Kit Colbert, CTO of the cloud platform business unit told attendees at VMworld 2016 that that enhancements to vSphere Integrated Containers now enables users to launch containers inside vSphere virtual machines.
VMware was one of the leading companies to embrace containers when Docker first popularized the technology a few years ago. At VMworld 2015, the company first announced its vSphere Integrated Containers. And at this year’s edition, the company showed how they were developing vSphere Integrated Containers – their enterprise container infrastructure.
vSphere Integrated Containers are currently a beta product and they are also open source on GitHub and Docker compatible. Additionally, VMware added a new Container Registry, a Container Management Portal as well as vRealize Operations compatibility.
The company added a couple of open source tools to go with vSphere Integrated Containers. Harbor is a registry specifically for the vSphere container environment. And Admiral is a management portal designed for teams to work together on container-based applications.
When trying to improve vSphere Integrated Containers, Colbert said they spoke to their customers to find out what they really needed.
At the top of VMware’s customer’s demands was a place to store containers securely, Colbert said. That’s the premise behind the Harbor container registry, which is based on the open-source Docker Distribution project, which in turn is the new version of the Docker registry, or Docker Hub, where Docker images are stored and deployed.
Another big demand from VMware customers was the need for a separate management portal for containers, which is where Admiral comes in.
"vSphere administrators don't want to give application and development teams access into vSphere," Colbert said. "So they need a place for the app teams to go and manage containers, which is exactly what we're providing with vSphere integrated containers now."
Colbert showed how VMware’s other tools also tie into vSphere Integrated Containers such as NSX and vRealize.
VMware is making vSphere Integrated Containers available as open source software to provide access to the code for customers, partners, and the community at large. This gives users visibility into updates, direct access to file issues, the ability to contribute code back to help VMware evolve the code. VMware is also offering a beta program for customers and partners alike. VMware vSphere Integrated Containers will also be supported by VMware Cloud Foundation enabling customers to run containers on-premises or in the cloud.
VMware is also announcing the launch of a partner program that will allow third-party solutions including container registries and management consoles to be validated with VMware vSphere Integrated Containers to offer customers greater choice. This partner program is aimed at VMware and its partners helping customers accelerate their adoption of cloud-native applications.