Can Storage Policies be used with VIC?

The answer is an emphatic yes. One can absolutely use storage policies with vSphere Integrated Containers (VIC). However, there is currently no way to specify a policy at the docker CLI when creating a container (at this time). Therefore one would have to deploy the VCH, then deploy the container, and then finally modify the storage policy as appropriate. My understanding is that consideration is being given to a way to do this at deployment time, but at the present, it involves a number of steps. Let’s discuss them in turn.

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…

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…

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…

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…