How Kubernetes tools focused on security and data protection will drive success
Kubernetes adoption is growing across Europe, and it’s taking a unique turn. As the global political climate shifts, European organizations are doubling down on a need to keep information and tools closer than ever.
The situation
European companies have always differed from their American counterparts. While American enterprises often default to cloud-first, European organizations are less likely to commit to a single hyperscaler and more likely to invest in a varied architecture that spreads workload among providers.
Now, the political climate is pushing this preference into a requirement. Particularly in Scandinavian countries, we are seeing a lot of concern and increasing interest in replacing any infrastructure with ties to the United States with something closer to home. Across Europe, this shift is manifesting in a few ways:
- Businesses are building use case-based data privacy, defining what is and is not acceptable to keep in an American infrastructure. That data is then split across cloud, edge, and on-prem as necessary.
- Businesses are turning toward European-based entities of American providers, such as Azure’s German-based cloud data center.
- Businesses are turning to hybrid or fully on-prem solutions for more security and control.
The trend toward on-prem is also rooted in a general need to reduce dependency on cloud and turn it into a strategic option. These hybrid and on-prem setups come with numerous benefits. They provide flexibility, better performance, and direct access to hardware resources, without a virtualization layer, so Kubernetes can handle redundancy while providing resiliency and the ability to take full advantage of physical resources. Furthermore, data centers running on Talos Linux are innately secure, built from the bottom-up to maintain consistency and reliability, and they are completely private.
Though the goal is clear, for many businesses the next steps are not. Traditionally, Kubernetes has been used to cobble together infrastructures that–though robust–were complex. There is a need for a single, uniform solution that integrates seamlessly across diverse environments reliably and intuitively.
Building Your Stack for Data Sovereignty
In the face of sudden change, many are unaware of what options exist. One of the toughest challenges for businesses is understanding what exactly needs to be changed and how, and the answer doesn’t need to be complicated. Here’s how Talos Linux and Omni can support you in this transformation.
Let’s start with the foundation. There are many tools out there, but just because a tool can do the job does not mean it will be flexible enough to support an infrastructure as it scales. Talos Linux is an operating system purpose-built for Kubernetes and specially built for bare metal, providing the same out-of-the-box experience we have come to expect from hypervisors. It also supports cloud and edge, making it easy to integrate nodes of any kind and in any location. This flexibility ensures that your team has a strong, central foundation to build a uniform architecture.
To ensure data sovereignty and protection, businesses need to examine how their infrastructure is managed and used in the real world. Talos Linux and Omni replace traditional management interfaces with an API approach, minimizing human error and enforcing consistency. Its minimal design similarly removes unnecessary components, reducing the security attack surfaces and security vulnerabilities.
With your infrastructure in place, it’s time to look at management. Omni elevates this technical foundation with enterprise tooling that makes cluster management automatic. It provides a clear overview of your Kubernetes operating system and operations while reducing the amount of work required to maintain them.