Cluster Types

In this document, we will explore the different types of Kubernetes clusters Platform9 Managed Kubernetes (PMK) supports today.

• ** On Premises (BareOS) – Platform9 uses the term ‘BareOS’ to refer to physical servers or a set of Linux virtual machines like VMWare or KVM. Clusters created using these machine types are called a BareOS cluster. Once created, these clusters will show up in your PMK UI with type ‘BareOS’.

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• EKS Clusters - Platform9 supports creating Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service(EKS) clusters, provisioned and managed using Kubernetes Cluster API.

• AWS Clusters (CAPI) - Platform9 supports creating clusters natively in AWS using EC2 instances provisioned and managed using Kubernetes Cluster API. This is a newly added mechanism for creating clusters on AWS using EC2 instances and is more feature rich compared to the legacy mechanism (below).

• AWS Clusters (Qbert) – This is the PMK legacy mechanism to create clusters natively in AWS using EC2 instances and using Platform9's native Qbert cluster management APIs.

• Azure Native Clusters – Platform9 provides native integration with Microsoft Azure to create Kubernetes clusters (non-AKS, leveraging VM instances) and manages the lifecycle of each component required to run a Kubernetes Cluster.

• Imported Clusters - Platform9 can connect to and import following types of clusters into the PMK management plane:

  • Imported GKE Clusters – Platform9 can connect to and import a GKE Clusters.

  • Imported EKS Clusters – Platform9 can connect to and import a EKS Clusters.

  • Imported AKS Clusters – Platform9 can connect to and import a AKS Clusters.