Complete Container Hosting
Straight-forward container management alongside expert technical support.
Hosting for Docker & Kubernetes
UKFast’s dedicated container platform combines the ease of use of Rancher management with market-leading Kubernetes orchestration and UKFast’s 24/7 support to provide a container hosting platform like no other.
Our dedicated container hosting platform is cloud-based, allowing your business to move fast, deploy software efficiently and rapidly, and operate at an unprecedented scale. It allows your developers to focus on their application logic, and IT operations teams to concentrate on deployment and management – a solution that is sustainable, drives your organisation forward and enables growth.
- Kubernetes allows for simple, automatic management of your Docker containers
- Rancher dashboard for easy interaction with the Kubernetes orchestration layer
- Scale applications in record time on both cloud and dedicated servers
- Rolling updates and zero-downtime deployment to support DevOps
- 24/7/365 award-winning technical support from day one
Hosting features
Rancher Kubernetes Engine
The Rancher Kubernetes Engine enhances the functionality of Kubernetes, with additional user management, multi-tenancy, and the ability to manage many clusters. It also circumvents the complexity often encountered during Kubernetes setup, operating a marketplace which offers software from a supported library.
Containerising for DevOps
There is a growing demand to adopt cloud technology for DevOps. Containers offer a package of software that can be shipped and coincide well with the way DevOps automate and innovate the virtual process. The use of containers supports the three pillars of DevOps practices: flow, feedback and continual learning.
UK-based support
Clients often tell us how their account manager and dedicated pod of technical engineers have become an invaluable extension of their business. We're here for you 24/7/365 and always answer the phone within three rings, whether you've been using containers for years or just getting started.
Improve operations
Containerising your work flow offers a wealth of opportunities to optimise your operations. Free up server resources, speed up application setup and deployment, and enhance overall scalability, agility, reliability and security.
Complete control
Move applications easily from one hosting solution to another, easily extend functionality to suit your requirements and access logs, allocate resources, minimise disruptions and more. Our container hosting works the way you want, for your unique organisation.
Flexibility
Our custom-built Rancher stack is designed to work on any UKFast platform, whether you have a cloud or dedicated server solution, to provide ultimate flexibility and integration with your workload.
Why UKFast?
100% network uptime guarantee
Our five purpose-built data centres are built upon enterprise continuity technology, we aggregate bandwidth from the world’s major suppliers, and all of our servers and circuits are run well below capacity. Our 1.6Tbps network has no single point of failure and so we are confident in our ability to deliver on our 100% network uptime guarantee.
Incredible tech partners
UKFast leverages its fantastic partnerships with leading industry brands to test the latest products and implement the most innovative tech in our own hosting solutions, offering exceptional performance for all environments. Partners include Microsoft, Intel, HPE, Cisco, Citrix, Linux, AWS, Azure, cPanel, Dell, Plesk, Red Hat, Shopware and VMware.
UK-based data centres
Your server is only ever housed in our exclusively UK-based data centres, which are purpose built to provide 100% data sovereignty and the highest standards of availability, security and performance for your business. UKFast data centres are ISO-certified, PCI DSS-compliant and secured to government IL4 standards, so you can rest assured that your data is secure.
The Rancher Kubernetes Engine (RKE)
UKFast's container hosting solutions include a minimum of three servers (for compute and storage) - in addition to load balancing capabilities, managed backups and monitoring, around-the-clock support and comprehensive firewall protection.
Our server nodes run CentOS 7 64-bit and are uniformly installed and configured to provide ultimate performance across your entire environment. We then install Rancher Kubernetes Engine (RKE) on top of the servers to create a Rancher-managed Kubernetes cluster – the orchestration platform which controls Docker and hosts your containers.
Several different components make up the RKE platform, including:
- Container runtime: We use the Docker Engine, which is the industry’s de facto container runtime.
- Kubelet (part of Kubernetes): The orchestration daemon which runs on each node and interacts with the local Docker engine.
- Canal Container Network Interface: This provides virtualised networking in your solution, allowing all containers and services on any nodes to communicate, if permitted by Network Policy.
- NGiNX Ingress Controller: Ensures inbound requests are routed to the correct services.
- Kubectl (part of Kubernetes): Kubectl is a command-line program used to interact with Kubernetes API servers, enabling management of Kubernetes clusters.
- Rancher Dashboard: The web interface used to interact with the Rancher orchestration-layer engine.
Get clued up on container basics with our What are containers? blog.
Certifications and Industry Compliance
Your solution is only ever housed in our government and ISO-certified, ultra-secure data centres managed by security cleared personnel. And as an exclusively UK-based company, hosting with UKFast offers guaranteed data sovereignty. UKFast is a government approved supplier through the G-Cloud 12 framework.