WekaIO and Rancher Labs in Technology Alliance

WekaIO, Inc. announced that Weka File System (WekaFS), with its Kubernetes container storage interface (CSI) plug-in, has completed interoperability testing with Rancher Labs’ Kubernetes Management Platform.

The 2 companies will offer enterprises an integrated, end-to-end tested solution that enables accelerated DataOps. With this certification, Rancher Labs (now a SUSE company) and Weka have joined each other’s Technology Alliance Partner Programs.

A complete software stack for teams adopting containers, Rancher is a choice for enterprises looking to run containers and Kubernetes in production. It addresses the operational and security challenges of managing multiple Kubernetes clusters across any infrastructure while providing DataOps teams with integrated tools for running containerized workloads. It is a product that enables enterprises to deliver Kubernetes-as-a-Service across any infrastructure.

“While Kubernetes enables a common compute platform across any infrastructure and a consistent set of infrastructure capabilities, it can create overhead and risk,” said Jim Sarale, VP global channels and alliances, Rancher Labs.  “Rancher enables production-quality Kubernetes everywhere. With more than 76% of enterprises expected to standardize on Kubernetes within three years, having a certified technology partner like Weka better allows us to help customers overcome the challenges of Kubernetes and deliver value from the data center to the cloud to the edge, with at-scale performance.“

WekaFS, a fast and scalable parallel file system for data-intensive workloads, addresses the shareability, performance, and portability challenges by providing stateful, reliable storage, allowing deployment on-premises and migration to the cloud. Using the WekaFS Kubernetes CSI plug-in, organizations have increased flexibility in how and where they deploy containers while delivering local storage performance and latency. Throughout the system, the WekaFS and Weka Client solutions deliver the speed-to-market required of a cloud-first solution.

“The purpose of any technology alliance program is to develop end-to-end solutions with partners that make life easier for our joint customers,” said Shailesh Manjrekar, head of AI and strategic alliances, WekaIO. “To achieve this goal, we target leading technology providers who add value by creating a solutions ecosystem that enables an agile and accelerated data center for our customers. By partnering with Rancher, we can offer a solution that fulfills the enterprise – and cloud-ready features required of today’s AI/ML container ecosystems. We believe this to be a key step in fulfilling our vision of helping organizations overcome their biggest storage problems with AI- and cloud-first strategies, while accelerating portability so that they may extract more value from their data, faster.“