The vMotion product team is looking for input on how to improve vMotion. vMotion has proven to be a paradigm shift of datacenter management. Workload mobility is a must-have requirement in today’s datacenter operational model. vMotion handles the majority of workload flawlessly. H
It would be very helpful if you can provide us with some more information to make vMotion even better. Thanks!
Take the survey here
We are looking into the combination of licensed workload and hard-affinity rules (Must run on rule). If you deploy this in your environment right now, how do you deal with this during maintenance hours? Your input helps in shaping future features. (Scroll down in the survey window to access the done button to submit your response)
This year VMworld provided a broad selection of talks focusing on various forms of Kubernetes. Which is not surprising at all. Many organizations move away from buying and installing shrink-wrapped software and move towards in-house built custom applications. And what is the modern developer tool of choice? For many, it is the container. It’s expected to have 1.5 Billion containers shipped by the end of 2021.
Containers are nothing more than a new format of virtualized workload. Michael Gasch explains it very well in our session Deep Dive: The Value of Running Kubernetes on vSphere (CNA1553BU), where containers are task structs in the Linux kernel, not very different than executing an LS command. Well, a bit more than that as containers require CPU, memory, network, storage, and security.
Containers satisfy the developers’ need for speed, and they remove dependencies on underlying operating systems. When deploying massive amounts of containers, you need a container management platform, and Kubernetes is clearly the defacto standard in the industry.
Source: Cloud Native Computing Foundation
For the infrastructure team, running Kubernetes can provide a way to create an infrastructure agnostic platform. That is, it can run on any cloud. VMware is fully vested in making this happen; you can run containers natively (VIC), containers and Kubernetes in Linux VMs on vSphere. Pivotal Container Service (PKS) on-prem or in-cloud that helps customer deploy and operationalize day 1 and day 2 kubernetes solution and VMware Kubernetes Engine (VKE) (Kubernetes as a Service) for organizations who want to consume Kubernetes without owning, building or operationalizing any infrastructure.
I’ve selected a few VMworld sessions that cover these container consumption models. There are many more, and please check them out at the VMworld On-Demand Video Library.
Container and Kubernetes 101 for vSphere Admins (CNA1564BU)
A very popular session at VMworld was the 101 session for vSphere Admins. Nathan Ness and Sachin Thatte go over the basics of Container, Kubernetes and Pivotal Container Services. A very helpful primer for the rest of the listed videos. (Watch here)
Running Kubernetes on vSphere Deep Dive: The Value of Running Kubernetes on vSphere (CNA1553BU)
Michael Gasch (Resident Kubernetes Expert at VMware) and I go over the reasons why vSphere and Kubernetes are better together. We provide guidelines on how to successfully run your Kubernetes environment.
(Watch Here)
A Deep Dive on Why Storage Matters in a Cloud-Native World (HCI1813BU)
7 out of 10 applications that run in containers are stateful applications (source: Datadog), you want to provide persistent storage. Myles and Tushar talk about project Hatchway and provide a preview of the upcoming Cloud Native Storage (CNS) Control plane.
(Watch Here)
Operating and Managing Kubernetes on Day 2 with PKS (CNA1075BU)
If you are planning to run large-scale kubernetes deployments on-prem, you should consider Pivotal Container Service (PKS). PKS allows you to deploy multiple kubernetes clusters quite easily. Thomas Kraus and Merlin Glynn show how to tackle day 2 operations and review SDDC products, such as vRealize and Wavefront, that integrates with PKS.
(Watch Here)
VMware Kubernetes Engine
VMware Kubernetes Engine (VKE) offers a turn-key solution of managed Kubernetes clusters that run natively on AWS. Not in VMware Cloud on AWS, not on vSphere, pure native EC2! Plans are to run VKE at multiple cloud providers, allowing you to create environments that no-other cloud provider themselves can provide. Think about an HA cluster spanning both AWS and Azure. However, we are not that far right now, but it is interesting to take a look at what VKE is and how Smart Clusters will change the way you will operate Kubernetes.
Intro to VMware Kubernetes Engine-Managed K8s Service on Public Cloud (CNA2084BU)
Tom and Valentina go over the concepts and customer value of VKE, including a nice demo. (Watch Here)
Deep Dive: VMware Kubernetes Engine-K8s as a Service on Public Cloud (CNA3124BU)
After getting familiar with VKE, I recommend to watch the session of Tom and Alain. They dive deeper into the concept of Smart Clusters. (Watch Here)
I hope you enjoy watching these sessions, please leave a comment about sessions you think are worth watching.
During VMworld, the DRS performance team released a new tech paper covering the DRS Enhancements in vSphere 6.7. It’s a short white paper uncovering the interesting improvements made to DRS. Download it here.
Two weeks left before the biggest VMware show is happening again, and I can’t wait for it to start. The last eight years I’ve been going to both the US and European show, and both have their own charm. But there is one thing that every VMware community member should experience, and that is the US welcome reception in the solution exchange on Sunday night. Almost every attendee in one big room, the buzz is just phenomenal.
I recently joined Kit Colbert‘s team, the CTO of Cloud Platform business unit. In my new role, I work on upcoming products and influence their strategy. One project I focus on is how VMware can help customers to run Kubernetes successfully on vSphere. Please reach out to me at VMworld if you have ideas or feedback. Luckily I will be presenting a few sessions this year as well, and I hope to see you there:
VIN1249BU
vSphere Clustering Deep Dive, Part 1: vSphere HA and DRS
2018-08-27
12:30 PM
The legendary session is back, Duncan and I talking about vSphere 6.7 HA and DRS. There is so much to tell, but we are hoping to keep some time open for some questions.
CNA1553BU
Deep Dive: The Value of Running Kubernetes on vSphere
2018-08-27
3:30 PM
I’m so much looking forward to this session, together with Michael Gasch, our resident Kubernetes expert, and popular Kubecon speaker. In this session, we will go over the reasons why vSphere and Kubernetes are better together and provide you with some guidelines on how to successfully run your kubernetes environment.
VIN2256BU
Tech Preview: The Road to a Declarative Compute Control Plane
2018-08-28
12:30 PM
I tweeted about every session on this list except this one. The reason why I had to keep quiet about this session is that we are showing some NDA stuff. In this session, Maarten Wiggers and I look at the changes that are happening in the industry. Most companies develop their strategic apps in-house, impacting the role of the VI-admin. We will go over the transformation from VI-admin to Site Reliability Engineering. With new technologies and different Life Cycle Management strategies, different ways of managing applications and infrastructure are necessary. We go over the changes from an infrastructure that responds to Imperative statements to an environment that is controlled by declarative statements. Within the software-defined data center (SDDC), VMware vSphere offers two declarative control planes: one for networking and one for storage. However, there is no declarative control plane for compute yet. We will tech preview the capabilities introduced in the VMware Cloud SDDC as a path to achieve that goal.
VIN1738BU
vSphere Host Resources Deep Dive: Part 3
2018-08-29
2:00 PM
The third edition of the vSphere Host Resources Deep Dive. The vSphere platform is designed to run most workloads at near bare-metal performance. More than enough for more than 95% of the workload. But what if you need to squeeze out that last bit of performance? How can you do it and how will it impact the rest of the system? Please join Niels and me on Wednesday at 2:00 PM.