VMware is the next company to take on the container trend with the beta release of VMware Kubernetes Engine (VKE), as well as the release of its collaboration with Pivotal, Pivotal Container Service (PKS) version 1.1.
VKE is a Kubernetes-as-a-Service addition to the VMware Cloud Services portfolio. It is not to be confused with the other VMware container offering, vSphere Integrated Containers, since it runs on the AWS EC2 cloud, not vSphere. The service integrates the upstream Kubernetes container orchestration technology with VMware Smart Cluster technology, providing additional policies such as availability, scale targets and isolation capabilities.
While initially available on AWS, VKE will eventually run on Azure and additional cloud environments as part of the VMware multi-cloud strategy following the initial beta program.
As for for the PKS 1.1 update, it is based on the upstream Kubernetes 1.10 release and offers increased capabilities, including increased availability and integrations with other VMware products for operations and management. It also has multiple availability zone (Multi-AZ) support, providing high availability in case of AZ outages.
Integration with VMware vRealize Log Insight provides increased visibility into the core layers of the container platform for traceability and monitoring via intelligent data tagging. Another addition is VMware-backed Harbor open-source container registry technology, a means for organisation to manage and deploy container images.