Some nice enhancements to Docker Volume Driver for vSphere v0.7

This week I am over at our VMware HQ in Palo Alto. I caught up with the guys in our storage team who are working on our docker volume driver for vSphere to find out what enhancements they have made with version 0.7. They have added some cool new enhancements which I think you will like. First, this has been designed specifically for docker version 1.12. So the first thing you will have to do is to make sure that your docker is at this latest version. For most distros, this is quite a simple thing to do. But since…

Docker Volume Driver for vSphere using policies on VSAN (short video)

This is a short demo (< 5 minutes) which highlights how one can use storage policies to manage the creation of a docker volume when that volume is being deployed on Virtual SAN. This does not cover the installation of the components required, as these have been covered here and there is another short video covering those steps here. Also, my good buddy William Lam has great step by step instructions on how to use VSAN policies for container volumes in his blog post here. This video just takes a very quick look at how the docker volume driver for…

Nginx running on VIC (short video)

I put together this short vSphere Integrated Containers v0.6.0 video (~4 minutes) showing how you can deploy a container running a web server, in this case Nginx, and have its ports mapped back to the Container Host (VCH), allowing you to access the web server from the VCH. This is to coincide with a blog that I posted earlier on the same topic. Check that out for additional details. If you’d like to try out VIC v0.6.0, you can get it on github, or download the binaries from bintray. You can also get the latest documentation here. If you want…

Nice simple demo – Nginx running on VIC

It’s been a number of weeks since I last looked at vSphere Integrated Containers. When I last looked at v0.4.0, one of the issues had been with port mapping not working. This was a bit of a drag, as in the case of web servers running in containers, you’d definitely want this to function. One of the most common container demos is to show Nginx web server running in a container, and port mapping back to the container host, so that you could point to the IP of the container host, and connect to the web server. I recently got…

Using vSphere docker volume driver to run Project Harbor on VSAN

Project Harbor is another VMware initiative in the Cloud Native Apps space. In a nutshell, it allows you to store and distributes Docker images locally from within your own infrastructure. While Project Harbor provides security, identity and management of images, it also offers better performance by having the registry closer to the build and run environment for image transfers. Harbor also supports multiple deployments so that you can have images replicated between them for high availability. You can get more information (including the necessary components) about Project Harbor on github. In this post, we will deploy Project Harbor in Photon…

Upcoming #vBrownBag EMEA Appearance – July 26th at 7pm BST

As my take-3 tenure in the VMware Cloud Native Apps (CNA) team draws to a close, the guys over at #vBrownBag have kindly invited me to come on their show and talk about the various VMware project and initiatives that I have been lucky enough to be involved with. All going well, I hope to be able to demonstrate the Docker Volume Driver for vSphere, some overview of Photon Controller CLI and Photon Platform with Docker Swarm, and maybe Kubernetes as well as some vSphere Integrated Containers (VIC). If you are interested, you can register here. I’d be delighted if…

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…