Mirantis

Overview

Mirantis is a provider of enterprise cloud-native infrastructure solutions, with a primary focus on Kubernetes and container orchestration. Established in 2009, the company offers a suite of products designed to simplify the deployment, management, and scaling of applications across various environments, including multi-cloud, hybrid cloud, and on-premise data centers. Their core offerings cater to large enterprises and organizations that require robust, secure, and compliant infrastructure for their machine learning and general application workloads.

The Mirantis product portfolio includes Mirantis Kubernetes Engine (MKE), a certified Kubernetes distribution for enterprise use, and Mirantis Container Cloud, which provides a unified control plane for managing Kubernetes clusters and cloud infrastructure across diverse footprints. For organizations with existing OpenStack investments or those requiring OpenStack's IaaS capabilities, Mirantis OpenStack for Kubernetes integrates OpenStack services directly onto a Kubernetes foundation. A notable offering for individual developers and teams is Lens Desktop, an integrated development environment (IDE) for Kubernetes, which provides a graphical interface for cluster management and application debugging. This tool aims to enhance developer productivity by abstracting some of the complexities of Kubernetes operations.

Mirantis positions itself for scenarios where organizations need to standardize their container orchestration strategy across disparate environments, ensuring consistent operations and governance. This includes use cases such as deploying AI/ML models at scale, managing critical business applications, and modernizing legacy infrastructure. The platform’s capabilities extend to providing secure supply chain management for containers, ensuring that deployed applications meet compliance requirements like SOC 2 Type II. Their solutions are engineered to support high availability and fault tolerance, critical for production-grade workloads in enterprise settings.

For example, a financial institution might use Mirantis Kubernetes Engine to host its trading applications on-premises, while simultaneously using Mirantis Container Cloud to manage development and testing environments on a public cloud provider like AWS. This allows for consistent tooling and operational practices across different infrastructure types. The developer experience is supported by tools like Lens Pro, which provides advanced features for debugging and monitoring Kubernetes applications directly from a desktop environment, accelerating development cycles. Mirantis' approach emphasizes providing a complete software stack from infrastructure to application deployment, aiming to reduce operational overhead for IT teams.

Key features

• Mirantis Kubernetes Engine (MKE): An enterprise-grade, certified Kubernetes distribution that includes integrated Swarm orchestration for mixed environments, providing high availability and security features for production workloads.
• Mirantis Container Cloud: A unified platform for managing Kubernetes clusters and underlying infrastructure across public clouds, private clouds, and edge locations from a single control plane. This enables consistent operations across hybrid environments.
• Mirantis OpenStack for Kubernetes: Integrates OpenStack's Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) capabilities, such as virtual machines and block storage, directly onto a Kubernetes foundation, allowing for management of both containers and VMs from a unified platform.
• Lens Desktop & Lens Pro: A desktop IDE for Kubernetes, offering a graphical interface for cluster navigation, resource management, and debugging. Lens Pro adds advanced features for enterprise users, including enhanced security, team collaboration, and support for multiple cloud environments.
• Multi-Cloud & Hybrid Cloud Support: Tools and services designed to deploy and manage applications consistently across various cloud providers (e.g., AWS, Azure, Google Cloud) and on-premise data centers.
• Integrated Security & Compliance: Features for container image scanning, vulnerability management, access control, and compliance reporting, including SOC 2 Type II attestation, to meet enterprise security standards.
• Automated Operations: Capabilities for automating cluster provisioning, upgrades, and scaling, reducing manual effort and improving operational efficiency for IT teams.
• Developer Experience Enhancements: Tools like Lens Desktop simplify the interaction with Kubernetes clusters, providing developers with a more intuitive interface for deploying, testing, and debugging their applications.

Pricing

Mirantis offers a tiered pricing model that includes both subscription-based services for individual tools and custom enterprise pricing for their platform products. Enterprise solutions like Mirantis Kubernetes Engine and Mirantis Container Cloud typically involve custom quotes based on deployment scale, features, and support requirements.

The Lens Pro product, an enhanced version of the Lens Desktop IDE, is available with a fixed monthly or annual fee. This tier provides additional features over the free basic Lens Desktop, such as advanced security, team collaboration tools, and priority support.

For detailed pricing inquiries regarding enterprise solutions, Mirantis advises direct contact with their sales team via the Mirantis pricing page.

Common integrations

• Cloud Providers: Mirantis Container Cloud integrates with major public cloud providers such as AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform for provisioning and managing Kubernetes clusters and underlying infrastructure.
• Monitoring & Logging Tools: Kubernetes environments managed by Mirantis can integrate with standard monitoring solutions like Prometheus and Grafana, and logging systems such as ELK Stack (Elasticsearch, Logstash, Kibana) for observability.
• CI/CD Pipelines: Integrates with popular CI/CD tools like Jenkins, GitLab CI/CD, and Argo CD to automate application deployment and updates to Kubernetes clusters.
• Identity Management: Supports integration with enterprise identity providers (e.g., LDAP, Active Directory, Okta) for centralized user authentication and authorization within Kubernetes clusters.
• Container Registries: Works with various container registries, including Docker Hub, Quay.io, and private registries like Harbor, for storing and managing container images.
• Storage Solutions: Compatible with a range of persistent storage solutions, including cloud-native storage (e.g., AWS EBS, Azure Disk), software-defined storage (e.g., Ceph), and network-attached storage (NAS) for stateful applications.
• Virtualization Platforms: Mirantis OpenStack for Kubernetes integrates with underlying virtualization platforms when deployed on-premises, managing virtual machines alongside containers.

Alternatives

• Red Hat OpenShift: A comprehensive enterprise Kubernetes platform based on Kubernetes, offering integrated developer tools, CI/CD, and a strong focus on hybrid cloud.
• Rancher by SUSE: An open-source container management platform that simplifies the deployment and management of Kubernetes clusters across any infrastructure.
• VMware Tanzu: A portfolio of products and services for building, running, and managing modern applications on Kubernetes, integrated with VMware's virtualization ecosystem.
• Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE): A managed service for running containerized applications on Google Cloud, providing automated cluster management and scaling.
• Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS): Microsoft's managed Kubernetes offering, simplifying the deployment and management of containerized applications in Azure.

Getting started

To begin using Mirantis Lens Desktop for managing Kubernetes clusters, you can download the application from the official Mirantis website. Once installed, you can add an existing Kubernetes cluster by importing its kubeconfig file. The following example demonstrates how to set a kubeconfig context for a cluster and then interact with it using kubectl, a common command-line tool, which Lens Desktop can visualize.

First, ensure you have kubectl installed and a kubeconfig file for your cluster. If you are setting up a new cluster or connecting to an existing one, your cloud provider or on-premise setup guide will usually provide instructions to generate or download this file.

For instance, to switch to a specific context named my-prod-cluster in your kubeconfig:

kubectl config use-context my-prod-cluster

Once your kubeconfig is configured and Lens Desktop is running, you can add this cluster. In Lens, navigate to File > Add Cluster and either paste the contents of your kubeconfig file or select the file directly. Lens will then connect to your cluster and display its resources, such as nodes, pods, and deployments, in a graphical interface.

To deploy a simple Nginx application to your connected cluster, you can use a YAML manifest. Create a file named nginx-deployment.yaml:

apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
  name: nginx-deployment
  labels:
    app: nginx
spec:
  replicas: 3
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      app: nginx
  template:
    metadata:
      labels:
        app: nginx
    spec:
      containers:
      - name: nginx
        image: nginx:latest
        ports:
        - containerPort: 80
---
apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
  name: nginx-service
spec:
  selector:
    app: nginx
  ports:
    - protocol: TCP
      port: 80
      targetPort: 80
  type: LoadBalancer # Use NodePort or ClusterIP if LoadBalancer is not available

Apply this manifest using kubectl:

kubectl apply -f nginx-deployment.yaml

Lens Desktop will automatically detect this new deployment and service, displaying them within its interface. You can then monitor the pods, view logs, and scale the deployment directly from the Lens GUI. This streamlined workflow demonstrates how Lens simplifies common Kubernetes operations for developers. For more in-depth setup and management, consult the Mirantis documentation portal for their enterprise products.