Today at VMworld 2017 in Las Vegas, VMware, Inc. and Pivotal Software, Inc., in collaboration with Google Cloud, introduced a new product that enables enterprises and service providers to deliver production-ready Kubernetes on VMware vSphere and Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Pivotal Container Service (PKS). PKS will ship as a standalone product that can integrate with Pivotal Cloud Foundry (PCF) and VMware's software-defined data center (SDDC) infrastructure as well as having constant compatibility to Google Container Engine (GKE).
Today at VMworld 2017 in Las Vegas, VMware, Inc. and Pivotal Software, Inc., in collaboration with Google Cloud, introduced a new product that enables enterprises and service providers to deliver production-ready Kubernetes on VMware vSphere and Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Pivotal Container Service (PKS). PKS will ship as a standalone product that can integrate with Pivotal Cloud Foundry (PCF) and VMware's software-defined data center (SDDC) infrastructure as well as having constant compatibility to Google Container Engine (GKE).
PKS is a commercial release of the open source Kubo technology that is aimed at helping Global 2000 companies operationalize Kubernetes. As containers become more accepted as units of deployment, software teams will need a reliable, scalable container orchestration platform like Kubernetes. Enter PKS that intends to help operations teams deliver a hardened, maintainable container platform, while giving developers on-demand access to a production-ready environment featuring high availability, security, and multi-tenancy across private and public clouds.
Upon its initial release later this year, PKS will feature Kubernetes via BOSH, VMware NSX, and a jointly developed version of Open Services Broker API that is designed to allow easy integration of GCP services into PKS applications. According to the companies, PKS will feature cross-cloud security and network connectivity including container network interface compatible services powered by NSX. Current VMware customers will be able to use their unified SDDC infrastructure for containers and VMs as PKS will be seamlessly integrated with VMware vSphere.
One of the main benefits of PKS is its constant compatibility to GKE, which is continuously powered by the latest Kubernetes release and features a fully managed experience backed by Google SRE. This gives users the latest container-native innovations while having workloads that are portable, operationally simple, and have agility to speed business outcomes.
Other benefits include:
- Enabling persistent storage for stateful applications via the vSphere Cloud Provider, which provides access to vSphere storage powered by VMware vSAN or traditional SAN and NAS storage,
- Automation and governance for enterprises via vRealize Automation and provisioning of service provider clouds with VMware vCloud Director,
- Monitoring and troubleshooting of virtual infrastructure via VMware vRealize Operations, and Metrics monitoring of containerized applications via Wavefront by VMware.
Availability
PKS is expected to become available in fourth quarter 2017.
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