Container Networks in VIC 0.4.0

This is part of a series of articles describing how to use the new features of vSphere Integrated Containers (VIC) v0.4.0. In previous posts, we have looked at deploying your first VCH (Virtual Container Hosts) and container using the docker API. I also showed you how to create some volumes to provide consistent storage for containers. In this post, we shall take a closer look at networking, and what commands are available to do container networking. I will also highlight some areas where there is still work to be done. Also, please note that VIC is still not production ready.…

Getting started with vSphere Integrated Containers (short video)

I decided to put together a very short video on VIC – vSphere Integrated Containers v0.4.0. In the video, I show you how to create your very first VCH (Virtual Container Host) and then I show you how you can create a very simple container using a docker API endpoint. I also show you how this is reflected in vSphere. Of course, VIC v0.4.0 is still a tech preview, and is not ready for production. Also note that a number of things may change before the VIC becomes generally available (GA). However, hopefully this is of interest to those of…

Container Volumes in VIC v0.4.0

I mentioned yesterday that VMware made vSphere Integrated Containers (VIC) v0.4.0 available. Included in this version is support for container volumes. Now, as mentioned yesterday, VIC is still a work in progress, and not everything has yet been implemented. In this post I want to step you through some of the enhancements that we have made around docker volume support in VIC. This will hopefully provide you with enough information so that you can try this out for yourself.

Getting Started with vSphere Integrated Containers v0.4.0

I’ve been working very closely with our vSphere Integrated Container (VIC) team here at VMware recently, and am delighted to say that v0.4.0 is now available for download from GitHub. Of course, this is still not supported in production, and is still in tech preview. However for those of you interested, it gives you an opportunity to try it out and see the significant progress made by the team over the last couple of months. You can download it from bintray. This version of VIC is bringing us closer and closer to the original functionality of “Project Bonneville” for running…

Deploy Docker Swarm using docker-machine with Consul on Photon Controller

In this post I will now show you the steps involved in creating a Docker Swarm configuration using docker-machine with Photon Controller driver plugin. In previous posts, I showed how you can setup Photon OS to deploy Photon Controller and I also showed you how to build docker-machine for Photon Controller. Note that there are a lot of ways to deploy Swarm. Since I was given a demonstration on doing this using “Consul” for cluster membership and discovery, that is the mechanism that I am going to use here. Now, a couple of weeks back, we looked at deploying Docker…

Compare and Contrast: Photon Controller vs VIC (vSphere Integrated Containers)

As many regular reader will be aware, I’ve been spending a lot of time recently on VMware’s Cloud Native App solutions. This is due to an internal program available to VMware employees called a Take-3. A Take-3 is where employees can take 3 months out of their current role and try a new challenge in another part of the company. Once we launched VSAN 6.2 earlier this year, I thought this would be an opportune time to try something different. Thanks to the support from the management teams in both my Storage and Availability BU (SABU) and the Cloud Native…

docker-machine driver plugin for Photon Controller

In previous posts we have looked at using a “cluster”  for deploying docker swarm on top of photon controller. Of course, deploying docker swarm via the cluster management construct may not be what some customers wish to do, so now we have full support for “docker-machine” on photon controller as well. This will allow you to create your own docker swarm clusters using instructions provided by Docker. In this post, we will look at getting you started with building the docker-machine driver plugin, setting up Photon Controller, and then the setup needed to allow the deploying of docker-machine on Photon…