This week, VMware announced that it has joined the Docker Certification Program. At the same time, VMware also announced that its vSphere Docker Volume Service (vDVS) plugin is now being made available in the Docker Store. The vDVS driver, if you aren't already familiar with it, enables vSphere users to create and
manage container data volumes on familiar vSphere Storage technologies
such as VSAN, VMFS and NFS. Plus, all the standard vSphere
capabilities (HA, DRS, etc) are readily available for use with
containers.
According to the virtualization giant, this certification indicates that VMware vSphere Docker Volume Service has been thoroughly tested and verified by Docker, confirming to customers that it is supported, built according to best practices, and has been evaluated for security as well.
VMware first announced the beta of its vSphere Docker Volume Service at DockerCon 2016. And as an added bonus, they also made the source code for this driver available under open source (GitHub), so the open source community and customers could use the driver, contribute code and modify the volume driver. This was another storage focused initiative from VMware to enable its customers to enjoy the benefits of using vSphere for deploying Docker Containers.
Benefits include:
- Proven Persistent Shared Storage: You can now use any VMware supported enterprise class storage backed by vSAN, VMFS and NFS
- Multitenancy, Security and Access Control: vSphere administrators can effortlessly set access permissions for shared storage across hosts, datastores and VMs from a single location
- Operational Consistency & Simplicity: Zero Configuration, zero credential management. It is easy to deploy and manage
- Self Service Operations: Use Docker APIs to manage volume lifecycle while maintaining administrator control over consumption
- 100% Docker Compatible and supports high availability with Docker Swarm
- Supports Storage Policy Based Management for Containers
There's a great
VMware blog post with more details which also steps through how easy it is to install and configure vSphere Docker Volume Service once it's available as a managed plugin.