j.a.r.v.i.s.

Based on talks with customers who already made their experiences running containerized applications in test as well as in production and who are using vSphere Integrated Containers for their way to go, I decided to build a dashboard to monitor those workloads (Container-VMs) with VMware´s Cloud Management Solution, vRealize Operations Manager (vR Ops). Figure I: VIC monitoring high level overview The Dashboard Treating Containers as “First-Class Citizens” is what vSphere Integrated Containers can offer to IT-(Dev)Ops Teams through instantiating a Container-Image as a Virtual Machine. ...

I like upgrades! Because mostly they bring cool new features with them or eliminate disturbing issues. In this post I´d like to guide you through the upgrade process of VMware vSphere Integrated Containers from version v1.3.1 to v1.4.1 which is a major upgrade and also to v1.4.3 which is a minor upgrade. Thanks Tom Schwaller for reviewing this article. First of all and this applies to all upgrades, we have to check the compatibility and dependencys with our infrastructure components. ...

Now that we´ve become more familiar with the Virtual Container Host, it´s time to run our first Container-VM on it. The following example will show you how easy it is to instantiate an Nginx Web Server container-image. We first pull down the image from Docker Hub to our Datastore by using docker -H 192.168.100.222:2376 --tls pull vmwarecna/nginx. You´ll see some running tasks in your vCenter taskbar under Recent Tasks. Validate the downloaded image with docker -H 192. ...

In this part I´d like to guide you through the Deployment of a Virtual Container Host aka VCH. I definitely don ́t want to make it a habit to use already written descriptions, but this one described it very well, thus I had like to quote this: A VCH is the virtual functional equivalent of a Linux VM running Docker. From a Docker client point of view, the Virtual Container Host looks very similar to a native Docker host. ...

In this section, I´d like to give you a walkthrough on how to install the VIC vSphere Client Plug-In for the vCenter Server Appliance. I´m already using the vCenter Server Appliance aka vCSA in Version 6.7.0. In general, it is important to know that a minimum version of vCenter Server 6.5.0d is required to make use of the plug-in. However! It is also worth to be mentioned that the plug-in is not necessary or a requirement to run VIC as well as for the deployment of a Virtual Container Host aka VCH. ...

Environment Pre-Requisites: vSphere Enterprise Plus license or vSphere Remote Office Branch Office (ROBO) Advanced (!) Dependency on the vDistributed Switch VIC also supports VMware NSX User with administrative credentials to vCenter Internet Access for downloading images min. two vDistributed Switch Port Groups for public communication (VCH to external network) for inter containers communication create a dedicated port group for use as the bridge network for each VCH If DHCP is not available on these segments, please, request a range of free IP-Addresses. ...

I´m very keen on everything related to Cloud-Native and all topics around the decoupling of a process from the underlying operating system and as well much more on the infrastructure underneath in order to run those distributed systems, which are the result by the end of the day. For me personally, it became so present in 2016 for the first time and far more when I decided to work for VMware. ...