Today VMware announced the release of its new beta of the Docker volume driver for vSphere. This marks the second storage-focused initiative from VMware on containers, last year they released a vSphere Volume Driver for Flocker. VMware is also making the source code for their new driver available under open source to encourage use and contributions to the code.
Today VMware announced the release of its new beta of the Docker volume driver for vSphere. This marks the second storage-focused initiative from VMware on containers, last year they released a vSphere Volume Driver for Flocker. VMware is also making the source code for their new driver available under open source to encourage use and contributions to the code.
Many VMware vSphere customers are already using Docker to package and deploy next-gen container based applications. These next-gen apps have certain persistent storage requirements; to support these, Docker has introduced the Docker Volume Plugin framework. VMware is using that framework to enable its customers to leverage enterprise ready vSphere Storage with Docker containers. The volume driver announced today will enable vSphere customers to create and manage container data volumes on familiar vSphere Storage technologies such as VSAN, VMFS and NFS. Not only that, customers can take advantage of vSphere capabilities such as HA and DRS to use with the containers.
Key benefits and features include:
- Programmability (Infrastructure as code): API driven provisioning and policy configuration enabling Self-service. Users are able to provision storage for containers using Docker API/CLI without having to co-ordinate with IT Administrators.
- Data Mobility: vSphere Shared storage enables seamless movement of containers between various vSphere hosts within a cluster without having to move the data.
- Single HCL: This enables customers to use same vSphere Storage for VMs and Containers and allows them to run side-by-side on same vSphere infrastructure
- Integration with Docker: Create and manage container volumes using familiar Docker tools e.g. Docker CLI, Docker UCP, Docker Compose, Swarm etc.
- Security – The driver is very secure and does not require sharing vCenter credentials with Docker Hosts (VMs)
- Storage Policy Based Management – Customers can leverage Virtual SAN named policies like FaultsToTolerate (FTT), QoS, Deduplication & Caching at the granularity of individual container volumes.
- vCenter based management – Familiar management console for vSphere Admins to use, no new UI to learn. In addition, an Admin CLI on host offers greater visibility into operational aspects like capacity management, access control and defining custom storage policies.
- Frictionless deployment on vSphere 6.0 and above
Availability
The Docker volume driver for vSphere is available today. This driver requires vSphere version 6.0 or later and a Docker Host (VM) running Docker 1.9+.
Docker volume driver for vSphere source code on GitHub
Docker volume driver for vSphere
Sign up for the StorageReview newsletter
