SentinelOne’s DataSet Kubernetes Explorer aims to centralize container monitoring

SentinelOne Dataset plays squarely in the fast-growing gig economy. As the primary in-house IT toolset of cybersecurity platform maker SentinelOne, it also lives another life as an independent contractor with its own customers and partners.

The Mountain View, California-based parent company today announced the latest addition to its DataSet suite: Kubernetes Explorer. This is intended to provide developers and engineering teams – who are constantly working on product iterations – a more effective way to understand and manage performance in complex, container-native Kubernetes environments, a key trend across the industry.

Kubernetes is a portable, extensible, open-source platform—developed primarily by Google a few years ago—for managing containerized workloads and services, facilitating both declarative configuration and automation. It has a large, fast-growing ecosystem, and Kubernetes Explorer is positioned to fit into this burgeoning market, dataset GM Rahul Ravulu told VentureBeat.

Large amounts of fragmented, unstructured data and microservices in distributed, containerized applications create unnecessary management overhead and costs, not to mention data silos that are typically difficult to manage. The purpose of DataSet Kubernetes Explorer is to simplify these challenges by bringing real-time visibility into applications and infrastructure, Ravulu said.

Actionable data on a single screen

This SaaS platform integrates metrics, metadata, events, and contextual logs into a single console screen for easy management. With this visual tool, Kubernetes teams can more easily see and understand the dependencies of Kubernetes components, spot performance issues, uncover root causes, and fix them, Ravulu said. Dataset Explorer provides an overview of all Kubernetes clusters with the flexibility for users to drill down into a specific cluster, namespace, node, pod, container or deployed workload in seconds, Ravulu said.

Not having full observability across such complex systems of Kubernetes clusters, containers, data stores, and microservices can cost admins time—and bottom line, businesses money.

“Users will be able to very intuitively allow developers and SRE (Site Reliability Engineering) teams to troubleshoot any errors they may encounter,” Ravulu said. “This definitely fits into the ‘observability’ category in terms of the ability to actually find anomalies and identify root cause problems to go in and fix anomalies as they arise.”

Log monitoring, also known as log management, is becoming a critical component in building next-generation IT infrastructure. According to KBV Research, the global log management market will grow to $3.3 billion by 2025, at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 11%.

Analyst Opinion on Kubernetes

“Dynamic containerized platforms generate large amounts of fast-moving data,” said Paul Nashawaty, senior analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group, in a media advisory. “As organizations move to Kubernetes, the ability to cost-effectively analyze events across the entire cloud stack, including applications, container platforms, and infrastructure, will become the norm, not the exception.”

Traditional data platforms were developed decades ago in the pre-cloud era. He said they don’t work for modern environments because they’re too slow to detect and respond in real time, too isolated for useful insights, too expensive to scale, and too complex to operate.

“Access to full-fidelity protocols is a must in dynamic container environments to provide a flawless application experience,” Ravulu said.

Dataset Kubernetes Explorer launched just months after SentinelOne launched its live enterprise platform. Explorer is now available in preview for existing customers. According to G2, established providers in this area include Splunk Enterprise, Datadog, Sumo Logic, Logz.io, Dynatrace, LogDNA, New Relic One, Graylog, Progress WhatsUp Gold and LogMonitor.