Introducing Bitnami Kubernetes Sandbox- A Complete Kubernetes Environment - Prepackaged and Ready-to-Run in the Cloud

At Bitnami, some of the most popular applications we package are developer tools and infrastructure tools. And if you follow Bitnami at all you are aware of the investments we’re making in Kubernetes, from the acquisition of Skippbox to developing and launching our own projects and our ongoing collaborations with other Kubernetes thought leaders. (We’re even doing joint Kubernetes training sessions with the team from Google.)

Put those two together and you’ll see why the most recent addition to our application catalog is a pre-packaged Kubernetes cluster that delivers the same simple, ready-to-run, click-to-deploy, always-secure-and-up-to-date goodness you’ve come to expect from every other Bitnami application you are using today.

Introducing – Bitnami Kubernetes Sandbox!



One package and you get everything you need to quickly launch a Kubernetes cluster in AWS, Oracle Cloud, or Google Cloud. Bitnami Kubernetes Sandbox is designed to be the easiest way to deploy a Kubernetes cluster in the cloud to give users as close to a production workflow as possible.

If you are looking for the perfect environment to learn Kubernetes and to test your containerized applications, this is it!

The Bitnami Kubernetes Sandbox includes:

• Heapster and Grafana for performance monitoring and visualization.
• Ingress Controller for making your applications accessible using port 80 and 443.
• Helm for deploying charts in your cluster.
• Dynamic Local Volume provisioning so you can work with persistence.
• Kubernetes Dashboard for easy cluster management. 
• RBAC authorization enabled by default.

Are you ready to launch your Kubernetes Sandbox? 

Deploy to Amazon, Google or Oracle from the Bitnami Launchpad.

Check out the documentation for AWS, Oracle Cloud and Google Cloud here.

And be sure to let us know what you think at https://bitnami.com/stack/kubernetes-sandbox.

Tweet, like, write a review…whatever you prefer! 

Meet the Bitnami Team: Brad Bock

The Bitnami team is a diverse group of talented people distributed all over the world. Get to know them better through this series of blog posts.

Brad is the Program Manager for Cloud Partnerships on the Business Development team, and works from our San Francisco office.

A brief bio

I come from Southern California, where I grew up obsessed with reading, playing music, and trying to figure out how things like small engines and radios worked by taking them apart and (sometimes successfully) putting them back together again. I had an entrepreneurial streak from a very young age as well, and by the time I was 12 I had cornered the neighborhood market on lawn-mowing and car-washing.

Around that same time I also discovered computers when my parents got our first desktop PC, a Tandy 386 with Windows 3.1 and a 14.4kbps modem purchased from Radio Shack. I was totally hooked- the ability to communicate with people all over the world was extremely interesting, not to mention that I could program it to do my math homework!

When I was a little older, I needed some help paying for college so I joined the US Navy. That took me all over the world, working in intelligence for a certain three-letter agency and feeding my passion for experiencing and learning about other cultures. After the Navy, I moved back to SoCal to study economics and philosophy. I met my future wife, Tiffany, and went to work in the motion picture industry after graduating. We eventually decided it was too damn hot in Southern California, and made the decision to move to the Bay Area where Tiff grew up.

Why you joined Bitnami and what excites you about working here?

During my time working in the movie industry, Tiff and I started building websites using WordPress and shared hosting. Before long, I was also hosting our websites to save some money… and not long after that I had a nice little side hustle building and hosting other websites for friends, family, and small businesses.

When we moved to the Bay, I was looking for a way to host WordPress websites in the cloud and happened across Bitnami. I immediately knew this was the company I wanted to work for- they made it so easy to deploy all these open source apps in the cloud, I was kicking myself for not finding them earlier! Now that I’ve been here a couple years, I’ve realized how tremendously exciting open source software is, and how much good Bitnami does for everyone from individual tinkerers to corporate titans by making it more accessible and flexible to use. Now we are doing some next-level s#$& with our application packaging toolchain, Docker, and Kubernetes that is going to have a significant impact on the way big companies adopt tomorrow’s cloud technology. It is almost surreal working at a company this size that can justifiably say that.

When I think back about the things that didn’t exist when I was a kid, and daydream about the things my own kids will take for granted, I get really excited about working for Bitnami. How cool is it that my (currently gestating) child will have the opportunity to start coding around the time he learns to write his name, and that some of the same technologies used to run the coolest tech companies will be at his fingertips to play with on a whim. Imagine the things the next couple generations are going to come up with! I feel that Bitnami’s raison d’etre is removing barriers to that future, and I am excited to be part of it.

The other thing that excites me most is working with such a diverse, talented, and humorous group of people from around the globe, among whom I am very sure many will be lifelong friends. I feel proud to work at a company where people are welcome and accepted whatever their age, sex/sexual orientation, ethnicity, religion, etc. I’m not just saying that because it sounds good- it is a very important issue to me, and I feel that as a company we’re getting it right.

What are you working on?

I wear a lot of hats at Bitnami; a little bit of product, a little marketing, some account management, design, you name it. Officially, I am a Program Manager for Cloud Partnerships; formerly I worked in a similar role with ISVs and then Systems Integrators.

It’s my job to be an expert in every aspect of Bitnami’s technology and business. I’ve always got my eyes open for opportunities to help people unlock value in their relationships with us.

What do you like to do for fun?

Enjoying the night market in Taipei

I am really interested in making things to eat and drink that were once made at home but are now almost universally mass-produced. I have become a one-man cottage industry of sorts, producing some fine home-made beer, smoked sausages, cheese, and other delicious treats. I am also obsessed with travel and meeting interesting people around the world, and especially sampling the many wonderful things to eat and drink.

When I’m not chasing new adventures around the globe, there’s nothing better than hanging out with family and friends (and four-legged friends), cooking out and enjoying each other’s company at home.

Interested in working with Bitnami and Brad? Apply for one of our open positions!

Bitnami User Survey Part 3: Containers Orchestration War or Peace?

We’ve all seen the many articles and blogs about container orchestration wars. Is that a vendor war? a user war? or not a war at all? I’m always interested in a good fight but I’m not sure there is one here. Our data seems to show there might not be a skirmish or even a scuffle, in fact it looks more like a peace treaty with the happy coexistence of multiple container orchestration services and solutions.

In part 3 of our user survey blog series, I wanted to expand on something we discovered in reviewing the results related to container orchestration adoption…that in over 40% of cases, container users reported using more than one orchestration solution, with some users reportedly using as many as 5. (two people actually reported using 7 !!!)

Figure 1. Number of Container Orchestrators Used



There are several logical explanation for this: 1. they are being used to manage workloads in different clouds 2. users are evaluating multiple solutions side-by-side to determine which will best fit their need 3. they're using different solutions to solve different use-cases.

To understand this better, we broke down the data even further to look at the number of orchestration solutions reportedly being used within each of the container services from the big public cloud providers.

Figure 2. Container Orchestration by Cloud Container Service




Key Data:

1. Amazon ECS uses are the most likely to have standardized on a single orchestrator.

2. Azure Container Service users are slightly more likely to be using more than one orchestrator

(this is perhaps reflecting the fact that ACS supports Kubernetes, Mesosphere or Swarm.)

Another interesting way to look at these results is by evaluating how orchestration solution adoption is distributed from single solution to multi-solution environments. Of course, the single solution leader will be some indication of a selection of a preferred platform but more interesting should be the distribution among users claiming multiple platforms. We know that from pure number of users that Kubernetes is the leading container orchestration tool (See Container Trends - Bitnami User Survey Part 2). What is interesting is that it is not the most widely chosen solution among those only using one, that position belongs to Docker Swarm.

Figure 3. Container Orchestration Usage by Solution



Key Data:

1. Amongst the container orchestration projects Swarm seems to have “platform loyalty” in the same way ECS does

2. People who are using Kubernetes are also using Swarm and AWS ECS, perhaps to cover different use-cases inside their organizations.

While not explicitly covered in the survey we can connect anecdotal data from customer conversations that suggests that Docker-compose/Swarm is more commonly used for development whereas Kubernetes or ECS is used more frequently in production.

If you are making a decision on where to invest as you build out a container strategy or you’re looking for tools that can help you manage your Kubernetes environment, you’ve come to the right place. Bitnami can get you started on your journey with pre-packaged container images from our vast catalog of ready-to-run applications and we’re actively developing a contributing to a number of leading edge Kubernetes projects.

Stay tuned for more from our 2017 Bitnami user survey.