Getting started with VCF Part 10 – Kubernetes deployment

With Enterprise PKS deployed in a Workload Domain in VMware Cloud Foundation, we now come to the point where we can begin to create Kubernetes clusters and deploy some containerized applications. We need access to some tooling to achieve this. One option is to SSH onto the Operations Manager appliance, as it has many of the necessary tools already installed. However, I prefer to do this in my own management/jump desktop rather than use components that are part of the actual product. In this post, I will show you the steps to get setup with the required tool-set, deploy your…

Getting started with VCF Part 9 – PKS deployment

We are nearing the end of our journey with Getting Started with VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF). In this post, we will go through the deployment of Enterprise PKS v1.5 on a Workload Domain created in VCF v3.9. We’ve been through a number of steps to get to this point, all of which can be found here. Now we have some of the major prerequisites in place, notably NSX-T Edge networking and PKS Certificates, so we can proceed with the Enterprise PKS deployment. However, there are still a few additional prerequisites needed before we can start. Let’s review those first of…

Tanzu Mission Control – VMworld 2019 Updates

After spending some time watching, digesting and then writing about Project Pacific Deep Dive updates from VMworld 2019, the next item on my to-do list was to get up to speed on VMware Tanzu, or to be more specific, Tanzu Mission Control. The reason I am being more specific is that VMware Tanzu is a broad portfolio of products and features which can be categorized into 3 distinct areas. These areas are Build, Run and Manage. The Build category related to initiatives taking place in the developer space, notably with Bitnami and Pivotal, the former having recently been acquired by…

Moving a Stateful App from VCP to CSI based Kubernetes cluster using Velero

Since the release of the vSphere CSI driver in vSphere 6.7U3, I have had a number of requests about how we plan to migrate applications between Kubernetes clusters that are using the original in-tree vSphere Cloud Provider (VCP) and Kubernetes clusters that are built with the new vSphere CSI driver. All I can say at this point in time is that we are looking at ways to seamlessly achieve this at some point in the future, and that the Kubernetes community has a migration design in the works to move from in-tree providers to the new CSI driver as well.…

See you at VMworld 2019 (Barcelona)

Hola! It is only a month or so to go until VMworld 2019 arrives back in Europe. Yet again, we are back in Barcelona for what promises to be a great event. I missed VMworld in San Francisco this year – too many things happening on the home front. So I’m really looking forward to getting down to Spain in early November and meeting up with everyone again. I am involved in 2 sessions in Barcelona. One of the sessions is the HCIBU Spotlight Session, HCI3551KE. I am delivering this with our SVP and GM of the Hyper-converged Infrastructure Business…

Two short video demos – CNS and Velero 1.1

I put together a few short (7 – 8 minute) videos to show off some new functionality that we’ve recently added in vSphere 6.7U3, as well as our new Velero v1.1 in action. The first video is on CNS, the VMware Cloud Native Storage feature which we included in vSphere 6.7U3. This demonstration involves the deployment of a Cassandra database on Kubernetes, which incidentally uses the new CSI (Container Storage Interface) driver for persistent volumes. Once the application is deployed, we can see the characteristics of the volumes bubbled up in vSphere. We also see how using CNS, we can…

Introducing vSphere Cloud Native Storage (CNS)

I’m delighted to be able to share with you that, coinciding with the release of vSphere 6.7 U3, VMware have also announced Cloud Native Storage (CNS). CNS builds on the legacy of the earlier vSphere Cloud Provider (VCP) for Kubernetes, and along with a new release of the Container Storage Interface (CSI) for vSphere and Cloud Provider Interface (CPI) for vSphere, CNS aims to improve container volume management and provide deep insight into how container applications running on top of vSphere infrastructure are consuming the underlying vSphere Storage. Now, there may be a lot of unfamiliar terminology in that opening…