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San Diego became the host for one of the largest industry events of the year - KubeCon + CloudNativeCon. With over 12000 attendees and 100s of vendors from the cloud native ecosystem, this conference was undoubtedly the biggest gathering of the industry.

KubeCon

Cloud Native Computing Foundation is chartered with the governance of the open source projects that form the critical building blocks of modern infrastructure. The most notable project governed by CNCF is Kubernetes, which has become the foundation of modern infrastructure.

With over 20 projects, 500 members, and 100 companies, CNCF represents one of the most vibrant communities and ecosystems of the industry. Just in 2019, 205 new members joined the foundation doubling the count of the membership.

KubeCon witnessed a 50% increase in attendance compared to last years event in Seattle. From traditional infrastructure companies such as HPE and VMware to young startups, the event had the most interesting mix of vendors.

The event transformed into a major milestone for the cloud native community. Companies utilize KubeCon to announce new products and features.

This years KubeCon saw over 100 announcements coming out from the cloud native ecosystem. Here is an attempt to highlight some of the most interesting announcements from KubeCon + CloudNativeCon 2019.

1. Helm 3 is Launched

Helm, an incubating project from CNCF, is the most popular application packaging tool for Kubernetes. It finds its place in the cloud native toolbox used by administrators as one of the key deployment tools. Microsoft, Google, CodeFresh and Bitnami are the key contributors of Helm.

The latest version of Helm simplifies and streamlines the experience by getting rid of some of the dependencies such as Tiller, a server-side component that ran within a Kubernetes cluster. There is also a well-defined migration path from Helm 2 to Helm 3.

2. AWS, Intuit and WeaveWorks Collaborate on Argo Flux

Argo Flux consolidates similar efforts from Intuit and WeaveWorks to deliver a unified continuous deployment tool based on Gitops. AWS is integrating the GitOps tooling based on Argo Flux in Elastic Kubernetes Service and Flagger for AWS App Mesh.

The collaboration resulted in a new project called GitOps Engine to simplify application deployment in Kubernetes.

3. Confidential Computing for Kubernetes from Microsoft

According to Microsoft, confidential computing capability provides an additional layer of protection from potentially malicious code. Based on Intel Software Guard Extensions (Intel SGX), this technology ensures that the data is protected even while the code is running on the CPU.

Microsoft is extending confidential computing to Kubernetes through a native workflow. Azure customers can launch clusters that support Intel SGX and then install confidential computing device plugin in the nodes. Kubernetes users can schedule pods and containers that use the Open Enclave SDK onto hardware which supports Trusted Execution Environments (TEE) based on Intel SGX.

4. Red Hat Launches CodeReady Workspaces 2.0

Announced in February 2019, CodeReady Workspaces from Red Hat provides a Kubernetes-native, browser-based development environment for smoother collaboration across multiple team members. Based on the open source Eclipse Che integrated development environment (IDE) project, CodeReady Workspaces is optimized for Red Hat OpenShift and Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

The latest release of CodeReady Workspaces enables developers to create and build applications and services in an environment that mirrors that of production environments running on Red Hat OpenShift.

CodeReady Workspaces streamlines the developer experience by integrating the IDE with the production deployment environments.

5. Mirantis Launches Kubernetes as a Service (KaaS)

Mirantis announced the continuously updated multi-cloud Kubernetes as a service (KaaS). The company calls the offering as a pure-play Kubernetes platform without proprietary API extensions which ensures that the apps can run on any cloud. Mirantis hardens the upstream Kubernetes software to make it scalable and reliable.

This announcement came after the recent news of Mirantis acquiring Dockers enterprise business.

6. OReilly Acquires Katacoda

Katacoda is an extremely popular tool to simulate Linux-based environments for learning new tools and platforms. The best thing about Katacoda is that the users can learn in real environments with the actual tools they would deal in production environments, within their web browser.

OReilly has successfully transformed itself into an online learning platform. Katacoda acquisition enables OReilly users to extend their learning experience to environments that mimic the real-world configuration.

7. Portworx Launches PX-Autopilot

Portworx, the leader in container attached storage market, announced an interesting extension to their storage platform called PX-Autopilot. The tool automatically provisions more storage when it detects that an application deployed on Kubernetes is running low on storage capacity.

PX-Autopilot is a based on policy engine that automatically adds block storage volumes or resizes existing application volumes when consumption hits a specific pre-defined threshold. Think of it as an autoscale engine for cloud native storage.

8. Diamanti Announces Spektra Hybrid Cloud Solution

Hyper-converged infrastructure company, Diamanti, announced Spektra, a hybrid cloud platform to manage the lifecycle of containerized workloads running across on-premises and public clouds. It also supports moving applications and data between various Kubernetes clusters.

Spektra provides a single pane of glass to manage the storage capabilities of clusters registered with the engine which enables mobility of applications and data between multiple Kubernetes environments with minimal impact.

9. Buoyant Announces Dive, a SaaS Control Plane for Kubernetes

Buoyant, the creators of Linkerd, announced the private beta of Dive, a multi-tenant control plane to manage Kubernetes deployments.

According to Buoyant, Dive turns every change to the infrastructure into a permalink - which can be pasted into Slack, commented on, and tied to other changes. Every service gets a homepage - which can be augmented with SLOs, runbooks, and ownership information.

Dive extends Linkerds ability to manage microservices running in a Kubernetes cluster.

10. Rancher Extends Kubernetes to the Edge

Rancher, the company that created the vendor-agnostic and cloud-agnostic Kubernetes management platform, announced the general availability of K3s, a lightweight, certified Kubernetes distribution purpose-built for small footprint workloads.

Rancher partnered with ARM to build a highly optimized version of Kubernetes for the edge. It is packaged as a single binary with a small footprint which reduces the dependencies and steps needed to install and run Kubernetes in resource-constrained environments such as IoT and edge devices.

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10 Most Interesting Announcements From Kubecon + CloudNativeCon 2019 - Forbes