Using AppDynamics for Kubernetes and CloudCenter 4.9 together

Cisco has announced Kubernetes support for AppDynamics and Cisco CloudCenter, enabling enterprises to quickly adopt Kubernetes in production, and create and modernize their applications for the multicloud era. Now, enterprises can easily harness the value of Kubernetes to help deliver better user experiences.

Companies are rapidly adopting containers on the promise of increased application agility. Releasing application features rapidly is critical as customer expectations have never been higher for real-time, personalized, and seamless experiences at every interaction. Despite this promise, enterprises are finding there are challenges with unlocking the full value of containers as they move applications from development into production environments in data centers and the cloud. In fact, according to Gartner, “By 2020, less than 20 percent of projects for containerizing legacy applications will be successful.”

Companies can use Cisco CloudCenter to deploy container-based applications with AppDynamics monitoring enabled on deployment. AppDynamics for Kubernetes can detect and report on dynamic conditions at the application or cluster level. Cisco CloudCenter can be triggered to optimize performance for seamless user experience until abnormalities are resolved. This helps IT operations staff adapt to the new production challenges of managing containerized applications in a dynamic Kubernetes environment.

“The Kubernetes platform has emerged as the de-facto container solution as customers accelerate adoption of containerized application architectures,” says Kip Compton, vice president, Cisco Cloud Platform and Solutions Group. “But organizations are still challenged to efficiently and confidently utilize Kubernetes as they modernize legacy applications and develop new cloud applications. With our latest Kubernetes support, customers can now easily adopt production-grade Kubernetes across multicloud environments.”

The new Cisco CloudCenter 4.9 is a key element of the open, hybrid cloud offering from Cisco and Google, announced in October 2017 and planned for availability later this year. Customers will be able to run production-grade containers on any infrastructure through the combination of Cisco CloudCenter 4.9, Cisco Container Platform, and the Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE), part of the Google Cloud Platform (GCP).

For IT teams, running Kubernetes in production affects a range of existing virtual machine-based tools and operating processes on which IT relies to deliver services. As organizations transition to container-optimized IT operations, Cisco CloudCenter 4.9 enables organizations to create deployable blueprints that work across multicloud environments so customers can deploy and manage containerized and virtual machine-based workloads on premises and in the cloud.

Cisco CloudCenter 4.9 enables customers to:

• Support hybrid application topologies: With Cisco CloudCenter 4.9, containerized workloads can be deployed to a Kubernetes cluster on premises or in the cloud. IT operations teams can also also deploy a declarative blueprint that includes container-based services as well as virtual machine-based or cloud-based services to a hybrid mix of Kubernetes and traditional virtual machine or cloud environments.
  
  
• Empower developers without Kubernetes expertise: Cisco CloudCenter auto-generates the pod manifest file (YAML) specific to each deployment after the user selects the deployment environment. This approach avoids configuration parameters, and as a result keeps container workloads from getting locked into a single cloud. And it makes it easier for developers that aren’t proficient or interested in learning kubectl commands to tap the power of Kubernetes.
  
  
• Apply IT governance and controls to Kubernetes: Cisco CloudCenter cost and usage controls, as well as roles and permissions can be set to determine who can deploy what, when, and where in different pre-production and production Kubernetes environments. Kubernetes alone doesn’t provide these types of IT controls that are critical for running containers in production at scale.