# Canonical and Tigera partner for multi-tenant Kubernetes with Calico networking

> **Key takeaway:** Canonical and Tigera are integrating Ubuntu Pro and Canonical Kubernetes with Calico's eBPF-powered networking to provide a long-term, secure, multi-tenant platform.

**Published:** 2026-11-09T15:51:14+00:00 
**Source:** Canonical / Ubuntu Server & Kernel Blog 
**Category:** distro-news 
**Canonical URL:** https://fosswire.org/news/canonical-and-tigera-partner-for-multi-tenant-kubernetes-wit.html 

## Summary
Canonical and Tigera have announced a strategic collaboration to provide an integrated, enterprise-ready blueprint for running Kubernetes workloads. The solution combines Canonical's CNCF-compliant Kubernetes distribution and Ubuntu Pro with Tigera's Calico networking and security layer. This partnership aims to solve the fragmentation issues faced by platform teams who typically assemble disparate operating systems, Kubernetes distributions, and networking tools from different vendors.

The resulting architecture is designed for consistency across cloud, on-premises, and edge environments. By pairing Ubuntu's long-term support with Calico's microsegmentation, the partnership offers a unified management plane for both container and virtual machine workloads. This approach focuses on providing stable, highly available production clusters that can be deployed at scale using the Cluster API.

## Technical integration and security features
- **Networking Data Plane:** Calico utilizes a high-performance eBPF data plane to apply identity-aware microsegmentation consistently across VMs and containers.
- **Lifecycle Management:** Both Ubuntu Pro and Canonical Kubernetes offer up to 15 years of support, providing a significantly longer stability window than the standard 14-month upstream Kubernetes release cycle.
- **Policy Governance:** The solution implements Calico policy tiers, allowing platform administrators to set central guardrails while delegating specific policy administration to individual tenants.
- **Connectivity and Gateways:** The stack includes Cluster Mesh for multi-site connectivity, egress gateways for stable outbound IPs, and ingress gateways built on the Kubernetes Gateway API.
- **Deployment and Observability:** Clusters can be automated via Cluster API, while network visibility is provided through dynamic service/threat graphs and dynamic packet capture.

## Why it matters
This collaboration provides a standardized, long-term reference architecture for enterprises needing to manage complex, multi-tenant Kubernetes environments. It reduces the operational burden on system administrators by aligning networking security and OS maintenance with the predictable Ubuntu LTS cadence.