The enterprise Harbor distribution, built and maintained by the project's maintainers and contributors. A hardened, production-grade registry with enterprise features beyond the community edition.
Teams running Harbor at scale encounter needs that go beyond what the community edition provides.
Managing upgrades and patches across multiple clusters requires streamlined lifecycle management with tested rollout procedures.
Enterprise environments need container images built on supported, low attack surface base layers with frequent security patches.
Scaling organizations require SAML 2.0, group-to-project mapping, audit log export, and org-level tenancy beyond basic OIDC and LDAP.
Production workloads benefit from defined SLAs, engineering-level support, and the ability to escalate issues directly to the people who wrote the code.
The Distribution
Upstream feature parity with frequent updates and patches. Low attack surface images that do not rely on unsupported base layers. Modified for reliable operations and scale, with enhancements improving usability and stability. Includes features not yet upstream and enterprise capabilities outside the scope of the community edition.
The Team
8gears Container Registry is developed and operated by Harbor's own maintainers and CNCF contributors. When you open a support ticket, it goes to the engineers who wrote the code. Not a third-party wrapper, not a consulting firm reselling open source.
| Capability | Upstream Harbor | 8gears Container Registry |
|---|---|---|
| Security & Identity | ||
| Enterprise SSO / IdP | OIDC, LDAP | OIDC, LDAP, SAML 2.0, group sync |
| Workload Identity Federation | — | ✓ |
| Multi-tenant project isolation | Basic RBAC per project | Org-level tenancy, quotas, policies |
| Low attack surface base images | Community images | ✓ |
| Operations & Scale | ||
| Automated backup & DR | Manual | Built-in, scheduled, tested |
| Upgrade & patch management | DIY | Managed rolling upgrades |
| Multi-region replication & HA | Manual setup | Turn-key geo-replication |
| Large registry cluster support | — | ✓ |
| Observability & Compliance | ||
| Audit log export | Local logs only | Kafka, SQS, SNS, Pub/Sub, webhooks |
| Compliance reporting | — | Audit logs, exports, dashboards |
| Advanced vulnerability management | Basic scanning | SBOM, export, enterprise dashboards |
| Support & Lifecycle | ||
| Long-term support | Latest release only | LTS with backported fixes |
| Vendor support & SLA | Community forums | Dedicated support with SLA |
| Professional services | — | ✓ |
Whether you manage infrastructure, own security, or make technology decisions.
For Platform Teams
Centralize all images with replication and proxying. Automate with Terraform, Pulumi, REST API, and Kubernetes CRDs. Control storage with garbage collection, quotas, and retention policies.
Learn moreFor Security Leaders
Organization-wide vulnerability overview and SBOM from a single pane of glass. Audit trails shipped to enterprise systems. Image policies to enforce what runs in production.
Learn moreFor Decision Makers
Vendor-backed with defined SLAs and roadmap influence. Built on a CNCF-graduated open-source core with no lock-in. Proven at enterprises and government agencies.
Learn moreRun it on our infrastructure, on your cloud, or on your own metal.
On 8gears infrastructure
AWS Marketplace self-service
Your account, we operate it
Custom agreement
Run it yourself
Annual subscription
Every delivery option includes access to the engineers who build Harbor.
Level 3 Support Package
Engineering support availability Monday to Friday, 9-17 CET. Remote assistance through email, chat, and video conferencing. Problem replication in a mirrored lab setup, diagnostic review, code debugging, and patch or hotfix development. We maintain a code fork until the fix lands in the product mainline.
Business Continuity Support
Proactive support with pre-release compatibility checks against your setup and configuration. Provider recommendations and workarounds. Security alerts for critical vulnerabilities before public release. We represent and defend your interests and requirements inside the Harbor Community and the CNCF.
Three focus areas shaping the next generation of 8gears Container Registry.
Focus Area
Cloud-native deployments on AWS and Azure with workload identity federation. Multi-regional high availability across regions and providers. Day-2 Harbor operation via Kubernetes CRDs for reduced operational overhead.
Focus Area
Native support for Maven, NPM, PyPI, and Cargo alongside containers. S3 and SFTP archival replication for long-term backup. Vulnerability image patching to apply fixes without full rebuilds. Smart retention policies.
Focus Area
Advanced auth providers with user-to-project mapping based on GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket, and OpenShift group membership. Vulnerability dashboard. Enterprise usage management with extended project and quota controls.
Ready to Start
Start with a free trial of the managed service, or talk to our team about BYOC and self-hosted deployments with LTS support.