Broadcom and Canonical Partner to Fast-track and Secure Containerized Workload Deployments on VMware Cloud Foundation

A survey on the State of Developers found that most developers spend roughly one day each week tackling development and IT inefficiencies¹. This is way too much overhead for an organization’s most important source of innovation. That’s why we are very excited about the newly expanded partnership between Broadcom and Canonical announced today at Explore 2025 in Las Vegas that will power high velocity, no friction containerized workload deployments on VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF). It brings together the #1 Private Cloud platform with the #1 Cloud OS to help customers who are building Kubernetes-based modern applications streamline support, improve developer efficiency, manage security risks, and simplify AI workload deployment. 

VCF 9.0 delivers a unified, AI-ready private cloud platform to manage traditional as well as modern containerized applications. Customers get a unified cloud experience reducing friction and significantly increasing developer productivity and experience. This partnership will further streamline the deployment of container-based and AI applications.

Fueling Private Cloud Momentum

VCF with vSphere Kubernetes Service (VKS) is the leading platform of choice for modern private clouds. VKS is Broadcom’s enterprise-grade upstream conformant CNCF certified Kubernetes distribution, offered as part of VCF. It is easy to install, upgrade, scale, and manage as a multi-cluster deployment delivering a seamless self-service experience. Centralized policy management for access control, networking, security, image registries, and runtime configurations across diverse Kubernetes environments simplifies compliance and governance at scale. 

Broadcom’s expanded partnership with Canonical, a trusted leader in open-source innovation, will accelerate the deployment of modern containerized and AI workloads with greater efficiency and security. IT teams will be able to reduce resource consumption and simplify lifecycle management. 

Figure depicting chiseled Ubuntu container integration with vSphere Kubernetes Service (VKS)

Customer Benefits

VMware is integrating technology components from Canonical into VKS to deliver new value in the following areas:

• VCF + Ubuntu with enterprise support: VCF will simplify operations and accelerate innovations by delivering a unified full stack with enterprise support that includes Ubuntu OS and Kubernetes-based containers. Customers will experience stable deployments with assured maintenance and enhanced security driven by efficient patch management using a robust process to monitor, review, prioritize, and remediate critical and high vulnerabilities.

• Security and efficiency with chiseled Ubuntu containers: Chiseled Ubuntu containers inherently offer a reduced attack surface by leaving content which is unnecessary at runtime out of the container. This design choice contributes to a more robust security posture, which is further enhanced by the fact that these containers run with limited privileges as a non-root user. These containers support streamlined application development for toolchains like .NET, Java, Python, Go, and others, to enhance security and improve efficiency. 
  
  By leveraging chiseled Ubuntu containers, enterprise developers will experience faster development-to-production cycles due to the consistent and highly standardized environments. Furthermore, these container images are lighter compared to traditional containers, leading to faster image downloads, quicker deployments, and reduced storage space. For example, a comparison of traditional and chiseled Ubuntu based .NET containers has shown a 50% reduction in image and size²  and 40% better response times³ .

• Rapid AI deployments with GPU-optimized images: With the introduction of precompiled virtualized GPU drivers, customers can achieve simplified deployment and secure operation in air-gapped environments, significantly reducing their dependency on external repositories and internet access. This not only streamlines the AI application deployment process but also leads to optimal performance, as deployment time and resource consumption are notably reduced by removing the need for on-node driver compilation.

Watch this demo to experience the benefits of building chiseled Ubuntu containers in VCF.

Contact your VMware representative or partner to find out more about deploying containers based workloads on VCF.   

Additional Resources

• Learn more about VMware Cloud Foundation
• Go deeper with VKS with Blog, Infographic, and a Demo
• Broadcom Canonical Joint Press Release
• Follow VMware Cloud Foundation social channels on LinkedIn, X, and YouTube
• Learn more about Canonical and chiseled Ubuntu containers
• Follow Canonical on LinkedIn , X , and YouTube

¹ https://www.atlassian.com/software/compass/resources/state-of-developer-2024

² https://canonical.com/blog/chiselled-containers-perfect-gift-cloud-applications

³ https://ubuntu.com/containers/chiseled/dotnet

The information in this blog is for informational purposes only and may not be incorporated into any contract. There is no commitment or obligation to deliver any items presented herein.