Companies to Help Enterprises Run and Manage Container-Based Applications on a Common Platform in Private, Public and Hybrid Clouds SAN FRANCISCO, CA--(Marketwired - Aug 25, 2014) - Today at VMworld 2014, VMware, Inc. (NYSE: VMW) announced joint initiatives with Docker, Google and Pivotal to help enterprises run and manage container-based applications on a common platform at scale in private, public and hybrid clouds. The collaboration will enable enterprises to leverage their existing VMware infrastructure as a unified, scalable and secure platform for running and managing enterprise applications whether in a container or a virtual machine or a container within a virtual machine in a platform as a service. Better Together: Containers and Virtual Machines
In cooperation with Docker, Google, and Pivotal, VMware will enable enterprises to run and manage their containerized applications on their VMware infrastructure or on VMware vCloud Air hybrid service, while minimizing complexity by reducing the need to build out new and separate infrastructure silos for their container initiatives. By offering a common platform, developers will gain the speed and agility they need while providing IT teams with the control they require. Additionally, VMware will bring to bear its compute, management, storage, networking and security capabilities to container environments. By running containers within virtual machines on- or off-premises, enterprises will benefit from high performance, security isolation, dynamic virtual networking, software-defined storage and the broad ecosystem of third-party products built for virtual machines.
Docker, Google and Pivotal are committing to multiple areas of collaboration with VMware including:
Docker and VMware will collaborate on enabling Docker Engine on VMware workflows from build to deploy for VMware vSphere to VMware vCloud Air;
Docker and VMware will collaborate on Docker-related open source projects libswarm, libcontainer and libchan;
Docker and VMware will jointly work on furthering areas of interoperability between their products including Docker Hub with VMware vCloud Air, VMware vCenter Server and VMware vCloud Automation Center ;
VMware has joined the Kubernetes community and will make Kubernetes patterns, APIs and tools available to enterprises;
Google and VMware will work together to bring the pod based networking model of Open vSwitch to enable multi-cloud integration of Kubernetes;
VMware has contributed code to bring Kubernetes to VMware vSphere to make it easy for enterprises get started with container management; and,
VMware, Pivotal and Docker will collaborate on enhancing the Docker libcontainer project with capabilities from Warden, a Linux Container technology originally developed at VMware for Cloud Foundry.
In recent years, Linux containers have emerged to offer an operating system-level virtualization method for running multiple isolated services on a single host. VMware and its partners are extending container technologies across the enterprise through a number of efforts:
Developers, enterprises, service providers, and ISVs are exploring Docker for application delivery because it cleanly separates applications from infrastructure, resulting in faster application lifecycles and the write once, run anywhere ability to move applications between laptops/workstations, data centers and clouds.
Googles open source container manager Kubernetes deploys and manages containers into a fleet of servers. It embodies management practices Google learned over a decade of running their own internet scale applications in containers. Kubernetes makes it easy to deploy, scale, monitor and update container packaged services.
Pivotal CF, based on the leading commercial distribution of the Cloud Foundry open source software project, uses a containers-in-VMs model for maximum speed and efficiency required for a modern development and operations platform. Cloud Foundry has used containers-in-VMs since the projects founding in 2011 in large-scale multi-tenant clouds.
With more than 500,000 customers, VMware brings the openness, security, and the ability to manage containerized applications at scale that enterprise customers require to operate a common platform for all applications in private, public, and hybrid clouds.
Supporting Quotes
With Docker, Google and Pivotal, we will simplify the way enterprises develop, run and manage all application types on a common platform at scale, said Ben Fathi, chief technology officer, VMware. In this way, Docker containers and virtual machines will provide an IT environment without compromise. Together, we will optimize containers for the enterprise -- enabling that they run effectively in software-defined data center environments.
Organizations are rapidly adopting the Docker platform because it allows them to ship apps faster, whether to bare metal, virtualized data center, or public cloud infrastructures, said Ben Golub, chief executive officer, Docker. For enterprises seeking to efficiently build, ship, and run enterprise apps, Docker and VMware can deliver the best of both worlds for developers and IT/operations teams. Joint customers will benefit from enabling IT to run and operationalize their Docker environments on their current virtual infrastructure and take advantage of existing management, compliance, networking and security processes and tools.
Kubernetes has gathered broad support as a way to bring Google-style dynamic container management to a multi-cloud world. Today we are very pleased to welcome VMware to the community. Not only will deep integration with the VMware product line bring the benefits of Kubernetes to enterprise customers, but their commitment to invest in the core open source platform will benefit users running containers, said Joerg Heilig, VP Engineering, Go
