Pivotal Container Service

Pivotal Container Service (PKS) is the container service providing an easy way of providing and management of the Kubernetes platform ready for operation based on VMware vSphere and Google Cloud Platform (GCP).

2019: VMware of PKS 1.3 with support of Microsoft Azure

On January 30, 2019 the VMware company announced release of upgraded version of the solution of VMware of PKS 1.3 (Pivotal Container Service) intended for management of the hybrid Kubernetes environments in onpremizny and public clouds.

According to the developer in PKS 1.3 appeared:

1. Support of a public cloud Microsoft Azure. Before PKS supported cloud Wednesdays VMware vSphere, Google Cloud Platform and Amazon EC2. In the provided version it works also in Azure: PKS allows to unroll independently Kubernetes clusters in cloud (or at once several clouds) and to receive all tools for daily operation of the solution.
2. Improvements of flexibility and customizers of the network environment and infrastructure of security. Network profiles of clusters which appeared in version 1.2 received even more than tuning properties:
   • Support of several Tier of 0 routers for the best isolation of container environments. One copy of VMware NSX-T can service several Tier of 0 routers that gives not only safety features, but also possibilities of setup of separate ranges of IP for each router and its clients.
   • the Routed IP addresses appointed to groups of nodes (Pods) that allows to provide their transparent communication with the outside world (and also to reach to them from the outside world). If it is necessary, it is possible to use also the NAT scheme.
   • For the Pods groups it is possible to block global settings of range of the IP addresses and the size of a subnet, having set them for separate groups. It gives more flexibility in respect of use of global address range.
   • Support of big (large) of balancers in addition to small and medium. It increases number of the provided services, number of groups on a backend counting on service and also the number of transactions per second by service.
   • the Best isolation of environments due to placement of several VMware PKS Control Planes within one copy of NSX-T. Each managing object of VMware PKS control plane can be placed on the designated router NSX-T Tier 0. It allows to separate better environments and, for example, to update a test environment irrespective of production, working with two copies of PKS.

3. the Improved transactions of management. There were following improvements:
   • Means of backup and recovery of clusters of Kubernetes. In addition to a backup of management tools of Control Planes, the possibility of a backup and stateless-loadings in containers means of the BOSH Backup and Restore (BBR) tulset appeared.
   • Possibility of carrying out smouk-tests. Using PKS 1.3 creation of a specialized test environment which can be used for check of upgrade of a cluster is possible to be convinced that on the production environment upgrade will take place normally. After the termination of the test the test cluster is removed then it is possible to upgrade quietly prodakshen.

4. Support of Kubernetes 1.12 and other opportunities.

VMware of PKS 1.3 supports all stable fiz of release of Kubernetes 1.12. From VMware they passed the Kubernetes conformance tests Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) tests.

Also within one group containers can have the general volumes. It can be useful, for example, for the general database of several applications in different containers.

Besides, the NSX-T components and other controlling units, such as VMware vCenter, it is possible to place behind HTTP proxy requiring authentication. Well and VMware of PKS 1.3 includes the solution Harbor 1.7 with such opportunities as management of charts of Helm, the improved support of LDAP, replication of images and migration of the database.

2017

Possibilities of PKS

According to information for August, 2017:

• PKS allows to create and operate quickly containerized applications in private public clouds, to develop Kubernetes clusters by means of a packet of the BOSH tools. At the same time the built-in means of ensuring of high availability, monitoring, analytics and automatic check of a status and operability of clusters simplify transactions with Kubernetes.

• Pivotal Container Service provides flexibility in Kubernetes deployment: or in the customer's infrastructure based on VMware vSphere, or in a public cloud.

• PKS also includes NSX-T for program control by virtual environments in any cloud and when using any hypervisor.

• Through Pivotal Container Service to carry out deployment, scaling, updating of clusters of Kubernetes is possible without stopping system operations.

• Integration of PKS into such tools of VMware as vRealize Operations Manager, vSAN network storage and Wavefront for deployment in the local environment is supported.^[1]

Start

On August 30, 2017 the companies VMware also Pivotal announced start of Pivotal Container Service (PKS) and cooperation with corporation Google to propose to the companies the standardized solution Kubernetes.

PKS offers the Kubernetes distribution kit created by Pivotal and VMware on the basis of Kubo, the technology with the open code developed by Pivotal and Google for more flexible work with containers locally and in a cloud. Pivotal Container Service (PKS) allows developers to create applications which can be easily set on servers under control of software of VMware or be started in a cloud of Google.^[2]

Notes