Cloud-native Workloads: DevOps Self Service

There is nothing like a demo to make a concept real in the IT world. This blog describes one of a series of recorded demonstrations illustrating the use of APEX Cloud Services with VMware Tanzu, the platform for open-source-based cloud-native applications leveraging containers with Kubernetes orchestration.

Agile operations need speed. This has often led DevOps teams to go around IT Operations by using public cloud to get self-service access to a modern applications environment. This week we’re showcasing how DevOps teams can have a full self-service modern applications environment in their private infrastructure. This can be enabled by IT Operations teams in a way that provides central control over resource utilization.

The base platform is VMware Tanzu running on APEX Private Cloud Service. APEX Private Cloud simplifies VMware cloud adoption as a platform for application modernization. It is based on Dell EMC VxRail with VMware vSphere Enterprise Plus and vSAN Enterprise and is available as a 1- or 3-year subscription with hardware, software and services (deployment, rack integration, support and asset recovery) components included in a single monthly price. VMware Tanzu Basic Edition was added post-deployment to create the container-as-a-service platform with Kubernetes running integrated in the vSphere hypervisor.

Also leveraged is APEX Data Storage Services – an as-a-Service portfolio of scalable and elastic storage resources built on our industry-leading technologies. Our storage as-a-Service model simplifies the storage process giving you complete oversight of your storage resources, while freeing you from the hassles of day-to-day data storage management.

The DevOps Self Service demo shows:

• • VMware administrators in the operations team establish namespace self-service and VM self-service for specific roles and individuals.
  • The operations team establishes resource quotas to control maximum resource utilization.
  • The operations team enables the self-service provisioning of high performance storage from APEX Data Storage Services.
  • The DevOps team can then provision and tear down Kubernetes clusters at will within the established limits. They can also assign the right storage resources as needed
  • The DevOps team can also instantiate virtual machines independently as needed to leverage legacy services that must be deployed as VMs.

Principled Technologies performed an independent evaluation and verification of these capabilities. You can find a helpful infographic summary and access to the full report here.