Finding VMDK path from PV VolumeHandle

I’ve been looking at ways in which we could query the mappings of objects between the Kubernetes layer and the vSphere layer. One thing that I really wanted to figure out is if I have the VolumeHandle from the Persistent Volume in Kubernetes, could I easily find the datastore and path using PowerCLI. It looks like I can. Let’s begin with a look at the Persistent Volume or PV  for short. Note that this is a Kubernetes cluster that is using the new vSphere CSI driver. 

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.…

Recording of my VMUG France presentation now available

Last week I had the pleasure of presenting at the French VMware User Group (VMUG) meeting in Paris. The local VMUG team did an awesome job with respect to the logistics, and even had someone on-site to record all of the sessions. The team just sent me the recording of my presentation, which I am delighted to be able to share with you. If you’re interested in learning more about vSAN 6.7U3, Kubernetes and Cloud Native Storage, this recording should help. And don’t worry – only the first few sentences are in my very terrible French 🙂 Encore merci équipe…

A first look at Octant – Visualizing your K8s clusters

In my lab, I run a number of different flavors of Kubernetes. Some of them I deploy via kubeadm. Others I have provisioned by VMware PKS. Some of these can access the outside world, while others are secured. Sometimes it is difficult to figure out the relationship between various K8s objects – which services, endpoints,  PVs and PVCs are used by different Pods or StatefulSets. In the past I have used the K8s dashboard, but more often than not, I have to start kube proxy and then run some sort of tunnel (via PuTTY or similar) in order to be…

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…

Announcing VMware Tanzu and Project Pacific

Today at VMworld 2019, VMware announced the Tanzu portfolio. Essentially, Tanzu covers a suite of up and coming products and features which will allow our customers to Build, Run and Manage modern applications on Kubernetes, on vSphere. I’m pretty sure that this will not come as a major surprise, considering some of the acquisitions and intentions that VMware has announced recently. For example, we have already had the Heptio acquisition at the end of last year, then the Bitnami acquisition in May of this year, and more recently, we’ve seen the intent to acquire both Carbon Black and Pivotal. Heptio,…

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…