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Gather Up Your Cloud Cattle with Rancher
February 24, 2022

Gather Up Your Cloud Cattle with Rancher

Kim Aaltonen | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Reseller

Software Version

Rancher

Modules Used

  • Rancher Kubernetes Engine (RKE)

Overall Satisfaction with SUSE Rancher

Customers of Datalounges build, maintain and manage cloud native applications on a variety of Kubernetes platforms. Often these are provided by hyper scalers such as Google and AmazonWeb Services. A small environment is easy for customers to keep under control, but as the use cases start varying and requirements for security, configuration management and more common ops-related problems arise, SUSE Rancher is introduced to the equation to maintain those platforms. Key use cases may include controlled delivery of apps from a trusted source and then their lifecycle or controlling the configurations of the Kubernetes environments to keep them similar enough over their lifecycle. Mainly it is a scaling thing though. Rancher provides a good basis for skilled engineers to automate and those with less experience to administrate in scale.
  • Manages users and access.
  • Maintains Kubernetes configurations.
  • Provides admin visibility to cluster health.
  • Self-service of developers needs either tooling or improvement
  • The observability-like elastic component is not flexible to fit into the rest of the stack
  • Fleet GitOps functionality could use improvement to compete with leading vendors
  • Kept customer's costs in control for cloud native workloads.
  • Allowed for faster delivery of updates and upgrades.
  • Better visibility into the health of Kubernetes capacity.
Use cases can be complex hence support as well. Problems have been solvable, but not always easily. It's great that there is support!

Do you think SUSE Rancher delivers good value for the price?

Not sure

Are you happy with SUSE Rancher's feature set?

Yes

Did SUSE Rancher live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of SUSE Rancher go as expected?

I wasn't involved with the implementation phase

Would you buy SUSE Rancher again?

Yes

The software is straightforward to use and easy enough to get started with. Then complex use cases require a lot of attention not because of SUSE Rancher but because of Kubernetes and cloud native in general.
The investment for small environments is quite significant. There has to be a compelling case to enhance the areas where SUSE Rancher brings in value to make such a financial leap. There is also a free version to test the value propositions, which will help support the user's buying decisions. More clusters, more volume, more tasks and more complexity in the environment equals more value that Rancher can provide.
SUSE Rancher as a management tool becomes useful on a larger scale. Small deployments not so much. If someone also requires Kubernetes capacity or storage, Rancher is an excellent choice. Also, without Kubernetes' skills, it is unlikely that Rancher deployment is going to be a success. Then again if someone else is managing your Kubernetes capacity, setting up the software's capacity will yield greater control. Rancher is not a very integrated solution similar to others in the market.