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CNA weekly #002

March 8, 2018February 20, 2018 by Bjoern Brundert

After some issues with sending out #001 of this newsletter, I’ll try again with some different settings on tinyletter. Sorry for yet another email tonight – I promise it’ll be the last one for today!

News:

“A Look into the Kubernetes Master Components” by @tom_schwaller: https://blogs.vmware.com/cloudnative/2018/02/20/kubernetes-master-components/
Cloud Native Computing Foundation Announces Keynotes and Full Agenda for KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe in Copenhagen

CNA weekly #001

March 8, 2018February 20, 2018 by Bjoern Brundert

Welcome to this little Cloud Native newsletter!

The world of Cloud Native Applications and Platforms is moving very fast – the goal of this newsletter is to capture some highlights from the previous week: blogposts, videos, tweets or other valuable links that I came across. Feel free to forward this newsletter to your friends and colleagues. I promise to keep it interesting and I am always open for suggestions (e.g. via Twitter @bbrundert).

Pivotal Container Service

On February 12, Pivotal Container Service 1.0 became generally available. Check out these blogposts that capture some of the highlights:
- https://content.pivotal.io/blog/secure-multitenant-kubernetes-in-minutes-pivotal-container-service-goes-ga
- https://blogs.vmware.com/cloudnative/2018/02/12/pivotal-container-service-ga/
In this blogpost, Swisscom’s Application Cloud team shares some details on their Containers-as-a-Service offering. They were part of the Pivotal Container Service early access program and were so kind to do a write-up of their experience: https://ict.swisscom.ch/2018/02/container-as-a-service-caas-part-i/

vSphere Integrated Containers

VIC 1.3.1 was released, read more about the important security enhancements and updates: https://pubs.vmware.com/Release_Notes/en/vsphere-integrated-containers/13/vsphere-integrated-containers-131-release-notes.html
Download VIC 1.3.1: https://my.vmware.com/en/web/vmware/info/slug/datacenter_cloud_infrastructure/vmware_vsphere_integrated_containers/1_3

VMware Cloud Native Applications and Platform News

Transparent Container Networking across Pivotal Cloud Foundry, Pivotal Container Service, OpenShift and Virtual Machines: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SN4eJk3C7uc – a super awesome demo by @yfauserduring TechFieldDay
OpenFaaS founder Alex Ellis is joining VMware’s growing VMware Open Source Technology Center team to continue his defining work in Functions as a Service (FaaS): https://blogs.vmware.com/opensource/2018/02/19/vmware-welcomes-alex-ellis/
Learn more about OpenFaaS here: https://www.openfaas.com/
There is a new set of Cloud Native Applications video learning resources available at : https://blogs.vmware.com/cloudnative/cloud-native-video-resources/ – check it out to learn more about containers, kubernetes, Pivotal Container Service, vSphere Integrated Containers and much more!
A brand new “Containers and Container Networking for Network Engineers” whitepaper is now available at https://communities.vmware.com/thread/581308, you can also find a lot of great information in the NSX-T Reference Design Guide that was also released this week: https://blogs.vmware.com/networkvirtualization/2018/02/introducing-vmware-nsx-t-reference-design.html/

Kubernetes / Container Ecosystem

Understanding and using the Kubernetes PodNodeSelector Admission Controller – https://embano1.github.io/post/podnodesel/ by @embano1
Running Kubernetes on VMware – a brief overview about the options http://blog.think-v.com/?p=5651
“Your Database Should Work Like a CDN”: https://www.cockroachlabs.com/blog/distributed-database-performance/ (not an andorsement of CockroachDB but an interesting thought)
“The full-time job of keeping up with Kubernetes” – I specifically like the quote “Find your favorite VAR and demand vanilla Kubernetes, in any form, that’s reasonably up-to-date and has a well-proven plan for handling upgrades. Then forget about it and focus on building on its abstractions and the things around it that actually impact your product.” – https://gravitational.com/blog/kubernetes-release-cycle/#

Running Kubernetes on VMware – a brief overview about the options

February 21, 2018February 13, 2018 by Bjoern Brundert

After I shared a brief overview about running Containers on vSphere, I’d like to go a little further this time and share the VMware intergration points with Kubernetes. As you are probably aware of, VMware has just released it’s own Kubernetes distribution called “Pivotal Container Service” which became generally available on Februrary 12, 2018. While this is VMware’s and Pivotal’s recommended and preferred way to run Kubernetes in an Enterprise environment, there are several options to either consume any other Kubernetes distribution or build Kubernetes solely from opensource. No matter what path you choose, VMware has a variety of solutions to offer.

Compute / Cloud Provider

vSphere Cloud Provider for Kubernetes
Photon OS 2.0: Container-Optimized Linux Operating System
Container Service Extension is add-on to VMware vCloud Director that helps tenants work with Kubernetes clusters
Runtime environments: VMware vSphere, vSphere Hypervisor, Workstation, Fusion

Network & Security

Overview: Network Virtualization and Pod-level Security with NSX-T
- NSX-T Reference Design Guide and Containers and Container Networking Whitepaper
NSX Container Plugin (NCP): sits between K8s API Server and NSX Manager, reacts to changes on K8s objects and triggers NSX Manager
- NSX-T Container Plug-in for Kubernetes and Cloud Foundry
- NSX-T Container Plug-in for OpenShift
NSX CNI (Container Network Interface) Plugin: Kubelet will call out to the CNI Plugin to manage the Pod network
NSX Kube-Proxy: replaces native Kube-Proxy with Open vSwitch-based load-balancing functionality

Storage

Project Hatchway: Persistent Storage for Cloud Native Applications
vSphere Storage for Kubernetes: overview page on GitHub

Monitoring

Wavefront by VMware: highly scalabe SaaS-based platform and application level monitoring (integration with K8s is done via Heapster)
VMware vRealize Operations Management Pack for Container Monitoring: platform operations level monitoring for Kubernetes, out-of-the-box integrated with VMware vRealize Operations
vRealize Log Insight: Intelligent Log Management & Analytics

Container Management

Project Harbor: An Enterprise-class Container Registry Server based on Docker Distribution, embedded in Pivotal Container Service and vSphere Integrated Containers
vRealize Automation: governance and self-service to request K8s clusters, nodes and e.g. namespaces; custom integration/blueprints required

3rd Party Documentation

Running containers on vSphere – a brief overview about the options

January 26, 2018 by Bjoern Brundert

Inspired by a tweet by Kendrick Coleman I decided to quickly summarize the current VMware and Pivotal provided options to running containers on vSphere.

vSphere Integrated Containers (VIC): running containers as VMs on vSphere
- Virtual Container Host (VCH): nearly complete Docker API support, one container per Container Host VM (“Container VM”)
- Docker Container Hosts (DCH): native Docker API support, multiple containers per Container Host VM
Pivotal Container Service (PKS): enterprise grade K8s distribution
Pivotal Application Service (PAS); formerly known as Pivotal Cloud Foundry (PCF): integrated Platform-as-a-Service offering based on Cloud Foundry
VMware Integrated OpenStack with Kubernetes (VIOK): running K8s on top of OpenStack
Photon OS: open source minimal Linux container host optimized for cloud-native applications for vSphere
Container Service Extension for vCloud Director: a vCloud Director add-on that manages the life cycle of Kubernetes clusters for tenants.

In addition to these integrated solutions, you can also build or bring your own solution and leverage projects such as:

Project Hatchway: persistent storage for Cloud Native Applications
- vSphere Storage for Docker: vSphere Docker Volume Service (VDVS) & vFile volume plugin for Docker
- vSphere Storage for Kubernetes: vSphere Cloud Provider (VCP) for Kubernetes allows Pods to use enterprise grade persistent storage
NSX: software-defined networking and security for containers
- NSX-T Container Plugin (NCP)
- NSX CNI Plugin
- NSX Kube-Proxy
Project Harbor: Enterprise-class Container Registry Server based on Docker Distribution
Project Admiral: Highly Scalable Container Management Platform
Weathervane: application-level performance benchmark designed to allow the investigation of performance tradeoffs in modern virtualized and cloud infrastructures

VMworld 2017 in Las Vegas and Barcelona – my photos

September 16, 2017 by Bjoern Brundert

After a longer-than-expected trip back from VMworld Barcelona, I just want to share some of my photos from the recent VMworld events with all of you. I have several posts planned for the next couple of weeks, specifically around VMworld, the newly announced Pivotal Container Service (joint Kubernetes offering from VMware and Pivotal in partnership with Google) and much more. Stay tuned!

Barcelona:

[Show slideshow]

Las Vegas:

[Show slideshow]

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