DKP Concepts and Terms

Understand the terminology used in association with DKP with the information on this page - DKP concepts and terms.

DKP is composed of three main components, Konvoy, Kommander, and Konvoy Image Builder (KIB) that work together to provide a single and centralized point of control for an organization’s application infrastructure. DKP empowers organizations to deploy, manage, and scale Kubernetes workloads in Day 2 production environments more easily.

Each main component specifically manages the following:

• Konvoy is the cluster lifecycle manager component of DKP. Konvoy relies on Cluster API, Calico, and other open-source and proprietary software to provide simple cluster lifecycle management for conformant Kubernetes clusters with networking and storage capabilities. 

  Konvoy uses industry-standard tools to provision certified Kubernetes clusters on multiple cloud providers, vSphere, and on-premises hardware in connected and air-gapped environments. Konvoy contains the following components:

  • Cluster Manager - Cluster API, CSI, CNI, Cluster AutoScaler, Cert Manager, MetalLB

The Konvoy component is installed according to the cluster’s infrastructure.

• To install DKP quickly and without much customization, refer to the Day 1 - Basic Installs by Infrastructure section.

• To choose more environment and cluster customizations, refer to theCustom Installation and Additional Infrastructure Tools section for more information.

• Kommander is the fleet management component of DKP. Kommander delivers centralized observability, control, governance, unified policy, and better operational insights. With DKP Essential, Kommander manages a single Kubernetes cluster.
  In DKP Enterprise, Kommander supports attaching workload clusters and lifecycle management of clusters using Cluster API. DKP Enterprise also offers lifecycle management of applications through FluxCD. Kommander contains the following components:

  • User interface, Security, Observability, Networking, Application Management

  • Platform Applications: Applications that come out of the box with DKP providing functionality like observability, cost management, monitoring, logging, making DKP clusters Day 2 production ready right from install. Platform applications are D2iQ’s choice of selected applications from the open source community that are consumed by the platform.

  • Essential Platform Applications: Monitoring, Logging, Backup/Restore, Policy Agent, External DNS, Load Balance, Ingress, SSO, Service Mesh.

  • Enterprise Platform Applications: All above Essential Platform Applications, plus additional Access Control and Centralized Cost Management.

  • Catalog Applications: Applications in DKP Enterprise that are deployed to be used for customer workloads, such as Kafka, Spark and ZooKeeper.

The Kommander component is installed according to the cluster’s environment type. See Installing Kommander by Environment for more information.

• Konvoy Image Builder (KIB) creates Cluster API-compliant machine images. It configures those images to contain all the necessary software to deploy Kubernetes cluster nodes. See Konvoy Image Builder for more information.

DKP Essential and Enterprise also provide a helpful add-on called DKP Insights.

Related Topics:

Universal Configurations for all Infrastructure Providers

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What is Pre-provisioned Infrastructure