VMware Project Lightwave

Project Lightwave is container technology of management of accounts and access rights, it expands possibilities of corporate systems of security for support of cloud applicaions.

On May 7, 2015 the VMware company started the OpenSource project - Project Lightwave which, according to the company, will facilitate to the organizations use of native cloud applicaions. The project is focused for the aid to corporate developers for creation and implementation of the application in a cloud with the raised security level and will be integrated with the unified VMware platform for hybrid clouds.

The distributed nature of cloud applicaions helps to create complex networks of the microservices started in hundreds of thousands of copies. Their work demands from the companies of support of mechanisms of identification and providing access for all interconnected components and users. Project Lightwave adds one more security level (in addition to isolation of containers), allowing the companies to control access and to manage accounts for all infrastructure and an application stack, including all development stages of software. In addition to it the technology will help the companies to provide access control that only authorized users had the right of start of the authorized containers on the authorized hosts thanks to integration with working environments, such as Project Photon.

Functions and opportunities

• Centralized operation by accounts — Project Lightwave will allow to implement a single system of an input, authentication and authorization by means of a user name and the password, electronic keys and certificates. Corporations will be able to use single solution for protection of the applications created in a cloud.

• Multiple lease — Project Lightwave supports a possibility of separate lease, allowing to use corporate infrastructure to different user groups and applications.

• Open standards — Project Lightwave will include different open standards, such as Kerberos, LDAP v3, SAML, X.509 and WS-Trust. The project will be focused on support of compatibility with other standard technologies in DPC.

• Scaling of the corporate level — Project Lightwave is developed counting upon the simple, expanded and multi-user replication, providing horizontal scaling along with high performance.

• Authorization of certificates and key management — Project Lightwave will simplify processes of work with certificates and key management for all infrastructure.

Representation of Project Lightwave, 2015

To receive more comments and to stimulate testing from customers, partners, researchers and community in the whole Project Photon and Project Lightwave are presented in the form of projects open source.

Having made public the source code software, developers have an opportunity of direct participation in projects for improvement of compatibility of products and the embodiment of new features. Project Lightwave will become available in 2015 reported VMware, later.