SUSE has announced the release of Rancher 2.7.2, the latest update to the most widely adopted Kubernetes management platform. It includes extensibility enhancements designed to foster even stronger eco-system adoption. SUSE also expanded the enterprise-grade value of its open source commercial subscription for Rancher with the latest release of Rancher Prime, as well as delivered updates to its popular open source projects like Rancher Desktop, and re-launched its free training portal, Rancher Academy.

Peter Smails, General Manager of Enterprise Container Management at SUSE, believes that Rancher’s UI extension framework will be especially popular with SUSE’s global network of technology partners. The SUSE One Partner Program now incorporates the ‘Tested & Certified – Rancher Extension’ certification, which allows partners to build and host extensions from within Rancher’s application catalog and validate its reliability through this new certification criteria. The updated program encourages more collaboration and interoperability across the Rancher partner ecosystem and is backed by support from the Rancher Prime subscription.

The new Rancher UI extension framework decouples the UI functionality from Rancher Manager and provides users with the ability to independently extend and enhance the Rancher UI. This gives users the capability to build on top of the Rancher platform and better integrate Rancher into their environments by building custom, peer-developed or Rancher-developed UI extensions.

Available today are three Rancher-developed extensions, including:

• Kubewarden Extension, which delivers a comprehensive way to manage the lifecycle of Kubernetes policies across Rancher clusters.
• Elemental Extension, which provides operators with the ability to manage their cloud-native OS and Edge devices from within the Rancher platform.
• Harvester Extension, which helps operators load their virtualized Harvester cluster into Rancher to easily manage and inspect.

SUSE’s strategy for Rancher is to provide the core power of hybrid and multi-cloud multi-cluster management, and for extension providers to deliver a highly customized user experience to their customers within the same pane of glass.

Rancher Academy, the free educational platform designed to help users get started with Rancher and Kubernetes, is back with more courses covering topics such as Kubernetes, Container Fundamentals, Rancher Multi-cluster Management, Container Security, and more.