Broadcom Extends Reach and Scope of Kubernetes Platform
Broadcom at the Kubecon + CloudNativeCon Europe conference today revealed that the VMware vSphere Kubernetes Service (VKS) now supports the Container Network Interface (CNI) along with integrations for networking and security platforms provided by F5, Kong and Tigera.
At the same time, Broadcom also announced it has contributed Velero, an open source backup and recovery tool for Kubernetes clusters, to the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF).
Additionally, VMware VKS now supports version 1.35 of Kubernetes along with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 9 as a base-level operating system. IT teams can also now generate VKS support bundles without vCenter credentials.
Broadcom is adding a Declarative TuneD profiles capability to enable safe kernel and sysctl tuning for databases and high-throughput applications without requiring any host customization and a simpler AppArmor profile management capability that allows profiles to be defined as custom resources that can automatically load and be kept synchronized across all worker nodes of a cluster or a pool of node pools.
Finally, Broadcom has added support for node-level firewall rules across all supported operating systems that can now be centrally managed via an application programming interface (API).
IT teams can also now open required ports for HostPorts and NodePort Services through cluster configuration, instead of relying on privileged init containers or DaemonSets. For Linux nodes, VKS 3.6 also adds support for the nftables backend for kube-proxy, delivering better performance and scalability.
Prashanth Shenoy, chief marketing officer and vice president of marketing for cloud platform, infrastructure, and solutions at Broadcom, said these latest additions to a platform that is widely used to deploy Kubernetes clusters on VMware virtual machines reinforce the company’s commitment to ensure there is an open extensible ecosystem for VKS.
Broadcom also remains committed to making contributions to both Kubernetes and related upstream projects, he added.
Most organizations continue to deploy Kubernetes clusters on top of virtual machines to ensure isolation. Broadcom, since acquiring VMware, has been making a stronger push for VKS as the primary platform for deploying Kubernetes clusters in enterprise IT environments where there is already a large pool of existing virtual machine management expertise.
Each IT organization will need to determine for itself which approach best suits it, but the one thing that is clear is that the pace at which cloud native applications are being built and deployed continues to accelerate. A recent CNCF survey finds a full 82% work in organizations that are running Kubernetes clusters in production environments, with a quarter (25%) using cloud-native technologies across all their application development and deployment workflows. Just over another third (34%) are mostly using those technologies.
Broadcom, of course, is still trying to retain the loyalty of its core base of enterprise IT customers following an effort to require more of them to pay higher licensing fees in return for more integrated networking and storage capabilities that are optimized for VMware environments. The challenge, as is the case with any Kubernetes platform, is that it’s a lot simpler to migrate a cloud-native application to another platform than a monolithic application that in many cases has been running for years on an instance of VMware.
