vSphere Integrated Containers provides critical enterprise container infrastructure to help IT Ops run both traditional and containerized applications side-by-side on a common platform. Supporting containers in their virtualized environments provides a number of benefits: IT teams get the security, isolation and management of VMs, while developers enjoy the speed and agility of containers - all within vSphere.
Repackage your existing apps with vSphere Integrated Containers and run them in production alongside your existing workloads
Offer your developer a ticketless environment for them to access container resources on-demand
vSphere Integrated Containers includes the following three major components that enables VMware customers to deliver a production-ready enterprise container solution to their development teams. By leveraging their existing SDDC, customers can run container-based applications alongside existing virtual machine based workloads in production without having to build out a separate, specialized container infrastructure stack.
By leveraging the existing capabilities of vSphere, IT Ops can run containerized apps alongside traditional VMs on the same infrastructure without having to build out a separate, specialized container infrastructure stack.
By running containers as VMs, IT teams can leverage vSphere’s core capabilities such as enterprise-class security, networking, storage, resource management, and compliance that are essential to running containerized apps in a production environment.
Avoid costly and time-consuming re-architecture of your infrastructure that results in silos. Scale application deployments instantly.
Developers already familiar with Docker can develop applications in containers, by using a Docker compatible interface and provision them through the self-service management portal or UI.
vSphere Integrated Containers comprises of three main components, all of which are available as open source projects on Github.
vSphere Integrated Containers Engine
Enterprise container runtime for vSphere that allows developers who are familiar with Docker to develop in containers and deploy them alongside traditional VM-based workloads on vSphere clusters. vSphere admins can manage these workloads through the vSphere Web Client in a way that is familiar.
For more information, check out https://vmware.github.io/vic/
Project Harbor
Enterprise container registry that stores and distributes container images. Harbor extends the Docker Distribution open source project by adding the functionalities usually required by an enterprise, such as security, identity and management.
For more information, check out https://vmware.github.io/harbor/
Project Admiral
Management portal that provides a UI for dev teams to provision and manage containers. Cloud administrators can manage container hosts and apply governance to their usage, including capacity quotas and approval workflows. Advanced capabilities are available when integrated with vRealize Automation.
For more information, check out https://vmware.github.io/admiral/
vSphere Integrated Containers is a vSphere feature that allows VI admins to create container hosts that are deeply integrated with vSphere. Once provisioned by the VI admin, developers are able to use the Docker CLI and API to run images in secure Container VMs. This gives developers self-service capabilities while at the same time allowing VI admins to control resource allocation. Since vSphere Integrated Containers uses native vSphere constructs, it allows you to leverage your existing infrastructure, tooling, policies and processes to manage containerized applications.
vSphere Integrated Containers is available to all vSphere 6.0 and above Enterprise Plus customers. There is no additional license subscription required to use vSphere Integrated Containers. You can download it from myvmware.com.
See the documentation to learn more about vSphere Integrated Containers, and try the Hands-on Lab.