Mirantis Announces Latest Features in Swarm Container Orchestrator

Integrated with Mirantis Kubernetes Engine, giving customers choice

CAMPBELL, Calif., April 9, 2024 -Mirantis, providing organizations with total control over their strategic infrastructure using open source software, today announced updates to Swarm that optimize use of compute resources and enhance security, plus plans to deliver additional features focused on enterprise security requirements. Mirantis delivers enterprise-grade Swarm through Mirantis Kubernetes Engine (MKE).

“While Kubernetes has taken over as the world’s leading container orchestrator, Swarm continues to be a popular option, with more than 100 of our customers utilizing Swarm for production workloads, and continual sales inquiries from enterprises interested in Swarm,” said Shaun O’Meara, chief technology officer, Mirantis. “We’ll continue to support and enhance Swarm with plans for additional features coming from our engineering staff dedicated to Swarm.”

Originally developed by Docker, Swarm is an integral part of MKE, which provides customers with choice of both Kubernetes and Swarm orchestrators for their container workloads. The most recent Swarm updates include:

- Scheduled image pruning for administrators to clean up unused container images, to optimize use of compute resources.

- Setting Swarm resource limits, enabling administrators to set constraints for process (CPU) and memory usage.

Planned next features for Swarm include IPv6 support, as well as support for ARM processors.

Mirantis customers using Swarm include MetLife, Royal Bank of Canada, and S&P Global, a top five global telecom operator, large federal agency, other financial services companies, and global pharmaceutical manufacturers. That amounts to more than 10,000 nodes spread across approximately 1,000 clusters, supporting over 100,000 containers orchestrated by Swarm.

The vast majority of enterprise Swarm customers also deploy Kubernetes clusters using MKE, and a significant number of them deploy mixed clusters with both Swarm and Kubernetes nodes. MKE provides users with a convenient on-ramp for future Kubernetes adoption.

Swarm is an easy-to-use lightweight container orchestrator that offers a simpler alternative to Kubernetes, and is often used in application deployments that require less complex orchestration and smaller infrastructure overhead.

Mirantis conducts regular security validation and updates to address security vulnerabilities. MKE uses encryption modules that are validated for Federal Information Processing Standards (FIPS) 140-2 security requirements. 

For further details, read the Swarm is here to stay blog post.