The Advantages of Running vSphere Kubernetes Service in a Private Cloud with VMware by Broadcom

This session will emphasize the tangible benefits of running vSphere Kubernetes Service in a private cloud environment. We’ll reinforce how VKS simplifies operations within a private cloud context, highlighting minimal networking expertise required, self-service capabilities, and the powerful synergies with VCF services for an optimal private cloud solution.

Jeremy Wolf introduced VMware’s approach to bringing a cloud experience to private data centers with VCF (VMware Cloud Foundation). He emphasized that applications require more than just runtimes; they need a complete ecosystem. To that end, VCF offers three core runtime services out of the box: VKS (vSphere Kubernetes Service), VM Service (a cloud-like way to consume vSphere VMs), and Container Service (deploying containers without a complete Kubernetes cluster). The goal is to enable consumers, whether platform operators or app developers, to deploy workloads quickly and leverage the surrounding ecosystem, with a focus on extensibility, adaptability, and multi-tenancy.

The presentation elaborated on the architecture, illustrating how VCF provides a declarative API surface, the vSphere supervisor, to consume all resources through Kubernetes APIs. This enables users to leverage familiar tools, such as `kubectl`, and a new VCF CLI. The VCF CLI is designed to interact with resources using plugins, similar to those found in public cloud CLIs. A key benefit is that adding a new service to the ecosystem automatically makes it discoverable through the existing CLI or UI. The resources are like Lego blocks within the same bucket. They can be picked up and used to construct application and workload requirements.

A demo showcased a three-tiered application (MySQL database in a VM, VKS cluster with front-end and back-end apps) deployed entirely through Argo CD and GitOps principles. All the services are used, including the secret service, volume service, network service, and the VM image service. The application is deployed by simply pasting the application YAML, and Argo does its magic. While acknowledging the inherent complexity in deploying diverse application form factors, Wolf clarified that the intent isn’t to mandate such complexity, but rather to provide the flexibility to address specific needs through a unified API service and a namespace construct for isolation. This highlights the benefits of discoverability through the same API.