Cloud Native Computing Foundation Launches Certified Kubernetes Program with 32 Conformant Distributions and Platforms

Program Ensures Portability and Interoperability Across the Kubernetes Ecosystem

SAN FRANCISCO – November 13, 2017 – The Cloud Native Computing Foundation® (CNCF®), which sustains and integrates open source technologies like Kubernetes® and Prometheus, today announced availability of the Certified Kubernetes Conformance Program, which ensures Certified Kubernetes™ products deliver consistency and portability, and that 32 Certified Kubernetes Distributions and Platforms are now available.

Over the last three years, Kubernetes has been adopted by a vibrant, diverse community of providers. As part of the new program, vendors use an automated test suite to demonstrate their conformance and CNCF certifies their submission.

The following products have passed the Certified Kubernetes conformance program:

• Alibaba Cloud, Alibaba Cloud Container Service
• Apprenda, Kismatic Enterprise Toolkit (KET)
• Appscode, Pharmer
• Caicloud, Compass
• Canonical, Canonical Distribution of Kubernetes
• Cisco Systems, Cisco Container Platform
• Cloud Foundry Foundation, Cloud Foundry Container Runtime
• CoreOS, Tectonic
• DaoCloud, DaoCloud Enterprise
• Docker, Docker Enterprise Edition
• Google, Google Kubernetes Engine
• Heptio, AWS-Quickstart
• Huawei, Huawei Cloud Container Engine
• IBM, IBM Cloud Container Service and IBM Cloud Private
• Loodse, Kubermatic Container Engine
• Mesosphere, Kubernetes on DC/OS
• Microsoft, Azure ACS-Engine
• Mirantis, Mirantis Cloud Platform
• Netease, Netease Container Service Dedicated
• Oracle, Oracle Container Engine, Oracle Linux, Oracle Terraform Kubernetes Installer
• Pivotal Software, Pivotal Container Service (PKS)
• Poseidon, Typhoon
• Rancher, Inc., Rancher Kubernetes
• Red Hat, OpenShift
• SAP, Cloud Platform – Gardener
• SUSE, SUSE CaaS (Container as a Service) Platform
• Samsung SDS, Kraken
• StackPointCloud, Stackpoint.io
• Tencent Cloud, Tencent Cloud Container Service
• VMware, Pivotal Container Service (PKS)
• Weaveworks, kubeadm
• Wise2C Technology, WiseCloud

“The new Certified Kubernetes Conformance Program gives enterprise organizations the confidence that workloads that run on any Certified Kubernetes Distribution or Platform will work correctly on any other version,” said Dan Kohn, Executive Director, Cloud Native Computing Foundation. “The interoperability that this program ensures is essential to Kubernetes meeting its promise of offering a single open source software stack supported by many vendors that can deploy on any public, private or hybrid cloud.”

A Certified Kubernetes product guarantees that the complete Kubernetes API functions as specified, so users can rely on a seamless, stable experience.

Certified Kubernetes implementations are permitted to use the new Certified Kubernetes logo and also are allowed to use the Kubernetes mark in combination with their product name (e.g., XYZ Kubernetes Service). Development of the certification program involved close collaboration between CNCF and the rest of the Kubernetes community, especially the Testing and Architecture Special Interest Groups (SIGs).

The Kubernetes Architecture SIG is the final arbiter of the definition of API conformance for the program. The program also includes strong guarantees that commercial providers of Kubernetes will continue to release new versions to ensure that customers can take advantage of the rapid pace of ongoing development. Kubernetes is one of the highest velocity software projects in the history of open source.

Vendor quotes:

Alibaba Cloud: “We believe Kubernetes is one of the key enabling technologies for a hybrid cloud application platform,” said Hong Tang, Chief Architect of Alibaba Cloud. “The conformance certification is important to ensure workload portability across different Kubernetes offerings. As always, Alibaba Cloud is committed to the open container ecosystems and communities.”

Cisco: “Cisco has certified its container platform using the Certified Kubernetes Conformance Program. The certification program provides Cisco’s customers with the confidence of a consistent Kubernetes environment,” said Lew Tucker, Vice President and CTO, Cloud Computing, at Cisco.

CoreOS: “The introduction of the Kubernetes Conformance certification program shows the maturity of the project and the validation of the vendor ecosystem that prioritizes enabling a reliable and consistent experience for Kubernetes consumers. We at CoreOS have ensured that Tectonic, our leading enterprise-ready Kubernetes platform, has achieved compliance,” said Reza Shafii, VP of product, CoreOS.

Docker: “By achieving certification through the Kubernetes Software Conformance program, we offer organizations a Kubernetes-certified platform to deploy Linux or Windows-based applications across a secure and automated supply chain operating in hybrid cloud environments,” said Banjot Chanana, Head of Product Management for Docker. “Docker Enterprise Edition (Docker EE) offers an unmodified version of Kubernetes with the added value of the Docker platform including security, management, a familiar developer workflow and tooling, broad ecosystem compatibility and an adherence to industry standards.”

Google: “From the day Google first open-sourced Kubernetes, the goal has been to provide a highly portable cloud native platform for developers to quickly deploy services on premises, in public cloud, and in hybrid environments,” said Eyal Manor, VP Engineering, Google Cloud. “The Certified Kubernetes Conformance Program is a way for vendors to prove they are offering pure Kubernetes, with continuous, seamless upgrades, giving users assurance that they can continue to benefit from the innovation and portability Kubernetes offers. We continue to provide that experience in Google Kubernetes Engine.”

Huawei: “Huawei is proud to be part of the initial wave of certified cloud vendors for the recently instituted CNCF Certified Kubernetes Conformance Program,” said Jiayongli, VP of PaaS Product department of Cloud BU at Huawei. “With this stamp of approval from CNCF, Huawei underscores its commitment to our customers and partners around a consistent and portable Huawei Cloud Services as part of our overall vision towards a truly open source cloud technology. This demonstrates the brand integrity and fosters confidence and strength of Huawei’s underlying cloud platform capabilities.”

IBM: “The pace of Kubernetes adoption among developers has been unprecedented, which is why we’ve made it a core component of both the IBM Cloud Container Service and IBM Cloud Private offerings,” said Jason McGee, IBM Fellow, VP and CTO, IBM Cloud. “By certifying our Kubernetes-based technologies with the open community’s interoperability standards, IBM is investing in the future of Kubernetes, and making it easier for developers to deliver innovation from their data and apps across IBM Cloud and other platforms.”

Mesosphere: “We are thrilled to see the introduction of the Certified Kubernetes program to ensure its consistency and safeguard against forks of the project that degrade the user experience,” said Tobi Knaup, CTO and Co-founder, Mesosphere. “At Mesosphere, we are committed to enabling teams to easily install and operate 100-percent pure Kubernetes clusters that are highly available, secure by default, and integrate easily with the production-grade data services that DC/OS has to offer.”

Microsoft: “Microsoft’s commitment to Kubernetes spans multiple product offerings, and we will add AKS, our new managed Kubernetes service, to our list of compliant services in the coming weeks,”  Gabe Monroy, Lead Program Manager, Containers, Microsoft Azure. “We’re all in on providing the absolute best experience for our customers seeking a reliable, scalable, and portable environment for their containerized workloads.”

Mirantis: “With September’s release of the latest Mirantis Cloud Platform, we fully embraced Kubernetes as part of our march to introduce new container services to our managed open cloud portfolio as the open source projects behind them become more mature,” said Nick Chase, Mirantis Head of Technical and Marketing Content. “The Certified Kubernetes program enables customers to be confident in the interoperability of the product or service that they choose, which is crucial in this multi-cloud world.”

Oracle: “The Certified Kubernetes program is a huge step forward in ensuring consistency and portability for developers no matter where the Kubernetes platform is running – in the cloud, across clouds, on premise, or locally on your laptop,” said TJ Fontaine, Oracle Technical Lead, Kubernetes Project. “With Oracle Container Engine, Oracle Terraform Kubernetes Installer, and Oracle Linux Container Services for use with Kubernetes, we are excited to be part of this first group of vendors certified under the Certified Kubernetes Conformance Program and look forward to helping the Cloud Native Computing Foundation further the adoption of Kubernetes across the industry.”

Pivotal Software: “Pivotal and VMware, in collaboration with Google Cloud, recently announced Pivotal Container Service, a powerful new way to deploy and operate Kubernetes,” said Ian Andrews, Vice President of Products, Pivotal Software. “PKS enables Global 2000 companies to deliver production-ready Kubernetes across private and public clouds, with constant compatibility to Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE). The Certified Kubernetes Conformance Program gives our customers even more confidence that PKS will help them operationalize Kubernetes reliably and securely at scale.”

Red Hat: “Core to Red Hat is our belief in both an upstream first development model and the potential for cross-community collaborative development to deliver standardization to the technology industry,” said Chris Wright, Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, Red Hat. “Through open source innovation and as a champion for open standards, Red Hat is helping customers around the world embrace container technologies, including Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform, a leading enterprise distribution of Kubernetes.”

SAP: “Kubernetes radically simplifies the task of building, deploying, and maintaining distributed systems. It plays an important role in SAP’s multi-cloud and open platform strategy. As a key functionality of SAP Cloud Platform, it will allow customers and partners to run their digital transformation workloads on SAP Cloud Platform deployed in SAP’s data centers or on their preferred hyperscale cloud provider. Certified Kubernetes environments ensure portability of our customer and partner applications across our various deployment options,” said Björn Goerke, President, SAP Cloud Platform and CTO, SAP SE.

SUSE: “SUSE has long been committed to providing our customers with open source technologies and a no-lock-in business model,” said Alan Clark, Director of Industry Initiatives, Emerging Standards and Open Source at SUSE. “Now, Kubernetes conformance certification of SUSE CaaS Platform solidifies our ability to carry that value into the emerging application delivery domain, where assurances of interoperability are especially critical, given the rapid pace of technology advancement and market evolution. It’s a win-win for SUSE and our customers.”

Samsung SDS: “Samsung SDS places high value on the conformance of our Kubernetes tooling with the community standards for portability, interoperability, upgradeability and predictability,” said Aaron Crickenberger, Samsung SDS Senior Technologist and Kubernetes Steering Committee Member. “The Certified Kubernetes Conformance Program, an important part of our validation procedures, increases confidence for any system admin using our Kraken build/deployment system to reliably maintain and operate their clusters from upstream Kubernetes releases.”

Tencent: “Tencent Cloud’s CCS (Cloud Container Service) has always been committed to enhancing user experience and maintaining consistency, said TianFu Wang, Senior Staff Engineer at Tencent Cloud. “The Certified Kubernetes Conformance Program is an important milestone for us to guarantee consistency and portability of our customer. The certification demonstrates that any services deployed on Tencent’s CCS platform ensures portability and reliability, as well as provides great security through seamless upgradeability.”

VMWare: “The Certified Kubernetes Conformance Program offers enterprises peace of mind that Certified Kubernetes products provide true consistency and workload portability,” said Paul Dul, Vice President of Product Management, Cloud-Native Apps, VMware. “In collaboration with Pivotal, we’re proud to announce that the initial release of Pivotal Container Service (PKS) will be certified out of the gate. We’re committed to rapidly adopting the latest Kubernetes releases and  providing enterprises with a seamless upgrade experience, enabling them to take advantage of the innovation in future releases.”

Any vendor is invited to run the conformance test suite and submit conformance testing results for review and certification by the CNCF. End users should make sure their vendor partners certify their Kubernetes product and can confirm that certification using the same open source test suite.

Additional Resources

• To Join the CNCF Conformance Working Group
• CNCF blog
• Join the CNCF conversation on Slack

About Cloud Native Computing Foundation

Cloud native computing uses an open source software stack to deploy applications as microservices, packaging each part into its own container, and dynamically orchestrating those containers to optimize resource utilization. The Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) hosts critical components of cloud native software stacks including Kubernetes, Fluentd, linkerd, Prometheus, OpenTracing, gRPC, CoreDNS, containerd, rkt, CNI, Envoy, Jaeger, Notary, and TUF. CNCF serves as the neutral home for collaboration and brings together the industry’s top developers, end users and vendors – including the six largest public cloud providers and many of the leading private cloud companies. CNCF is part of The Linux Foundation, a nonprofit organization. For more information about CNCF, please visit: https://cncf.io/.

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“Cloud Native Computing Foundation”, “CNCF” and “Kubernetes” are registered trademarks of The Linux Foundation in the United States and other countries. “Certified Kubernetes” and the Certified Kubernetes design are trademarks of The Linux Foundation in the United States and other countries.

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