Because of the popularity of containers, cloud companies are also offering managed Kubernetes as a Service (KaaS). Google Kubernetes Engine, Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service, and Azure Kubernetes Service perform the majority of the heavy work in creating, configuring, and managing clusters. Customers that use KaaS services concentrate on the workload while the cloud provider manages the infrastructure.
When you switch to the edge, clients are on their own. They must select every component, including the operating system, Kubernetes distribution, storage, network, service mesh, and observability. Assembling the stack by picking the appropriate component from dozens of open source and commercial software options might be difficult. Customers quickly recognise that this stack has far too many moving components. The decision to choose one version of an open source component over another might make or break the entire infrastructure stack.
Even when the cloud native edge stack components are correctly combined, clients frequently suffer with day-2 infrastructure operations. Upgrading and patching the operating system, Kubernetes distribution, and other cluster building elements are all part of this. The fundamental problem here is to undertake maintenance on a large scale, affecting tens of thousands of clusters running in a highly dispersed environment.
Customers that use standard OEM or bespoke hardware configurations will be responsible for managing hardware, infrastructure software, and workloads from start to finish.
