The Nutanix Kubernetes Platform (NKP) addresses a key challenge for enterprise IT leaders: maintaining consistent operations across distributed environments while supporting AI initiatives. While deploying containers is no longer the main hurdle, managing them reliably across environments introduces additional challenges. By integrating networking and security into the platform, it provides a unified and manageable approach to ongoing operations.

The Operational Challenge Behind Enterprise Containerization

Many organizations begin their enterprise containerization journey with optimism, only to encounter fragmented networking models, inconsistent policies, and rising operational overhead. Networking and security remain top concerns in production Kubernetes deployments. These are ongoing operational burdens that affect uptime, compliance, and developer productivity.

As an executive decision maker, you need a solution that supports modern application delivery without adding complexity. A mature enterprise container platform should not require your teams to stitch together multiple tools just to maintain baseline operations.

Why Integrated Networking Matters

Integrated networking is foundational to sustainable IT operations. The Nutanix Kubernetes Platform embeds networking into the stack, allowing your teams to manage policies, segmentation, and connectivity from a unified control plane.

This directly addresses a common issue in enterprise containerization, where networking operates separately. When embedded, teams can apply consistent policies across environments without relying on multiple tools.

Integrated networking enables:

• Consistent policy enforcement across environments
• Simplified troubleshooting through centralized traffic insights
• Faster onboarding of new workloads

These capabilities support broader goals, especially when working with an AI infrastructure partner to accelerate AI time-to-value. AI workloads require predictable and secure connectivity, and fragmented networking can quickly become a bottleneck.

FAQ: Full-Stack Networking and Security for Kubernetes

What does full-stack networking mean for Kubernetes? Full-stack networking means connectivity, segmentation, and security are built directly into the Kubernetes platform rather than assembled from multiple tools. It spans infrastructure, Kubernetes networking behavior, and application-level policies that move with workloads. This creates a consistent, policy-driven model aligned with the platform lifecycle.

Why does full-stack networking matter in production? Production environments often fail due to networking and security issues, not container deployment. Full-stack networking ensures policies remain intact during scaling, outages, and recovery. It also enables consistent traffic control and removes the need to troubleshoot across multiple vendors during incidents.

How is native networking different from third-party add-ons? Third-party approaches require combining separate tools for networking, security, and data services, each with its own lifecycle. This increases operational risk and slows issue resolution. Native networking integrates these capabilities into the platform, allowing policies and segmentation to persist across workload migrations or restarts.

Why is application-aware networking important? Stateful workloads require consistent identity and security throughout their lifecycle. Application-aware networking ties policies to Kubernetes labels, services, and workload behavior rather than static IPs. This allows policies to automatically reapply during redeployments or recovery, minimizing manual intervention.

How does integrated networking support regulated or zero-trust environments? Integrated networking enables microsegmentation, platform-level policy enforcement, and operation in restricted environments without relying on external services. This supports zero-trust models while avoiding dependency on disconnected or third-party systems.

How does full-stack networking reduce operational risk? Operational risk increases when teams must coordinate across multiple vendors. Full-stack networking reduces this by aligning networking, security, and Kubernetes lifecycle management within a single platform, eliminating version conflicts and simplifying support.

Supporting AI and Modern Workloads

As enterprises invest in AI, infrastructure demands increase. Data pipelines, training, and inference workloads all require reliable container environments. Choosing the right enterprise container platform directly impacts how quickly you can operationalize these initiatives. The Nutanix Kubernetes Platform supports this with a consistent operational model, enabling teams to focus on outcomes rather than infrastructure challenges.

Reducing Risk in Enterprise Containerization

Risk management remains a top priority. Fragmented tools and inconsistent configurations introduce exposure. By consolidating networking and security, NKP reduces configuration drift and policy gaps.

In enterprise containerization, this provides:

• Greater control over application communication
• Simplified audit processes
• Alignment between infrastructure and security teams

A unified enterprise container solution also supports governance as your organization grows, especially for AI workloads handling sensitive data.

Final Thoughts

Modern application delivery and AI initiatives require more than Kubernetes alone. They require a cohesive operational approach. The Nutanix Kubernetes Platform shows how integrated networking and security can simplify management while supporting complex workloads.

As you evaluate your next steps, consider whether your current enterprise container platform supports your long-term goals. Are your teams focused on delivering value, or managing tools?

WEI specializes in helping organizations address these challenges. As an experienced AI infrastructure partner, WEI provides AI infrastructure consulting for enterprises and delivers the best enterprise AI integration services to accelerate AI time-to-value. If you are ready to adopt a more unified enterprise container solution and strengthen your enterprise containerization strategy, contact WEI to start the conversation.

Next Steps: As organizations reevaluate their virtualization strategies in response to rising costs and vendor uncertainty, Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) emerges as a powerful alternative. from WEI breaks down how NCM helps organizations move forward with measurable business outcomes.

The post Why The Nutanix Kubernetes Platform Is Your Enterprise Container Solution appeared first on IT ·èÇéAV Provider - IT Consulting - Technology ·èÇéAV.

Kubernetes has become a key technology for enterprises modernizing their application infrastructure. As Nutanix highlighted in their , adoption has grown beyond cloud-native companies. Organizations now use Kubernetes to support both stateful and stateless workloads across hybrid and multi-cluster environments.

As Kubernetes use grows, enterprises face new requirements around deployment, management, and security. Nutanix and WEI provide a proven approach that helps organizations meet current needs while building a strong foundation for future goals.

Meeting Modern Demands with Kubernetes and Nutanix

Enterprise adoption of Kubernetes continues to accelerate. Nutanix identifies several trends that are shaping how organizations put Kubernetes to work:

• Stateful applications are increasingly containerized, requiring dependable storage, data protection, and consistent operations.
• Hybrid and multi-cluster architectures are now common, with workloads running across data centers, public clouds, and edge locations.
• Security and compliance have become central, as organizations align operations with regulatory and internal standards.
• Platform choice and independence help enterprises avoid lock-in and maintain control over their technology path.

Nutanix solutions address these priorities through integrated capabilities:

• The Nutanix Cloud Native AOS platform provides enterprise-level storage for Kubernetes, including support for persistent volumes, replication, and data protection to support key workloads.
• The Nutanix Kubernetes Platform (NKP), built with Canonical’s Ubuntu Pro, provides a hardened Kubernetes stack with automated lifecycle management, security features such as kernel hardening and live patching, and integration with Nutanix Cloud Platform (NCP) for reliable data services.

NKP: New Capabilities for Unified Kubernetes Management

The 2024 release of NKP introduced important capabilities to support modern Kubernetes operations while helping organizations manage both traditional and containerized workloads on a common platform.

Key features include:

• Unified management of virtual machines and Kubernetes clusters, helping IT teams support both types of workloads through a single toolset.
• Open API support, enabling integration with existing CI/CD pipelines, monitoring systems, and service meshes so teams can continue using familiar tools.
• Policy-based governance, allowing administrators to apply access controls, resource limits, and compliance rules consistently across environments.
• Built-in observability and troubleshooting tools, giving teams the information they need to address performance issues and keep operations steady.

The Role of Nutanix Cloud Platform

NCP supports NKP by bringing together compute, storage, networking, security, and database services in one platform that works across on-premises data centers and public clouds. Proven benefits of this integration include:

• Unified data services, allowing Kubernetes clusters managed by NKP to use the same storage, database services, and data protection capabilities as other workloads.
• Consistent operations, helping organizations apply the same practices and controls across all environments without unnecessary duplication of infrastructure or effort.

This approach helps enterprises reduce operational friction and maintain reliable performance across all parts of their IT environment.

The WEI Advantage: From Planning to Production

Nutanix provides the technology foundation, and WEI ensures that it is ready for use from day one.

Our customers are the beneficiaries of:

• Deployments that are pre-configured in WEI’s labs, with updates and customer-specific settings applied.
• Testing that confirms interoperability and readiness for production.
• Simulations that verify performance, security, and compliance needs are met.
• Disaster recovery, backup, and access controls that are integrated as part of the deployment.
• Architecture that supports hybrid and multi-cluster operations while preserving platform choice.

WEI also provides planning, deployment support, and training so internal teams are equipped to manage NKP and Kubernetes with confidence.

Real-World Impact: Nutanix, NKP, and WEI in Action

Organizations across industries have seen measurable results from working with Nutanix and WEI:

• A healthcare leader deployed more than 2,000 Nutanix nodes across 70+ global sites. WEI prepared and tested these systems to support multi-cluster operations and hybrid models. This effort helped the customer meet timelines for application deployment while reducing operational risk.
• A financial institution modernized its data center using Nutanix AHV and disaster recovery solutions. This supported secure operations for stateful applications and helped the institution maintain compliance.
• A financial services customer adopted Nutanix Cloud Clusters (NC2) on Azure, with WEI designing and delivering a hybrid Kubernetes solution that aligned with Azure spending commitments and improved cloud resource management.

In each case, WEI helped ensure that Nutanix solutions were ready for production use and aligned to both technical and business goals.

Watch: Get Your Picks In With WEI & Nutanix

Looking Ahead: Preparing for the Future of Kubernetes

As organizations look ahead, Kubernetes will remain central to how they support innovation, from AI and machine learning initiatives to IoT applications at the edge. The possibilities are exciting, but they also bring new decisions and challenges for IT teams. Nutanix continues to build its platform with these opportunities in mind, providing tools that help organizations move forward with confidence.

With Nutanix Cloud Platform as the foundation, enterprises can manage Kubernetes clusters with consistent data services, security practices, and operational controls, whether their workloads run in the data center, in the cloud, or at the edge.

At WEI, we believe success with new technology is about more than getting systems live. It’s about making sure they deliver lasting value. That is why our team works closely with customers, providing guidance, deployment support, and training tailored to their goals.

Together, Nutanix and WEI are committed to helping enterprises build solutions that are not only ready for today’s demands, but also prepared to support the opportunities ahead. Contact our experts to learn more.

Next Steps: A leading federal credit union faced aging infrastructure, rising costs, and scalability challenges that jeopardized the reliability of its critical systems. To modernize its IT environment, they partnered with WEI to deploy a Nutanix-based hyperconverged solution, replacing outdated hardware and ensuring future growth with enhanced disaster recovery capabilities. and learn how WEI can transform your IT infrastructure!

The post Achieving Container Goals with Confidence: The Nutanix and WEI Partnership appeared first on IT ·èÇéAV Provider - IT Consulting - Technology ·èÇéAV.

Modern IT demands agility and scalability. They are common buzzwords in IT, but it’s true that enterprises are increasingly seeking hybrid cloud strategies that blend the stability of virtualized environments with the flexibility of containerized applications. vSphere with presents a compelling solution, but its implementation requires careful planning and expertise – something WEI is ready and willing to assist with.

This blog post delves into the advantages of vSphere with Tanzu and outlines how our detailed approach facilitates a seamless transition to a modern, agile, and innovation-ready cloud infrastructure.

Understanding Your Kubernetes Journey

WEI recognizes the critical role of collaboration between IT and DevOps teams in achieving optimal container deployments, scaling, and management. VMware Tanzu for Kubernetes Operations empowers this collaboration by providing a unified platform with automation tools and insightful monitoring. This approach fosters a continuous cycle of optimization to ensure deployments are efficient, scalable, and secure.

Furthermore, WEI’s Tanzu expertise secures the supply chain and CI/CD pipeline for protected containerized application development.

The Tanzu Advantage

Here’s how Tanzu can transform your approach to application management:

• Streamlined Development Lifecycle: Tanzu capitalizes on VMware’s cloud-native and agile know-how to streamline the application lifecycle. A unified platform with pre-built templates and integrated tools empowers developers for rapid development and deployment.
• Enhanced Developer Productivity: This solution automates infrastructure tasks, which frees developers to focus on building innovative applications. The approach aligns with modern workflows to boost development efficiency.
• Robust Security Without Compromise: Tanzu prioritizes security by integrating automated measures into the development pipeline. This “left-of-bang” approach ensures consistent enforcement and a strong foundation, freeing operations teams to optimize developer experience and application performance.
• Cloud-Agnostic Flexibility: The cloud-neutral approach empowers organizations to choose optimal cloud solutions. It simplifies deployments and ensures application portability across any cloud environment, private, public, or hybrid.

Adopting Tanzu unlocks a suite of advantages for organizations. This flexibility, combined with the ability to operate in any cloud environment, empowers businesses to stay ahead of the curve and deliver exceptional value to their customers.

Streamline Your Path To Kubernetes

WEI is your trusted guide throughout your Kubernetes adoption journey. Through a thorough kickoff assessment, our proven architects evaluate your existing cloud environment and align it with your long-term goals. Leveraging this analysis, WEI develops a secure and compliant Kubernetes environment tailored to your private cloud, adhering to the rigorous standards set forth by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF).

WEI also provides a full range of services to empower your vSphere with Tanzu journey, such as:

• Assessment and Design: Collaborate with WEI to review best practices, identify potential issues, and design a compliant cloud-native environment.
• Workload Management And Deployment: Enable efficient workload management and deploy (TKG) clusters.
• Migration And Management: WEI offers extensive vSphere with Tanzu services, including migrations, RBAC implementation, patching upgrades, backups & disaster recovery, and connectivity solutions.
• Infrastructure Automation: WEI’s infrastructure as code (IaC) and configuration management expertise automates infrastructure provisioning and management.

Choosing A Strategic Partner For Seamless Implementation

A successful vSphere with Tanzu deployment hinges on partnering with an expert who prioritizes customer success. WEI distinguishes itself as the premier choice, bringing its proven track record of excellence to ensure a seamless and successful implementation.

1. Unparalleled Expertise And Customer Focus

For over 35 years, WEI has prioritized customer satisfaction by assembling a team of highly trained and certified professionals. We consistently recruit the industry’s top engineers, empowering them to create best-in-class solutions tailored to your specific needs. This dedication is reflected in our recognition as a three-time CRN Triple Crown Award winner, signifying our unwavering commitment to exceptional service, technical proficiency, and exceeding customer expectations.

2. Validated Skills For Modern Application Management

WEI’s team boasts a robust portfolio of industry-recognized certifications, demonstrating their in-depth knowledge of Kubernetes concepts and practical experience managing cloud-based applications.

• Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA): Our CKAs excel in deploying, configuring, and managing production-grade Kubernetes clusters. Their expertise encompasses and goes beyond core Kubernetes functionalities, application lifecycle management, networking, and security.
• Certified Kubernetes Application Developer (CKAD): WEI’s CKADs possess the skills to design, build, configure, and manage cloud-native applications seamlessly within Kubernetes environments.
• VMware Cloud Native Master Specialist: Leverage the expertise of our specialists to architect a robust Kubernetes platform that integrates seamlessly with complementary cloud-native technologies, ensuring a smooth and continuous application delivery pipeline.
• VMware Certified Design Expert (VCDX): As we’ve written before, WEI is proud to have one of the few VCDX professionals in the New England region. This vast and exceptional knowledge base enables our customers to design, plan, and test vSphere-based solutions that perfectly align with their unique business objectives.

When you partner with WEI, you gain a trusted advisor with the expertise to navigate the complexities of vSphere with Tanzu implementation so you can focus on core business innovation.

Final Thoughts

WEI is committed to supporting you throughout your Kubernetes journey with vSphere and Tanzu. Our expertise, combined with Tanzu’s robust capabilities, empowers your enterprise to efficiently modernize applications, enhance security, and seamlessly operate across any cloud environment.

A WEI partnership is more than an innovative solution; we provide dedicated strategic advisors who will remain actively engaged with your business to ensure your long-term success. Contact our team today to discuss your needs and learn more about how we can help you achieve your Kubernetes goals.

Next Steps: discover the vSphere with Tanzu services that WEI offers as well as an understanding of our deep certification portfolio. When you work with WEI, you get more than an innovative solution. You get a team of dedicated strategic partners and advisors who stay connected to ensure your long-term satisfaction and success.

Bonus Podcast Content: the WEI Tech Talk Podcast welcomes WEI Senior Architect and Virtualization Ambassador Mark Gabryjelski. Mark has been practicing VMware since 2000 and is VCDX #23. Known as “Gabs” around the industry, he is one of the first non-VMware employees to have earned the certification.

Today’s episode will explain what the VCDX certification is and why it elevates WEI as an IT solutions provider. Mark also explains what his journey was like in earning his certification and how the program has evolved over the past several years. The content for this episode was recorded in January 2024.

The post Leverage Comprehensive Cloud Expertise For Your Cloud-Native Journey appeared first on IT ·èÇéAV Provider - IT Consulting - Technology ·èÇéAV.

It’s Tuesday and you are waiting for work colleagues to join you at lunch for a quick reprieve from the office. You pull out your smartphone and begin browsing to pass the time. An interesting technology article catches your eye and you tap to access the page. Unfortunately, the session times out and your engagement with that journey ends prematurely. Does this experience sound familiar?

According to a recent Google study, 53% of mobile users will abandon a session if it takes longer than 3 seconds to load. Fair or not, this is the bar that has been set, and serves as a reminder to enterprises of how important it is to modernize applications. Once users leave you behind, it is difficult to get them back as 79% of participants in the same mentioned study said they will not return after a negative experience.

What Makes an Application Modern Today?

Applications used to consist of one singular block of monolithic interdependent code hosted on a single virtual machine (VM), a design considered innovative in its day. But things are different now. To gain greater agility and flexibility, companies hastily transitioned to microservices and container environments. Here, a single application is broken up into small individual modules where each module performs a single defined task or capability. These services are then coupled together to communicate with one another, creating a highly flexible coalition of services that we call the modern application. Here, all necessary components are then contained within a single container.

Benefits of Application Modernization

Application modernization provides greater flexibility as microservices can be deployed in different programing languages and technologies. Modern applications are far more resilient as containers can be easily migrated or deployed to other systems. Updating is easier as each service can be updated and deployed independently of others and new application features and functionality can be released more rapidly to market. Containers and the microservices they host can be scaled up or down to meet fluctuating workload demands in real time.

The 6 R’s of Application Modernization

So, how do you go about updating monolithic and legacy applications to the modern era? AWS created a set of six best practice strategy options that be applied to any business application you may consider modernizing.

1. Retain: Keep the existing application in its present form as it still meets the needs of the organization.
2. Refactor: Improve the code and architecture of the existing application to attain greater scalability and flexibility.
3. Rehost: Move the existing application to a new infrastructure, such as a cloud platform, without changing its code.
4. Replace: Replace the existing application with a pre-built solution or different technology.
5. Rebuild: Create a new application from scratch to replace the existing one.
6. Retire: Discontinue support for the application and retire it. The application is no longer needed

The Paradox of Application Modernization

The speed, dynamics, and scalability of modernized applications will outpace and out scale traditional management and monitoring tools. While they may have been sufficient for an on-prem legacy environment, their product cycle is ending. If your applications are delivering workloads differently, it only makes sense that they need to be managed differently. It isn’t just programmers who need greater agility to increase the velocity of new feature releases and updates. The application admins need greater speed and agility to ensure application environments are always optimized. If not, they will fail to attain the full benefit potential of modernization efforts, thus diminishing ROI and risking losing users along the way.

Monitoring vs. Observability

Monitoring and observability may sound alike, but one is superior in scope to the other. Monitoring was appropriate for traditional on-prem environments. It helped IT personnel track problems, issues, and performance using a list of prescribed metrics that provided a snapshot of the systems that comprised the application environment.

While sufficient for the application models of yesteryear, monitoring no longer cuts it for today’s cloud application environments. The architecture that interconnects an application’s services and interdependencies together is highly complex and visibility is a challenge. Enter observability.

Observability takes monitoring to the next level by aggregating and analyzing data from multiple sources and uses AI intelligence to put the puzzle pieces together. Observability isn’t restricted to alerts and metrics. It also provides insights and context to your environment so IT can properly understand the issues at hand. While monitoring provides a view into your application environment, observability provides full comprehension and understanding.

Intelligent Observability with Dynatrace and Davis

Meet Davis (short for Davis AI-Powered Detection and Response). Davis is part of the Dynatrace performance monitoring and management solution platform for modern applications and cloud environments. Davis uses AI and ML to identify and prioritize issues and security risks in real-time on its own. Besides delivering comprehensive contextual insights to your support team, the platform automatically remediates issues before users are affected and IT can review them. Don’t just upgrade your applications to the modern era, upgrade your application operational tools in tandem with Dynatrace.

Next Steps: Thanks to Dynatrace, full stack application analytics and observability is fully achievable for your AWS-hosted application environments. Converting terabytes of data about your cloud application environment and converting it to real answers and actionable, intelligent automation, companies can maximize their modernized application strategies. We expand on this in our free tech brief,

In this tech brief, we expand on:

• Application Modernization
• Cloud scalability
• Monitoring vs. observability

The post Application Management: Keep Pace With Your Application Modernization appeared first on IT ·èÇéAV Provider - IT Consulting - Technology ·èÇéAV.

Every enterprise has its own library of applications and many of these libraries include a core set of applications that, while older, still play an incredibly important part in the day-to-day operations of your enterprise. However, as enterprises prioritize digital transformation these legacy applications may start lagging behind and integration complexity grows. That’s where application modernization comes in.

Through application modernization enterprises can protect their investments and refresh their software portfolios to take advantage of new advances in technology, without creating large disruptions for the rest of the digital environment.

Once an enterprise understands the value of undertaking an application modernization project, the next question is which applications should we prioritize, and how do we get started? has been a leading answer for countless enterprise organizations, and it could be the right answer for your business as well. Keep reading to find out why.

What Is VMware Tanzu?

The suite of products offers enterprises the tools they need to tackle the modernization of application and infrastructure, and in doing so, these tools provide a number of benefits to the business, a key one being improved productivity. Through VMware Tanzu enterprises can take full advantage of cloud native infrastructure throughout their application portfolio.

How Does VMware Tanzu Support Enterprises Through Application Modernization?

Beyond the technical aspects of VMware Tanzu, it’s important to understand ‘s philosophy for application modernization. In their own words, the following are four tenants to a successful application modernization initiative:

1. Start small – Regardless of the size of your entire application portfolio, it’s important to start small and choose one business unit or group with just a handful of applications.
2. Automate everything – Reduce manual processes however you can with IT automation, whether that’s test-drive development, continuous integration or continuous deployment.
3. Learn by doing – Take your mistakes and learn from them. Keep your successes and losses in mind and use them to inform your strategy and build new skills and playbooks as you go.
4. Break things down – Take a larger problem and break it down to its component pieces. In other words, “Iterate quickly and continually on thin slices of complex systems.”

Additionally, before beginning an application modernization project, there are few prerequisites that VMware recommends every enterprise have:

1. A list of viable application candidates
   Start your application modernization journey by selecting a set of custom apps that have relevance to your current business model and are actively being used.
2. Organizational commitment
   Ensure that the business unit or group selected at the start of the project is committed to cloud computing and can invest the time and resources required for transformation.
3. The right people
   Select your team carefully. Pick people that understand the application domains. It’s also important to ensure the application modernization team are allowed to focus entirely on this project.

Which VMWare Tanzu Edition Is Right For You?

Once enterprises decide to move forward with VMware Tanzu for their application modernization needs, they must decide is the right fit for their business goals.

All editions share several common principles, including multicloud enabled, open source-aligned, and tools that allow enterprises to facilitate a environment.

That’s where the similarities end. In choosing the right VMware Tanzu edition for your enterprise, you must consider which specific challenges you’re looking to address and the resources you have at your disposal.

VMware Tanzu is available in the following formats:

• Tanzu Basic. This edition offers the tools enterprises need to handle simple, containerized off-the-shelf workloads and is also the most affordable and accessible of the four editions.
• Tanzu Standard. This version caters to enterprises that need to manage at scale on public cloud or across multiple clouds.
• Tanzu Advanced. Tanzu Advanced builds off the previous versions and offers additional functionality to enable enterprises to full embrace a DevOps practice, even stretching towards DevSecOps.
• Tanzu Enterprise. The last and most powerful in the lineup is Tanzu Enterprise. This edition is perfect if you need to address important objects for operators and developers, such as more efficiency and control, and more speed and freedom.

Regardless of the edition you choose, VMware Tanzu can help your enterprise throughout your application modernization journey.

Partner with WEI for Application Modernization

VMware offers enterprises solutions that will help them manage and run consistent infrastructure, across on-premises data centers and public clouds, improving user experience and overall business operations. Their innovative approach to cloud offers architecture that is easy to deploy and manage, increasing enterprise agility and flexibility.

Now, couple industry leading VMware technology solutions with the virtualization, infrastructure, cloud and modern apps experience WEI provides. Our team’s collective expertise is light years ahead of other VARs. In fact, WEI holds four VMware master services competencies and employs an early VCDX recipient. If you’re wondering how to get started with application modernization, or you’re hitting roadblocks on your journey, . We’re here to help!

Next steps: Get insights from our experts about getting started with containers in our eBook, IT Leader’s Guide to Preparing for Containers, by clicking below.

The post How VMware Tanzu Supports Your Journey To Application Modernization appeared first on IT ·èÇéAV Provider - IT Consulting - Technology ·èÇéAV.

After being popularized and exploding onto the IT scene almost a decade ago, the usage and management of containers is still evolving as new and more efficient organization strategies and tools are developed.

is one such tool. It was released in 2014 and over the last several years, has grown to be one of the most frequently utilized container management platforms.

That said, its popularity does nothing to simplify its core concepts and for executives, even those with an IT background, it can be hard to understand just how important and useful Kubernetes really is.

To make the conversation easier, we’ve pulled the top four things enterprise leadership should know about Kubernetes from ‘s Kubernetes for Executives report and other sources, and shared them in the article below.

1. What is Kubernetes?

The first step to understanding the benefits of Kubernetes (Koo-burr-NET-eez) is to actually learn what it is. This is typically the part that creates the most confusion for non-technical members of leadership teams.

As described on , “Kubernetes is a portable, extensible, open-source platform for managing containerized workloads and services, that facilitates both declarative configuration and automation.”

Depending on your own technical knowledge, that explanation might seem pretty simple or it may require further explanation. To start with, what is a container and what are they used for?

In VMware’s words, “ encapsulate applications and make them portable.” Essentially, containers provide a way to keep software running under identical conditions when it is moved from one computing environment to another. As an example, this might be migrating an application from a test environment into production.

For today’s enterprises, containers offer a sort of “plug and play” method for administration, development, and distribution of applications and their relevant dependencies.

Kubernetes goes one step further and offers scalable, automatic management and administration for distributed systems at the container level and serves as a starting platform for developers, while also preserving user choice and flexibility.

2. What are the benefits?

At its core, Kubernetes is an API-based, scalable and extensible solution, supported in all major public clouds and with a growing community of open-source solutions that complement its essential features.

Among its other benefits, Kubernetes offers the following, :

• Service discovery and load balancing
• Storage orchestration
• Automated rollouts and rollbacks
• Automatic bin packing
• Self-healing
• Secret and configuration management

For a non-technical audience, Kubernetes can best be described as an automated system that eliminates many of the manual provisioning and other tasks required for container management.

Its components, which are easily replaceable to allow the system to be extended to new requirements and environments, work together to coordinate activities and react to events.

3. Why Your Enterprise Needs Kubernetes

As shared by VMware, Kubernetes benefits the enterprise at multiple levels, from the IT teams that administer the digital environment, to application developers, and all the way up to CIOs.

The bottom line is:

• Kubernetes reduces the amount of time administrators need to spend on container management, allowing them to focus on more complex and beneficial tasks.
• It allows enterprises to deliver new software and products more quickly.
• Kubernetes improves infrastructure and application availability, resulting in increased productivity at every level of the enterprise.
• It improves security by allowing application developers to play an active role in designing securable application.

4. How To Get Started With Kubernetes

Starting your journey to Kubernetes adoption can seem daunting, especially for those enterprises that have yet to fully embrace cloud computing technologies. However, the rewards of taking the leap are undeniable, especially for those enterprises the prioritize software development.

If you aren’t sure where to get started, VMware and can help you pave your way forward.

Are Your Looking For A Partner On Your Journey To Kubernetes?

VMware offers enterprises solutions that will help them manage and run consistent infrastructure, across on-premises data centers and public clouds, improving user experience and overall business operations. Their innovative approach to container orchestration offers architecture that is easy to deploy and manage, increasing enterprise agility and flexibility.

NEXT STEPS: Is your organization using containers?

Click below to grab your copy of our FREE EBOOK, “The IT Leader’s Guide to Using Containers in Today’s Digital World.”

The post 4 Things Executives Need To Know About Kubernetes appeared first on IT ·èÇéAV Provider - IT Consulting - Technology ·èÇéAV.

This week, we will be looking at the top ten use cases for multicloud storage strategies.

1. Expanding Cloud Backup Options to Cut Costs
2. On and Off-Ramping Data
3. Clustering Mission-Critical SQL Databases in the Cloud
4. Accelerating Development, Automating DevOps
5. Moving an Application Using Docker Containers
6. Using the Cloud for Disaster Recovery
7. Cloud Bursting for Free (Almost)
8. Switching Between Public Cloud Providers in a Flash
9. Monitoring and Predicting Usage Costs
10. Using Cloud Storage like You’d Use Your Storage Area Network

Expanding Cloud Backup Options to Cut Costs

42% of enterprises use cloud for reasons. Multicloud storage services provide highly efficient data transfer and storage capabilities to create low-cost, flexible, safe alternatives for cloud backup. They cut the cost, while increase the performance and scalability of object storage, making it possible to harness the cloud for long-term retention and archiving of critical data.

On and Off-Ramping Data

Many organizations need the capability to move data from the data center to the cloud and back again in an easy and cost effective way. Multicloud options provide a great opportunity for that, particularly ones built specifically for enterprise applications and workloads. These storage clouds:

• Accelerate migration with compression and change block tracking technologies
• Enable simplified data transfer processes
• Offer direct compatibility across clouds (previously not possible)
• Include enterprise-class reliability and security features

The simplicity of on and off-ramping data with multicloud is a simplified, cost-effective process with a pay as you go structure ensuring enterprises aren’t paying for storage and capabilities they don’t need.

Clustering Mission-Critical SQL Databases in the Cloud

Typically, an organization’s most sensitive and important data is stored in SQL databases. If anything goes wrong with that SQL database, the results could be disastrous. Clustering cannot be done with cloud block storage because clustering requires two compute instances. A workaround that mutlicloud provides is hosting those important SQL databases in a cloud with added redundancy. This ensures that the data is still available if anything happens to the cloud. In addition to this added level of redundancy, organizations use multicloud for this reason because clustering can be done to add shared access to the cloud where this data is being stored.

Accelerating Development, Automating DevOps

Multicloud is suitable for developers that need to be able to create data sets and clones for building, testing, and deploying apps into production. Multicloud is a viable and more affordable strategy than investing in more CapEx to cover the needed development resources. The portable and accessible nature of cloud structures extends to all databases, file servers, file shares, and any other needed applications and resources developers would need.

Moving an Application Using Containers

Containers are increasingly being used across enterprises because of the capabilities and features they provide. and are two of the major players in the container space. Containerization allows for an entire software program, including everything it needs to run successfully, to be housed in one unit (container) to avoid errors between different applications, deployments, and systems. It can also be more efficient than virtual machines, as multiple containers can be run on one operating system and with a smaller amount of required space needed. Multicloud and seamlessly align with one another, making containerization an easy opportunity to see for any organization taking advantage of multicloud storage.

Using the Cloud for Disaster Recovery

Disaster recovery is one of the most frequently used and planned for aspects of a multicloud strategy. Organizations look into multicloud for backup and disaster recovery reasons alone. This is in large part due to the efficiency and appealing cost structure that a secure offsite data repository provides. With the advent of cloud-ready data protection, cloud-based DR has become even more practical and cost-efficient.

By allowing enterprises to put data in the cloud, or in multiple clouds, the cloud-ready data protection model provides new options for DR while bringing down the cost. Instead of maintaining a separate DR site with redundant compute infrastructure that doesn’t get used unless there’s a disaster (or you’re testing your DR capabilities), now you can simply move data copies to the cloud and avoid all that CapEx.

Cloud Bursting for Free

is the capability of extending workloads to the public cloud when the computing capacity needed to run an application in a data center or private cloud increases. In earlier cloud bursting models, this capability also brought with it some data security risks. Even more secure cloud bursting strategies didn’t come without a significant cost associated with it. It is now possible to create many copies of data using cloning features without the need to pay for multiple copies of data. Unfortunately, cloud bursting is never completely free, but organizations can take advantage of cloud bursting in a multicloud model with incredibly low incremental costs, creating an illusion of it being free compared to the associated costs organizations experienced when cloud bursting prior.

Switching Between Public Cloud Providers in a Flash

Multicloud strategies enable organizations to avoid vendor lock-in with any cloud provider or company. Fortunately, the reasons for this give organizations the control and freedom to determine exactly which cloud providers will be utilized and at which times. The entire philosophy of multicloud is to provide increased flexibility and capability to move around and access data. This seamless accessibility extends into making decisions to entirely switch between public cloud providers.

Monitoring and Predicting Usage Costs

By integrating with predictive analytics capabilities, multicloud storage services can now perform automated monitoring and tracking of the resources you’re actually using, so you know what your costs are going to be. You can see precisely how much capacity you’re using in any given period of time, so there are no surprises when you receive an invoice. Multicloud storage services can also help you estimate future usage based on any number of variables that you provide, and resize capacity on-the-fly to meet future requirements.

Using Cloud Storage like You’d Use Your Storage Area Network

The multicloud model makes it easy to on-ramp data to the cloud and still get enterprise-grade data capabilities and consistent data services, so you can actually start using the cloud the way you used to use storage area networks, but for a lot less money.

Now What?

At this point we have covered a range of topics within the realm of multicloud storage strategies, such as:

1. What’s Your Multicloud Strategy?
3. 7 Tips for Multicloud Success
4. Ultimate 10-Point Checklist for your Multicloud Storage Strategy
5. This blog on multicloud storage use cases

Multicloud is and has proven to be a worthwhile strategy for enterprises to take advantage of on the road to digital transformation. This series of blogs covered all angles of a multicloud storage strategy and deployment. Talking to an IT solutions provider can help to answer any additional questions. For more information on how to optimize your multicloud strategy or to get started with multicloud, talk to the multicloud experts at WEI.

Next Steps: Get everything multicloud in one place by downloading HPE’s full eBook,

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Containers are small, agile, and easy to spin up. As a result, they tend to spread quickly, which can ultimately lead to sprawl. Sprawl exists when containers propagate unfettered, consuming resources and negatively impacting other containers or applications. Since containers work on the concept of shared resources, even small changes can have a widespread impact. By breaking deployments into smaller, more manageable parts, we ultimately increase the number and complexity of items to control. Maintaining a manageable number of containers will prevent mishandling, misconfiguration, and resource fragmentation. Visibility helps to keep container use in check, yet it’s often overlooked in the early stages of container adoption. If your current asset management teams are struggling to keep up with the state of physical machines, patches, and apps, the widespread proliferation of containers will only add to the challenge. Furthermore, unmanaged container use may become a security issue, as it can potentially increase the overall attack surface and make systems more vulnerable to threats.

4 Steps to Maintain Proper Visibility with Containers

The use of containers is on the rise. Maintaining visibility into container usage and growth will bring adopters closer to their benefits by actively seeking to avoid problems before they happen. So, what exactly can a company that is new to the use of containers do to ensure proper visibility before diving deep into their use? Here are some suggestions.

1. Understand your security requirements
2. Document your compliance requirements
3. Recognize your host resource requirements
4. Map out precisely what your container life cycle looks like (or will look like)

Since containers are highly mobile and flexible assets, there must be a way to see precisely where the containers are, what exactly they are doing, and on what data they are operating. There is a need for sufficient controls to apply policies and constraints to each container as they spin up, move around, and shut down. And it has become increasingly important to be able to control data movements within virtual environments, including where it can go and what resources it can consume, all while ensuring encryption and compliance controls remain in place.

Yet, with the proper insight into container use, the data provided can help with provisioning, orchestration, version control, and infrastructure management, and becomes an essential part of an ongoing containerization strategy. Containers allow IT to run services in isolation, with high fault tolerances, and with better management over resource provisioning. have an intentionally short lifetime, averaging about 2.5 days while traditional and cloud-based VMs have an average lifespan of 23 days. Because of their short lifetimes and hardware-agnostic behavior, containers pose to IT requiring the need for additional infrastructure monitoring. The lightweight nature of containers allows them to spin up so frequently and change so rapidly that they become much more difficult to monitor and understand than a physical or even a virtual host.

Check out the video below titled, “.”

Since containers live in the loosely monitored space between hosts and applications, traditional application performance and infrastructure monitoring tools lack the visibility needed to keep containers under control. Gaining insight into container use requires a unique set of monitoring tools not typically available to most technology departments. These specific tools are necessary because container resource management applies all the way through the stack, from physical infrastructure to shared files and operating systems, well beyond the reach of common resource monitoring tools. Since containers share resources, and can even limit access to other applications, there is an increased urgency to understand the exact resources they are consuming. Visibility is not only crucial in monitoring the utilization of physical resources like memory and CPU, but also extends to application, file, and operating system resources.

In response to this growing need of visibility, we see a host of purpose-built container monitoring solutions that help deal with these new complexities, most of which allow for real-time visibility into both virtualized and containerized applications. Not only do they monitor for acute performance indicators such as latency and response time, they also provide visibility into a host of shared resources such as .dll’s, .bin files, and server and network utilization.

Next Steps: Questions about containers? Try to find the answer in this on containers.

Sources:

1. IDG Research commissioned by WEI, November 2017.

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