VMware is undertaking the biggest innovation to its vSphere product line in the past 10 years through what it has called ‘Project Pacific,’ eventually transforming vSphere into a Kubernetes native platform.
During a pre-briefing with press at VMworld 2019, VMware vice president and CTO of global field and industry, Chris Wolf, said it was the biggest innovation to the vSphere product line in the last 10 years.
“It’s important to us and the industry. This is giving you native Kubernetes on vSphere,” Wolf said.
“Native Kubernetes using vSphere constructs, allowing our vSphere administrators to be able to manage Kubernetes environments with the tools and processes they already have in place. That’s a really big deal, and this is where we see DevOps evolving to.”
More specifically, embedding Kubernetes into the control plane of vSphere will transform the platform, enabling it to converge containers and VMs onto a single platform, VMware said.
Project Pacific will also add a container runtime into the hypervisor. New ESXi native pods will combine the best properties of Kubernetes pods and VMs to help deliver a more secure and high-performance runtime for mission-critical workloads.
“This is a continuation of our PKS strategy. We already have significant value with PKS today, but this is where we’re going to take it and provide more value for our customers going forward,” he said.
This was further anchored by the launch of VMware Tanzu that will provide a range of products and services to help enterprises build modern applications on Kubernetes, run it consistently across environments, and manage all their Kubernetes clusters from a single control point.
Wolf said it will be supporting all native cloud environments as well as VMware.
“When you look at other public cloud providers, there are other providers that have Kubernetes too, but when you look at their offerings, they typically comprised of supporting their own native cloud environment and VMware.
“We’re supporting VMware, and all native cloud environments as well. Anywhere you want to run Kubernetes today, we’re going to have you covered,” Wolf said.
“When you think about running applications in different places, the app itself is the easy part, it’s this huge long tail of operations and operation consideration that adds to the complexity - how do I backup? Do change management? SLA enforcement? App security? Compliance? All these things still have to be determined.
“When you can have a consistent operational plane that doesn’t just allow you to run an application anywhere, but also operate that application as well, without the additional modification or certification, there’s a lot of business value in that and a significant amount of reduced costs in operating that model too.”
Additionally, it is also launching Tanzu Mission Control, which is a single point of control where customers can manage all their Kubernetes clusters regardless of where they run, including assessment of cluster and component health.
Throw in the recent acquisition of Pivotal, VMware believes it is in form to deliver the most comprehensive enterprise-grade, Kubernetes-based portfolio for modern application, further tapping into their aim towards being the leading enabler of Kubernetes and native cloud.
“We’re positioned to help customers succeed along each step of their journey -- building their applications with the addition of Pivotal’s developer platform, tools and services; running their applications with the groundbreaking Project Pacific which will transform vSphere into a Kubernetes native platform; and managing their growing Kubernetes footprint across environments from a single control point with VMware Tanzu Mission Control,” VMware COO products and cloud services, Raghu Raghuram, added.
Capabilities will span building modern applications using modern software supply chain including Pivotal and Bitnami, which offers the largest catalogue of pre-built, scanned, tested, and continuously maintained application content for Kubernetes clusters, VMware said.
Additionally, VMware introduced Project Galleon -- a beta offering that will enable enterprise IT to deliver customised, up-to-date application stacks and formats to their end developers, that are multi-cloud ready and has also expanded its ISV ecosystem to offer value-add services through Kubernetes and build applications on Kubernetes available via the Bitnami community catalogue.
Julia Talevski attended VMworld 2019 in San Francisco as a guest of VMware.