Although Kubernetes has been around for quite some time, the open-source container orchestration platform has recently gained traction with public announcements of support by big vendors like Google Cloud and VMware. Continuous integration, continuous delivery (CI/CD) software development continues to be what’s driving the greater awareness. 

As enterprises consider moving more workloads to the cloud, it’s a great time to consider approaches that include containerization orchestrated by Kubernetes instead of just lifting and shifting traditional VMs that have been architected to run on premises in a data center. Kubernetes provides more agility and control of modular computing containers running microservices that can scale with demand. 

Here’s a quick summary of how Kubernetes is deployed and managed.

Deploying a Kubernetes Cluster

The first step in getting started with Kubernetes is to deploy at least one controller node and typically two or more worker nodes as virtual machines running Kubernetes. This set of nodes as a cluster is where all the configuration and containerization will be deployed and run. The cluster makes up the capacity of compute power for containers to run. 

Major public cloud providers provide managed Kubernetes clusters as a service. There’s Google Kubernetes Service (GKE), Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS), and Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS). In addition, other vendors provide native Kubernetes cluster configurations and services. Once the clusters are set up and are running, you can manage the orchestration and configuration of containerization, typically Docker as the container service. 

Kubernetes Pods and Nodes

The nodes in a Kubernetes cluster act as workers for the most part with a controller (master node) providing the instructions for each node. Each node will have pods that can dynamically change based on the controller management.They can scale up or down and as well as get started and stopped. As pods are scheduled to start and stop on the cluster worker nodes they run the containers specified to run at any given time or current state of the Kubernetes cluster. One or more containers can run on a pod and containers are where applications and services run at scale in the Kubernetes environment. 

Managing a Kubernetes Cluster

Kubernetes clusters are managed using a Yet Another Markup Language (YAML) file. These files are simple text files that can be updated with conditions for the state of any Kubernetes cluster and managed in a central repository outside of the Kubernetes environment. For example, DevOps engineers can have a repository of YAML files in a Github account and several team members can be working any aspect of the Kubernetes environment to maintain and run containers in the target Kubernetes cluster environment. The files can be retrieved and executed from a command line or any Kubernetes management platform. 

CloudBolt and Kubernetes

CloudBolt supports Kubernetes orchestration for enterprises in the following ways:

• Create a Kubernetes cluster on Google Cloud Platform
• Deploy a Kubernetes cluster to your virtualization environment
• Connect to any Kubernetes cluster and orchestrate containerization

See also: Orchestrating Docker Containerization with Kubernetes

See how CloudBolt can help you. Request a demo today!

CloudBolt sponsored and attended VMworld 2019 in San Francisco (with 12 CloudBolters in attendance!) and it was an energy-packed event. I’ll summarize some of the news and talk from the conference here.

VMWare’s main announcements

Last week, VMware announced the release of:

• Tanzu – their Kubernetes orchestrator, essentially an answer to Google’s Anthos.
• Project Pacific – the effort to embed a container runtime into vSphere and provide visibility into both containers and VMs from within the vSphere UI.
• Updates to VMware Cloud on Amazon Web Services (AKA VMC on AWS) – including accelerated GPU Services and a new study showing cost savings in moving to VMC on AWS.

Analysis of VMware’s Direction 

Shift of focus from IT to developers

VMware has traditionally focused on selling products and services to IT departments, but their messaging and product direction are steering toward selling to developers. This is likely in response to VMware’s observation that the locus of decision-making and the budget for technology are shifting toward development teams over time. 

Embracing of containers

With both Project Pacific and Tanzu, it’s clear that VMware is now betting on containers and does not want to miss that train. These two projects will embed a container runtime in vSphere and provide a Kubernetes cluster management tool (playing in the same space as Google’s Anthos).

Emphasis on VMC on AWS

VMC on AWS is a key part of the hybrid cloud story that VMware is delivering. The idea is to keep running workloads on VMware ESXi, and using vCenter to manage them, but the servers run in data centers owned by AWS instead of customer-owned and operated data centers. This is appealing as it allows large organizations to swap their capex spend out for opex, and to do it without making major changes to applications to run using modern public cloud services and/or containers. The possibility remains that organizations could move applications off VMC on AWS to just AWS or a different cloud, so it will be interesting to see how VMware handles that long-term.

vRA 8 Announced

VMware officially announced vRealize Automation 8, the rewrite of their Cloud Management Platform. We talked with a lot of vRA 7.x customers who are wondering what the path forward looks like for them. vRA 8.0 will have some good new features (like more agnostic public cloud support, more flexible blueprints than vRA 7, and potentially enhanced extensibility), but that it will have a subset of the features of vRA 7. It remains to be seen when upgrades from vRA 7 to 8 will be supported, or how difficult they will be when that day comes. It’s also unclear whether old-style extensions will be supported.

What this Means for CloudBolt

Since 2011, CloudBolt has been focusing on meeting the needs of both:

1. Empowering developers with a simple self-service way to obtain the resources they need to do their job AND
2. Turning the central IT team into superheroes, giving them unmatched visibility and the ability to orchestrate and automate everything

At CloudBolt, we are passionate about the themes VMware brought up. Here’s how CloudBolt stacks up in these themes:

Summarizing, CloudBolt has been focused on the themes that matter most to IT and developers and the product has matured over many years of releases and management of production environments for global 2000 companies.

What’s Next

We look forward to heading back to VMworld in 2020, and in the meantime you can find us at upcoming VMware User Group (VMUG) gatherings in Boston (9/25), Atlanta (10/2) and Phoenix (10/30) this fall. Stop by to chat with us!

Want to see how CloudBolt stacks up with vRA? Download our datasheet today.

Welcome to this week’s edition of CloudBolt’s Weekly CloudNews!

Last week, our CEO Brian Kelly posted this column in PaymentsSource on how operational holes can cause breaches more than security glitches, and in particular highlighted the recent breach at CapitalOne.

Reminder: Carahsoft will be hosting a webinar featuring CloudBolt and AWS on Thursday, Sept. 5 at 2 p.m. EST. The topic will be on orchestrating AWS with CloudBolt. If you’re among the first 50 to sign up and attend, you’ll receive 100 free AWS credits. Sign up here.

With that, onto this week’s news:

Many throats to choke: For better or worse, multiple clouds are here to stay

Paul Gillin, SiliconAngle, Aug. 25, 2019

“In information technology circles, it’s called “one throat to choke.”

“It’s a metaphor for chief information officers’ preference for concentrating most of their business with a single strategic supplier in each category of application and infrastructure. The approach has a lot of appeal to risk-averse IT organizations, including fewer points of failure, better customer service, bigger discounts and clearer strategic direction.”

What Multicloud Really Costs

David Linthicum, InfoWorld, Aug. 30, 2019

“Multicloud is becoming the de facto standard. Indeed, a solid 84 percent of the respondents in the RightScale report use more than four cloud providers, including both the public and private clouds. (Note, RightScale is now part of Flexera.) However, not only are companies shifting to multicloud, but to more than one public cloud as well. That means using Google, Microsoft, and AWS—two or three providers, typically, and sometimes more.”

Why Red Hat sees Knative as the answer to Kubernetes orchestration

James Sanders, TechRepublic, Sept. 5, 2019

“Containers are where the momentum is, in enterprise computing. Even VMware, the last stalwart of traditional virtual machines, is embracing containerization with their absorption of Pivotal. Revenue for the container software market is anticipated to grow 30% annually from 2018 to 2023—surpassing $1.6 billion—according to a recently published IHS Market report.

“From a deployment standpoint, containers are still just different enough of a paradigm that adoption can become complicated at scale. While Docker itself is straightforward enough, automating update lifecycles across dozens or hundreds of deployed containers requires some level of automation in order to increase efficiency.”

Beyond data recovery: A CIO’s perspective on digital preservation

Joseph Kraus, CIO, Aug. 30, 2019

“While most IT organizations have taken the time to establish data backup and recovery procedures as part of their overall operations, few consider long term digital preservation as part of data protection planning. Establishing a formal plan to ensure access to critical data over time is becoming increasingly important as the amount of digital information continues to expand and serves as the only record of an organization’s asset.

“Digital preservation is a formal endeavor to ensure the digital information of continuing value remains accessible and usable. It involves planning, resource allocation, and application of preservation methods and technologies.  This is done to ensure continued access to reformatted and born-digital content, regardless of the challenges of media failure and technological change.”

See how CloudBolt can help you. Request a demo today!