Why VMware is Transforming vSphere 7 with Embedded Kubernetes Support

By Jean S. Bozman

Kubernetes will play a central role in transforming VMware’s huge installed base by embedding Kubernetes support in VMware’s core vSphere virtualization engine. By making the move to cloud-native applications that leverage both VMs and containers, VMware believes it is preparing its customers to catch the multi-cloud wave.

Project Pacific, the initiative to embed Kubernetes support in VMware’s core virtualization product, vSphere, is nearly complete, prompting many customers to expect vSphere 7.0 to ship next year. This high-profile effort to embed Kubernetes, as described at VMworld 2019 in San Francisco, is a sign of VMware’s cloud-first priorities. Other signs include an energetic round of acquisitions in 2018-2019, building a portfolio of new cloud-enabling products.

The importance of these moves is that VMware is partnering with all major U.S.-based cloud service providers – and making Kubernetes the key to aligning its content with all major cloud services. Key to making this happen is the central role VMware is placing on Kubernetes itself, as seen in VMware’s Project Pacific.

Catching the Multi-Cloud Wave

Project Pacific is one of a number of parallel efforts to help VMware customers adopt Kubernetes-managed cloud services and multi-cloud more easily. The company has already partnered with major cloud service providers (CSPs) that will anchor the multi-cloud world – Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform and IBM Cloud, and with a partner ecosystem of thousands of ISVs, SIs and cloud deployment advisors.

These moves can be seen as a series of building blocks for next-generation multi-cloud deployments. They will be added to a number of important steps customers can take in their cloud journey.

VMware already offers VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) as an integrated software stack that can be paired with on-premises hyper-converged systems that combine compute, storage, networking and management resources. The company also sells hyper-converged (HCI) software that combines compute, storage and networking resources, and NSX networking software for “stretch clusters” that span clouds.

 The Road Ahead: Project Pacific

Project Pacific, the effort to embed Kubernetes support into vSphere 7.0, will take this process of cloudifying the VMware installed base one step further. Kubernetes is orchestration software that manages multiple clusters deployed on the cloud; its capabilities support end-to-end management across hybrid and multi-cloud environments.

Heptio, a company co-founded by Craig McLuckie and Joe Beda, was acquired by VMware in November, 2018. McLuckie and Beda were co-developers of Kubernetes, when it began life as an open-source project inside Google. Now, these executives are focused on developing a future product called VMware Tanzu Mission Control for managing multiple Kubernetes clusters in a multi-cloud computing environment.

VMware did not provide many technical details about Tanzu Mission Control, but it is understood to provide support for enterprise-grade workloads that require reliability, availability and security. This is a key requirement for enterprise applications in multi-cloud computing.

The Centrality of Kubernetes

What’s central to this close support for Kubernetes? It will mean that applications that are housed inside software containers (e.g., Docker or Red Hat OpenShift) will be managed by Kubernetes orchestration software. However, building the applications, running the applications and managing the applications are three top goals for the multi-cloud workloads to come.

As specific workloads move through all of these stages, they will be moving from traditional, enterprise-style applications into a new, and different, computing infrastructure. These phases will take time, and effort, but VMware believes that the transformation of many enterprise workloads is inevitable, and that its products and services can help customers move into the next wave of containerized, multi-cloud computing.

Kubernetes Implementations

VMware’s project to support Kubernetes in vSphere has been underway since 2017. Project Pacific is part of a multi-phase VMware initiative to increase customer adoption of cloud-native DevOps, to modernize customer applications via software tools -- and to move more customers to multi-cloud operations that can be managed by VMware software.

From a corporate business perspective, VMware will be shifting its business model to support more cloud-native applications, expanding its reach into new cloud opportunities for VMware’s future revenue growth.

VMware already offers its VMware PKS software to customers who use vSphere 6.0 or to those who wish to run Kubernetes on public clouds or in edge environments. VMware. PKS was jointly developed by VMware and Pivotal, which was a freestanding Dell Technologies company. Pivotal is soon to become part of VMware, via acquisition. VMware PKS delivers Kubernetes-based container services for multi-cloud enterprises and for cloud service providers. Customers adopting VMware PKS can deploy and operate containerized workloads that are distributed across the cloud, and managed by Kubernetes.

The Energy to Speed Up Multi-Cloud Deployments

The move to support more cloud-native workloads is a top priority for VMware, which had $8.97 billion in fiscal 2019 revenue. The company plans to leverage its large installed base, estimated at 500,000+ customers worldwide, to capture a large slice of the multi-cloud opportunity that lies ahead for the entire computer industry and the CSPs. The company intends to bring its large installed base – originally built on virtualization of server and storage resources in the early 2000s – forward into the multi-cloud computing world. As a result, the company’s revenue mix would be shifted a bit more to cloud services, although much of the base, especially SMBs, are expected to remain on a licensed software basis.

To achieve its multi-cloud goals, VMware is speeding up acquisitions of companies that fill out its multi-cloud portfolio (e.g., Bitnami, Carbon Black, Uhana). The multi-cloud efforts join the company’s products for hybrid cloud. VMware emphasized multi-cloud services at this year’s VMworld 2019, because it already sees hybrid cloud as mainstream technology for its customers.

Moving to Modernize Applications

It’s clear that VMware aims to accelerate customer adoption of cloud services – and to monetize VMware’s presence on the cloud. This will create a next-generation revenue stream from cloud subscriptions of VMware software deployed in cloud service providers (CSPs).

Modernizing applications via DevOps is another large initiative in VMware’s multi-cloud strategy. Ray O’Farrell, who was VMware’s CTO, is changing roles to head up the business unit that will drive application modernization for VMware customers. While O’Farrell focuses on application modernization, another executive, Greg Lavender, was named as VMware CTO. O’Farrell’s important role in hybrid cloud and multi-cloud will be carried into the near-term work of integrating Pivotal with the VMware organization.

The energy of VMware’s move to cloud-native workloads is evident from the pace of its announcements in DevOps (e.g., the Pivotal acquisition); networking, security and cloud management. Customers can already use VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) to gain a fully integrated software stack that supports hybrid clouds. Or, they can use VMware Cloud on AWS, allowing them to migrate VMware workloads directly to AWS cloud services.

Overall, I believe that VMware has done a good job of identifying the pieces of cloud technology it needs to offer customers a faster path to cloud-native workloads and Kubernetes management. It has spent money acquiring the technology pieces that will fill out the overall cloud-enabled software portfolio – and it has the energy to bring that portfolio to market.

Many Paths to the Cloud

The foundation for cloud operations has been underway for some time. VMware customers already have hyper-converged (HCI), VM hypervisors (VMware ESXi) – and an integrated stack VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) to run applications on cloud services. Recent acquisitions add to that foundation.

Last year, VMware acquired CloudHealth, which presents unified cost, usage, security and governance data and analytics, and Wavefront, which provides enterprise full-stack observability and analytics to cloud applications that are running in containers. The Carbon Black acquisition supports enterprise-level security for applications running in containers, addressing customer concerns about achieving adequate security in cloud-native deployments.

Some customers leverage both VMs and containers today; in the future, the percent of the installed base leveraging containers is expected to grow, creating an opportunity for VMware’s Kubernetes-enabled product portfolio – which can run on top of any cloud providers’ infrastructure.

But moving to the cloud is not the same thing as moving to containers and cloud-native micro-services. Some customers, such as Freddie Mac, the financial services company, are moving more than half of their applications to the cloud – but Freddie Mac’s IT executives report having 10 percent, or less, of their workloads running in containers.

The Freddie Mac story is an example of cloud migration patterns: It shows that many customers making the move to containers have already decided to migrate workloads to the cloud – and many are still planning their multi-cloud deployments. This snapshot in time highlights VMware’s motivation to help VMware customers make the transition by rapidly building out its portfolio of cloud-enabling software, and by lining up advisory services from VMware and its ecosystem partners.