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Confluent brings cloud-native capabilities to on-prem environments with Kubernetes integration

As a cloud-native system, Confluent for Kubernetes intelligently detects if a process fails and will automatically restart processes or reschedule as necessary

Red Hat, Nutanix partner to deliver open hybrid multi-cloud solutions
Red Hat, Nutanix partner to deliver open hybrid multi-cloud solutions

Confluent has recently announced the availability of Confluent for Kubernetes, a platform purpose-built to bring cloud-native capabilities to data streams in private infrastructures.

With the roll out, Confluent seeks to make it easier and faster for businesses to harness the value of data in motion across an entire organisation. The company drew on its expertise managing thousands of Apache Kafka clusters in Confluent Cloud to offer the same cloud-native experience for on-premises environments.

These cloud-native capabilities are key to running modern data platforms and are now available wherever an organisation’s applications and data reside. Within minutes, it’s now possible to build a private cloud Kafka service that powers applications that are increasingly critical to how organisations thrive.

“To compete in the digital realm, organisations need to quickly deliver personalised customer experiences and real-time operations, which are only possible with access to data from all environments and cloud-native advantages,” said Ganesh Srinivasan, Chief Product and Engineering Officer, Confluent.

“For organisations that need to operate on premises, we’re bringing the benefits of cloud computing to their private infrastructure with Confluent for Kubernetes. Now, any company can build a private cloud service to move data across their business regardless of its environment.”

With the launch of Confluent for Kubernetes, Confluent brings together the cloud-native advantages learned from Confluent Cloud with the control and customisation from self-managing their private infrastructure in on-premises environments.

So, whether an organisation is transitioning to the cloud or needs to keep workloads on premises, they can take full advantage of Confluent for Kubernetes’ cloud-native capabilities, including a declarative API to deploy and operate Confluent.

The platform also makes moving applications to the public cloud easier by seamlessly migrating workloads to wherever your business needs them with the ability to connect and share data with Confluent Cloud. By reimagining what is possible for private infrastructure with the capabilities of modern cloud computing, it is easier than ever for organisations to build and manage a private cloud Kafka service for moving data across a business.

As a cloud-native system, Confluent for Kubernetes intelligently detects if a process fails and will automatically restart processes or reschedule as necessary. Automated rack awareness spreads replicas of a partition across different racks, improving the availability of brokers and limiting the risk of data loss. With automated reliability, organisations can minimise the risk of business disruption, reduce downtime costs, and limit data loss.

With Confluent for Kubernetes, organisations can also meet changing business demands with the ability to scale up using API-driven operations. The platform will automatically generate configurations, schedule and run new broker processes, and ensure data is balanced across brokers so that clusters can be efficiently utilised. With the ability to spin up and down Confluent clusters, organisations can control infrastructure costs while quickly scaling to meet their business needs.

A core concept of the cloud-native paradigm is the ability to focus on higher value activities that create business value rather than performing complex sequences of low-level infrastructure-related operations. Confluent for Kubernetes extends the Kubernetes API, enabling organisations to define the desired high-level state of clusters rather than manage all the low-level details. This infrastructure-as-code approach reduces operational burden and achieves a faster time to value, while enhancing security with standards that can be easily and consistently deployed across an organisation.