Red Hat Introduces Kubernetes-Native Connectivity Management with Red Hat Connectivity Link

Unified solution simplifies and enhances application connectivity, management and security capabilities across the hybrid cloud

Red Hat, Inc., the world's leading provider of open source solutions, today announced the general availability of Red Hat Connectivity Link, a hybrid multicloud application connectivity solution that provides a modern approach to connecting disparate applications and infrastructure.

Red Hat Connectivity Link integrates advanced traffic management, policy enforcement and role-based access control (RBAC) directly within Kubernetes, enhancing security and compliance across multiple layers of application infrastructure. Application development and platform engineering teams can now manage application connectivity across single and multi-cluster Kubernetes environments -- streamlining the definition, management and visibility of connectivity configuration and policies. Red Hat Connectivity Link enables organizations to reduce complexity by consolidating functions such as traffic routing, security and policy management functions into a single Kubernetes-native solution.

Reduced complexity through a unified approach

The adoption of cloud-native architectures, containers and Kubernetes has fostered an explosion of applications, services and endpoints. In turn, this has increased both the need for and challenges of configuring and governing connections between these components. Applications can span Kubernetes clusters, data centers and cloud providers. Technology evolutions in generative AI (gen AI) and edge deployments are adding further complexity and introducing new requirements for security and traffic management. With many organizations running applications across on-premise environments and multiple clouds, and deploying containers and virtual machines, managing application connectivity can be complicated, error-prone and inefficient.

Historically, organizations have needed to implement individual tools for tasks like API security and rate limiting, service mesh and application networking. Relying on multiple solutions requires product-specific skills and time spent integrating these solutions together with each other and the Kubernetes environment. This leads to layers of complexity in setting up and administering these environments. Red Hat Connectivity Link provides a new pathway to application connectivity with a unified environment for both development and platform teams to manage connectivity through a single solution.

Based on the open source Kuadrant project, Red Hat Connectivity Link is a Kubernetes-native solution designed to provide a cohesive experience and efficient approach to managing application traffic. It leverages the new Kubernetes-standard Gateway API and the broadly-adopted Envoy proxy technology to create an integrated functionality and management experience for single and multi-cluster Kubernetes environments. Authentication policies, rate limiting, DNS configuration and TLS management are specified through Kubernetes objects; operational data is surfaced through Kubernetes and customizable dashboards. The Red Hat Connectivity Link approach addresses connectivity challenges faced by modern IT organizations with a single, integrated solution rather than a complex, layered, multi-product approach.

Red Hat OpenShift users can use Red Hat Connectivity Link for a more consistent and efficient connectivity management experience across all clusters. With support for orchestrators like Istio and OpenShift Service Mesh, users have greater compatibility and flexibility in managing application connectivity within a wide range of Kubernetes environments.

Availability

Red Hat Connectivity Link is now generally available. More information including information on speaking to someone at Red Hat about this product can be found here.

Supporting Quotes

Sarwar Raza, vice president and general manager, Application Developer Business Unit, Red Hat

“Application connectivity, within and across distributed infrastructure environments, is fundamental to developing and scaling cloud-native workloads such as generative AI applications. Red Hat Connectivity Link is an integrated, unified solution that enables platform engineers and application developers to streamline operations, more efficiently scale across multiple environments and enhance security and compliance management across multiple layers of infrastructure using emerging cloud-native standards.”

Additional Resources

• Learn more about Red Hat Connectivity Link

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About Red Hat, Inc.

Red Hat is the world’s leading provider of enterprise open source software solutions, using a community-powered approach to deliver reliable and high-performing Linux, hybrid cloud, container, and Kubernetes technologies. Red Hat helps customers integrate new and existing IT applications, develop cloud-native applications, standardize on our industry-leading operating system, and automate, secure, and manage complex environments. Award-winning support, training, and consulting services make Red Hat a trusted adviser to the Fortune 500. As a strategic partner to cloud providers, system integrators, application vendors, customers, and open source communities, Red Hat can help organizations prepare for the digital future.

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