Google has announced GKE Advanced, an enterprise-grade addition to its managed Kubernetes service for the second quarter that will tackle security and automation.

Getting to grips with Kubernetes is no easy feat, which is why many turn to managed services before setting up their own installation.

As home to container orchestrator before its move into the Cloud Native Computing Foundation, Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) seemed like a natural fit for many.

But the lack of advanced security features will have served as a red flag to some – hence the planned, new release.

GKE Advanced will feature a container runtime based on the gVisor project, which can be used as a sandbox for running third-party software in a Kubernetes cluster. Further security should be granted through Binary Authorization, which is supposed to make sure only verified images are in use.

Automation is another aspect where people need help, so GKE Advanced will include two features to help out – named Vertical Pod Autoscaler and Node Auto Provisioning. The idea is they will stabilise workloads and optimise resources by watching their utilisation in a deployment and making adjustments or using enhanced cluster autoscaling respectively.

GKE metering is also planned and will offer offer a breakdown of resources consumed by Kubernetes namespaces and labels, attributed to entities like departments. For serverless fans, Cloud Run on GKE – a serverless project Google introduced earlier this month – will be part of the Advanced.

Larger enterprises are targeted by GKE Advanced, so it will pack a financially backed Service Level Agreement of 99.5 per cent uptime for a regional cluster. That still means yearly downtime of up to about four hours 23 minutes but it’s better than nothing.

GKE as it is now will still be available – just under the new name GKE Standard. Those interested in testing GKE Advanced before committing will have the chance to do so for free once it has been released. Pricing information for subscriptions however haven’t been made available yet.