima’s Kubernetes-optimized storage, enhanced by Diamanti’s patented block storage architecture, provides containerized applications with access to data in easily consumable, persistent volumes, boosting performance and ensuring that data remains available during any life-cycle activity (i.e., upgrades, patches, cluster deactivation) a prerequisite for stateful applications).

On-Demand Capacity Management

Storage capacity can be instantly allocated in response to demand (e.g., unexpected business surges) and/or to make intelligent use of the most cost-effective environment, such as shifting I/O intensive applications from the cloud back on-premises.

Application Migration

Seamlessly locate and relocate applications as needed across cloud and on-premises environments for deployment, expansion, migration and failover.

Integrated Networking

The management of networking ports, overlays and bandwidth in Kubernetes can lead to interoperability challenges, making it difficult to monitor and secure network traffic. Diamanti streamlines configuration through its unique plug-and-play Container Networking Interface that integrates directly with any network infrastructure.

Bandwidth

Rely on Ultima’s built-in L2/L3 10Gbps Ethernet to ensure that as traffic crisscrosses your Kubernetes implementation, you get the bandwidth you need to ensure performance.

VIP-Based Cluster Management

In Kubernetes, instead of an actual IP address connected to a network interface, different services are associated with virtual IP (VIP) addresses that forward traffic between pods and remain operational even if an individual pod gets taken down. Integrated VIP management in Ultima Enterprise ensures up-to-date mapping between VIP addresses and pods.

User Management (LDAP/RBAC)

Ultima Enterprise comes with a full set of policy-driven, role-based access control (RBAC) tools simplifying the process for managing user access. Administrators can control access via roles that function per project or cluster-wide and get the visibility they need for compliance with Center for Internet Security (CIS) best practices, while also minimizing the resources devoted to access control. Integration with both lightweight directory access protocol (LDAP) and active directory (AD) enable user authentication and streamlined user access to resources.

Air-Gapped Clusters

Increasingly, companies are seeking to take advantage of Kubernetes to run highly-secure, mission-critical workloads on isolated, air gapped environments. Diamanti Ultima provides the infrastructure and dependency planning to make air gapping successful.

Zero Disruption Failover & High Availability

Through the multi-zone clustering capability, a Kubernetes environment can be set up with multiple, geographically-distributed availability zones (failure domains). If an unexpected outage occurs, the Diamanti control plane can fail over instantaneously from one location to another with zero disruption. Kubernetes applications can also seamlessly access storage volumes across availability zones, enabling high availability of application data.

Data Security

Ultima offers protection for data-at-rest with AES 256-bit volume encryption as well as through hardware-based, self-encrypting drives. With these capabilities, enterprise customers can prevent data theft and protect against security breaches without incurring significant performance penalties.

Templates

Simplify Kubernetes deployment through work templates (i.e., application specifications). Build once, deploy many.

Management Platform

Rely on the Ultima Enterprise management console—a single-pane-of-glass for managing all your Kubernetes clusters across all your cloud and on-premises environments. Dashboards deliver visibility into applications and infrastructure performance including compute and memory consumption, network utilization, storage performance/capacity and much more. Querying and analysis capabilities allow you to drill down at any level—cluster, tenant, project, node, pod, container—and get the data you need to keep fine-tuning performance.

Deployment

Benefits/Performance of Ultima Enterprise

A Turnkey Solution

Everything you need to build, run, manage, secure and monitor an enterprise-scale Kubernetes implementation

Future-proof Your Kubernetes

100% cloud native certified—works with the on-premises and cloud solutions you use today and the ones you will add tomorrow

Reduce Cloud Costs

Take advantage of all infrastructures for your Kubernetes clusters and cut public cloud spend by as much as 65%.

Eliminate Kubernetes Complexity

Get a Kubernetes deployment underway in minutes

High Availability

Instantaneous failovers with zero disruption. Seamless access to storage volumes across geographically distributed availability zones

Simplified RBAC

Role-based access controls and authentication via Active Directory and LDAP

No Vendor Lock-in

Take full advantage of best-of-breed add-ons

Guaranteed Application SLAs

Granular QoS policies for compute, network, and storage deliver guaranteed SLAs to applications.

Air Gapped Deployments

Deploy air-gapped clusters in secure environments for your mission-critical workloads

Ultima Enterprise Use Cases

Ultima Enterprise is the cloud-native storage and networking platform trusted in production by the world’s largest enterprises and most heavily regulated industries. As a high-performing, flexible platform, Ultima features container-optimized storage and networking layers, providing developers with integrated data services, advanced CSI and CNI plugins, and I/O acceleration to provide a highly scalable solution that’s unmatched.

Multi-cluster Kubernetes

Rely on a wide range of features for managing multi-tenancy, replication and DR across hybrid environments including the ability to deploy, manage and migrate applications across clusters.

Hybrid cloud

Get an enterprise-scale Kubernetes implementation up and running quickly on any infrastructure—all on-premises, all in the cloud, hybrid, bare metal, you name it. Migrate applications across infrastructure as needs dictate.

Application modernization

Enhance software delivery performance by replatforming existing legacy workloads using Kubernetes. Break down monolithic applications into microservices.

Big Data, AI/ML

Deploy Big Data and AI/ML workloads on Kubernetes. Effortlessly optimize CPU, storage and networking resources while supercharging performance and lowering the cost of large-scale data investments.

Software-as-a-Service

Full end-to-end scalability and reliability for supporting Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) applications. Optimize both compute and IT resources while facilitating automated operations, data mobility, backup and disaster recovery, and data security.

Database As-a-Service

Get the speed and ease of use while also supporting the data protection, access control, encryption, and key management that are essential for running a Database-as-a-Service (DBaaS) at enterprise scale.

Unmatched Kubernetes Performance – On Any Infrastructure

With Ultima Enterprise from Diamanti, you have everything you need to deploy, operate, and scale Kubernetes applications on any cloud or on-premises infrastructure in seconds. Get the #1 CNF-certified Kubernetes platform with integrated storage, networking, and security, powered by Diamanti Kubernetes Engine (DKE)

Resources

Kubernetes Can Unlock Digital Transformation and Renew the Utilities Sector

The utilities industry is undergoing a massive digital transformation. Providers today are facing a sea change: in addition to the disruptions and possibilities sparked by technological advances, environmental awareness has increased, and customer expectations have evolved.

Build vs. Buy: choosing the right kubernetes infrastructure

Kubernetes adoption is accelerating rapidly, yet existing IT infrastructure that has been optimized over a period of many years for legacy business applications may not efficiently support containers and cloud-native applications.

Seamless Enterprise-Level Cloud Experience

Azure and Diamanti provide an enterprise-level cloud experience, allowing businesses to seamlessly combine the strength of their on-premise hardware, software and services with Azure’s cloud solutions.