VMware container solutions glance
https://linux.cn/article-6984-1.html
| 2016-02-07 09:18 Favorite: 2
This article describes the VMware recently announced two container solutions are vIC (integrated vSphere container technology vSphere Integrated Containers) and Photon platforms, and compared with the existing scheme.
Recently, VMware announced several cloud and how to build native applications cloud-native application on container technologies and solutions . The announcement target customers are traditional VMWare customers, their characteristics is that they will pay attention to new technology Docker, etc., while leaving for a credible supplier is more cautious. vIC ( integrated vSphere container technology vSphere Integrated Containers) and Photon platforms to give those customers a chance to start building a native cloud applications.
However, a large number of new technologies and new terms proposed for VMware traditional VMware administrators, architects and consultants to bring new challenges. This blog to try to figure out these new programs, and compared with existing solutions.
vSphere Integrated Containers
The first option is vIC (integrated vSphere container technology vSphere Integrated Containers), which is the evolution of a container program proposed by VMware. According to VMware's introduction, vIC philosophy is that the container is essentially "a packaged dependent, exist in the private namespace private namespace and resource-constrained binary executable files for execution," while the host container host container It is "that contains the necessary pool of computing resources and storage network architecture for managing container." If you accept that premise, then what constitutes container and container host is not important, as long as the developers can use APIs such a standard container similar Docker APIs to access these resources on it.
vIC from Bonneville project evolved, container technology will deconstruct certain basic capabilities become, and then replace these capabilities through a combination of VMware's ESXi, Photon OS and Instant Clone technology. This solution can be traditional vSphere infrastructure and container technology to connect, so that VMware VMware administrators to use familiar tools (such as vSphere) to manage these specific types of containers.
To compare Docker containers by this technique below and vIC FIG.
In vIC architecture, ESXi virtualization layer (hypervisor) as an alternative to Linux server host operating system Docker containers. In order to replace the Linux kernel isolation mechanisms to create a container, such as namepaces and cgroups, vIC With the ESXi hardware virtualization mechanism to create a virtual machine container container VMs. In order to make the traditional vSphere virtual machines with Linux and container matches the start speed, vIC use of a Photon OS "small version" pico version as VM, and create a copy of a zero overhead, called JeVM (Just enough VM). JeVM is a new type of container VM, share the parent virtual machine's memory. When the memory page is changed, the copy copy-on-write operation will create a new sub-machine virtual memory page write. Every time a new container is created, will repeat the process.
vIC的其中一个优势是，可以使用现有的工具（如vCenter）来管理容器宿主机，原因是容器宿主机本质上就是一台ESXi主机或者vSphere集群。这意味着vIC可以利用vSphere的高级功能，如HA、vMotion和分布式资源调度Distributed Resource Scheduling（DRS）。我们把这种抽象称为虚拟容器宿主机virtual container host。VMware将VIH定义为“具有完全动态边界的容器终结点Container endpoint with completely dynamic boundaries”，在这个边界内，vSphere资源管理器处理容器如何放置，从而虚拟Docker宿主机可以是一个完整的vSphere集群，也可以是这个集群的一部分”。这对于有些人可能很容易混淆，我的理解是，DRS允许容器虚拟机可以在vSphere集群中的ESXi宿主机之间来回迁移。这样一来，我们可以把托管传统虚拟机的vSphere集群称为虚拟的VM宿主机virtual VM host。
作为容器终结点，VIH机制向开发者暴露了Docker APIs，使得他们与vIC交互的方式和与基于Linux的Docker容器的交互方式是完全相同的。同时，VIH和vIC实例可以通过vSphere网页客户端管理，就像传统的vSphere资源一样。
来自VMware的Georg Hicken提供的这张幻灯片很好地做了总结：
Photon平台
如果说vIC是针对从传统虚拟机过渡到容器的客户的解决方案，那么Photon平台就是针对完全使用容器和Kubernetes、Mesos等容器管理工具的客户的解决方案。Photon平台被设计来提供可扩展性和高性能，就像“Google风格”的数据中心架构一样。在Photon平台中，为了完成这个目标，VMware将传统的ESXi虚拟层替换为一种新型的轻量级的“microvisor”，将容器作为应用发布的基本单元，并使用一种新型的、经过优化的容器管理工具，称为Photon控制器Photon Controller。
了解Photon平台的一个好方法就是与另一种容器架构比较，比如CoreOS的Tectonic平台。
图中的Photon Machine是一种新的基于ESXi的微虚拟层microvisor，它使用了Photon OS，提供了容器宿主机操作系统和容器运行时container runtime。刚开始这可能是令人疑惑的，因为在Tectonic平台中，容器宿主机操作系统是基于Linux的最小化系统CoreOS，而容器运行时是不同的，可以是RKT，也可以是Docker。在VMware术语中，容器宿主机操作系统是微虚拟层，容器运行时是Photon OS。
从这张图往上看，Photon Controller是一种分布式的控制层control plane和资源管理器resource manager，用来管理大量的Photon Machines。单个控制器monolithic controller，如vCenter，可扩展性往往存在一定的局限，而Photon Controller没有这种局限。例如，vIC就是使用vCenter来管理的容器解决方案，具有中等的可扩展性，而Photon平台则是一种适用于大规模容器的架构。
从图中可以看出，Photon Controller是一种超级管理器uber-manager，用来管理容器和调度资源，就像Docker Machine/Compose/Swarm、Kubernetes和Apache Mesos一样。换句话说，你可以使用Photon Controller来创建和管理Kubernete集群或者Mesos集群。类似的做法是，vRealize Automation (vRA)可以管理不同的vSphere集群，其中的ESXi宿主机可以被vCenter实例来管理。Photon Controller可以与Lightwave项目整合，来提供身份访问管理。将来，Photon Controller会包含更多的插件，提供创建、监控、管理等多种能力。
小结和更多资源
在以容器为中心的、云原生应用方面，VMware正在进行各种探索。尽管很多人认为VMware是一个传统公司，但是需要注意的是，VMware的客户群将会谨慎地转向容器技术。VMware提出了vIC和Photon平台，提供给客户一个转向容器技术的方案。虽然，不能保证VMware在开源世界和云原生领域中一定会成功，但是他们已经踏出了积极的一步，创建了云原生应用团队，并开源了Photon Controller。无论如何，这显示了对于开源世界，VMware并不是空口说白话。总之，VMware不应该被忽视。
另外，我建议读者们阅读以下关于vIC和Photon平台的文章：