Containers are a popular way to virtualize applications for cloud deployment, but they won’t replace network functions virtualization (NFV)-based virtual machines (VMs) in the telecom network. In fact, they will co-exist for the foreseeable future. In this video from Google Next 2024, Sricharan Mahavadi, Director of Enterprise Solutions and Customer Success at Rakuten Cloud, discusses how storage management works for a hybrid environment consisting of both Kubernetes containers and VMs.
Kubernetes has emerged as the de facto standard for cloud-based application modernization, but still many legacy applications are too complex to be refactored to run in containers. Because VMs operate essentially as software-based appliances, it’s easier to run applications that need higher performance in a VM.
This can be done using KubeVirt or by running the VM runtime in Google Distributed Cloud (GDC). This can work well because the Kubernetes ecosystem is broad and can be leveraged for VMs. For instance, there are a number of orchestration platforms that can provide operational and management workflows for a hybrid virtualized platform.
Among the biggest challenges to this type of deployment is storage. KubeVirt allows for local storage to be accessed by both containers and VMs, but it can’t scale beyond this.
Choosing the right storage management solution is a critical decision. Mahavadi introduces Rakuten Cloud-Native Storage which is designed to address the challenges for hybrid container-VM applications.
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