Building a slide deck, pitch, or presentation? Here are the big takeaways:

  • DigitalOcean has begun offering Kubernetes container hosting services, simplifying the container deployment process for developers.
  • Registration for early access is open, with selected users gaining access to the technical preview starting in June 2018. General availability is planned for later this year.

Since early 2017, cloud hosting provider DigitalOcean has been expanding beyond the traditional cloud VPS “droplet” hosting that has rocketed the company to becoming the third largest host in terms of web-facing computers, according to NetCraft. As part of this expansion, DigitalOcean announced a preview of Kubernetes container support, according to a Wednesday blog post.

Much in the same way that DigitalOcean simplified server deployment with VPS droplets, the company is taking a similar approach to Kubernetes container deployments. According to the post:

We designed DigitalOcean Kubernetes with developers and their teams in mind, so you can save time and deploy your container workloads without needing to configure everything from scratch. Automatic deployment of load balancers, block storage, firewalls, ingress controllers, and more makes configuring your cluster on DigitalOcean as simple as deploying a Droplet. We understand having your data close to your cluster is essential, so you’ll have the option to deploy a private container registry to your cluster with no configuration, and store the images on DigitalOcean Spaces.

SEE: Why containers are critical to successful DevOps projects (Tech Pro Research)

Containers can be deployed on standard DigitalOcean hardware, or on specialized high-compute hardware for better performance, the post said. As hinted above, management capabilities can optionally be extended to teams, making it possible to administer deployments from multiple accounts.

While DigitalOcean noted that it has used Kubernetes internally for two years, this additional embrace of the container standard has also prompted the company to upgrade their membership with the Cloud Native Computing Foundation to the Gold level.

DigitalOcean’s move into the Kubernetes container hosting industry brings them into competition with market leaders Amazon Elastic Container Service for Kubernetes, Google Kubernetes Engine, Microsoft Azure Container Service, and Baidu Cloud Container Engine, among others.

Registration for early access is already open, with selected users gaining access to the technical preview starting in June 2018. Pricing information for deployments is not yet available, though those selected to be part of the test can use the service freely through this September, the post said.