vSphere with Kubernetes

VMware new product announcements: vSphere with Kubernetes (Project Pacific) & Tanzu App Portfolio

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From my experience Kubernetes is complex and not just from an architecture perspective in getting clusters deployed and managed, but also for day 2.

From the onset you need to decide if you want to create separate clusters or make use of namespaces. If you choose namespaces then you need to think about Pod Security Policies and Network Policies to isolate the namespaces properly and the list goes on and on.

Kubernetes provides a platform to seamlessly run containers on your laptop, across on-premise data centers and on public cloud providers.  But to create an enterprise ready environment you need to tap into different OSS solutions, adding to the complexity, for IAM, Config, Policies, backup/recovery, ingress etc. 

VMware is looking to solve these day-1 and day-2 problems with their new product launches.  To better understand these new products and how they will be used, let’s break down K8s into different areas:

  • Provisioning K8s clusters

    • Tanzu Kubernetes Grid can create K8s clusters in different infrastructures like AWS, Azure, GCP, Edge or VMC on AWS.
    • Tanzu Kubernetes Grid is also embedded in vSphere so VI admins can deploy K8s clusters from vCenter Server natively on ESXi hosts!
      • This requires VCF 4

  • Running K8s clusters

    • This consists of vSphere with Kubernetes (aka Project Pacific), which transforms vSphere into a Kubernetes native platform.

  • Managing K8s clusters.

  • Provisioning and managing/monitoring containers

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VMware announces Cloud Infrastructure for the Modern Applications – It’s a game changer!

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Every year people anxiously wait for that shiny new phone, tablet, laptop or car and in most cases they end up being disappointed with a new expensive product that are not visually pleasing or provides very few advantages over the one they already have. (Pixel 4 wink wink)

Well every year some of us get just as excited about software releases, and in most cases we experience the same ups and downs with new releases.  But lately VMware with all their amazing strategic acquisitions, has been hitting it out of the park, and this year is no different and in my opinion a game changer with VMware expanding their portfolio to accelerate their strategy for any cloud, any app, any device as well as making Kubernetes available for enterprise adoption in vSphere, Public clouds an edge locations.

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The IT industry is changing at a fast pace and so has the definition of an application.  Apps used to be some monolith that consisted of a VM for the app and maybe another VM for the database and VMware provides a mature platform for these need, however now we are starting to see distributed systems where parts your application might be running in a VM, other parts running in containers that leverage Kubernetes as its control plane, and even consuming capabilities from other micro services like databases and serverless functions.

Challenges for modern app

These modern applications create challenges for Developers, Line-of-business leaders, as well as creates complexities for the VI admin around provisioning, logging, monitoring, troubleshooting, backup/restore, networking and security. Not just on-prem, but in the cloud as well.  VMware is looking to provide value across 3 different pillars.

vSphere 7 - Essential services for the modern hybrid cloud
These will be delivered through vSphere 7 capabilities as well as what VMware is referring to as “VMware with Kubernetes”.

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Let’s first do a deep dive into the non-Kubernetes side and of course where everything always starts, our beloved vSphere:

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The primary focus in vSphere 7 is all about simplified Lifecycle Management, enhancing all the intrinsic security capabilities and the application accelerations deliveries capabilities.  The capabilities and enhances that we will be discussing will be available with Enterprise Plus.

key capabilities vsphere 7.png

Since we have so much to cover, I have broken up the detailed review of each products new features and enhancements into different blog posts:

vSphere 7: What’s new

vSAN 7: What’s new

vRealize Management 8.1 (vROPS, vRLI, vRA): What’s new

VMware Cloud Foundation 4: What’s new

The announcements above are great, but the star of the show is VMware’s entry into the container world with worthy products that will help customers navigate with ease around the complexities of Kubernetes. You can read about it in more detail on my blog post below.

VMware new product announcements: vSphere with Kubernetes (Project Pacific) & Tanzu App Portfolio

 

(All images on this page courtesy VMware)