Replicated Releases Open-Source Alert Tool to Support Compliance, Security in Kubernetes Clusters

Replicated today released its open source image version alert tool, called Outdated, to help cluster admins and operators actively determine if they’re running the latest versions of container images and ensure a higher level of security and compliance. While there are other tools on the market that support similar actions, Outdated is the first standardized tool that will automatically tell customers when there’s a container image update they need to install.

“Instead of just deploying the latest version in a cluster, we determined the best solution is to always pin a specific version so you get reproducible deployments, and then you can decide what you want to do next,” said Marc Campbell, CTO at Replicated.

The most compelling reason to use Outdated is increased security, but it was also created to give the user a straightforward way to understand if they’re running the latest container images, with output color-coded as green (latest version), yellow (new version pending), and red (need to update). While other apps like GitHub and Helm have similar alerts, Outdated looks specifically at the images and the state of the cluster and tells you if there are outdated versions.

“At a high level, Outdated is a binary that runs on your workstation and interrogates the Kubernetes cluster, finds all the container images that are running with tags, and goes out to the associated container registries and finds the newer versions,” Campbell explained. “We created Outdated because an important step in keeping a Kubernetes or application cluster secure is to keep the latest version running at all times. This tool makes it really simple.”

Similar to its work to develop and make available SchemaHero, now in the CNCF sandbox, and Troubleshoot, it is Replicated’s hope that releasing Outdated as a fully open sourced project will both introduce the purpose-built tool to a community that will appreciate its usefulness, as well as foster community by way of feedback, use cases and contributions.

To access Outdated and start using it today, please visit https://outdated.sh.