VMware inks deal to bring support for Docker containers to its platform

VMware is teaming up with Docker, Google and Pivotal to bring support for container technology to its virtualisation platform. With this, VMWare will enable enterprises to run containerised applications on their VMware infrastructure or on the VMware vCloud Air service (the new name for VMware’s hybrid service).

Analysts suggest this announcement is a bold move by VMware as containers are seen as a direct rival to VMware’s virtual machines, and bringing support for Docker containers is something very interesting on VMware’s part.

“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 optimise containers for the enterprise – enabling that they run effectively in software-defined data center environments.”

VMware said it 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 and VMware will collaborate on enabling Docker Engine on VMware workflows from build to deploy for VMware vSphere to VMware vCloud Air. The two will also collaborate on a number of Docker-related open source projects libswarm, libcontainer and libchan, as well as on improving the interoperability between their products including Docker Hub with VMware vCloud Air, VMware vCenter Server and VMware vCloud Automation Center.
VMware is also joining hands with the Kubernetes community and will make Kubernetes’ patterns, APIs and tools available to enterprises.

In addition, VMware said it will work with Google to bring the pod based networking model of Open vSwitch to enable multi-cloud integration of Kubernetes.

“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, Google Cloud Platform.

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.