The recent VMworld 2019 event in San Francisco saw a significant focus on Kubernetes, with the announcement of Project Pacific, which integrates Kubernetes into the vSphere platform. This move signals VMware’s intention to embrace cloud-native technologies and provide a more holistic platform for IT operations (IT Ops) and developers (Devs).

Project Pacific is built around the idea of using Kubernetes to manage workloads via declarative specifications, allowing IT Ops and Devs to define their desired state and have vSphere deploy and manage the infrastructure accordingly. This approach abstracts away much of the underlying infrastructure, making it easier to manage applications holistically.

One of the key benefits of Project Pacific is the ability to run almost any workload in Kubernetes, as long as it’s declared. This includes traditional vSphere workloads, such as VMs, as well as containerized workloads and serverless functions. This integrated approach allows for self-service and more speed with control to deploy and manage infrastructure and platforms that run applications.

VMware has taken advantage of the advanced ESXi scheduler and NUMA node operations to optimize the runtime for Kubernetes containers on VMs, resulting in an 8% performance boost over bare metal. Additionally, vSphere will have two APIs with Project Pacific – the traditional vSphere API and the Kubernetes API, allowing for seamless integration with existing tools and processes.

While the integration of Kubernetes into vSphere is a significant innovation, it remains to be seen how successful Project Pacific will be in the market. The current movement towards cloud-native technologies and refactoring of workloads to take advantage of containers, serverless, and Kubernetes may not need to happen with this new functionality in place. However, the catch is that existing workloads may not benefit as much from this integration, and the scale and immediacy of Kubernetes platforms on public clouds may still provide an advantage for certain use cases.

Overall, Project Pacific represents a bold move by VMware to embrace cloud-native technologies and provide a more holistic platform for IT Ops and Devs. While its success remains to be seen, the integration of Kubernetes into vSphere is a significant innovation that could potentially stop the shift towards public clouds.