VMware Cloud Foundation brings together the building blocks of the Software-Defined Data Center (SDDC), namely vSphere, vSAN, and NSX, with the advanced automation capabilities of the VMware SDDC Manager. Combined, these components deliver an engineered integration of the core SDDC software stack. Whether you’re looking to build an on-premises private cloud, deploy the SDDC stack on leased infrastructure from a public cloud provider, or both, VMware Cloud Foundation is key to simplifying the SDDC and ensuring success with the hybrid cloud.
However, enabling the hybrid cloud is only half of the battle. After all, it’s the applications running in the cloud that truly deliver value to the business. And in today’s world, this includes both traditional apps, running inside virtual machines, and new cloud native apps (along with the container ecosystem used to create and manage them).
While there are is a lot of ‘talk’ about running traditional applications side-by-side with cloud native apps, it’s pretty rare to see this done in practice. Which is why I’m excited to introduce you to a new reference architecture jointly developed by Intel, DellEMC and VMware that shows how this can be done.
This reference architecture demonstrates how you can securely develop, host, and manage applications of all types, whether they are hosted on VMs or deployed as containers, across both the private and public cloud. It starts with a brief overview of VMware Cloud Foundation and vSphere Integrated Containers and then goes over the steps needed to deploy and configure each. It then provides an example of deploying a containerized application workload, complete with NSX based load balancing and microsegementation, that runs alongside traditional virtual machines in a Cloud Foundation workload domain.
Regardless if you’re already working with containers or if you’re just getting started, be sure to check out this reference architecture which is freely available on Intel’s solution library: A Secure, Unified Cloud Platform to Host Both VM-based and Container-Based Applications.
