Can you running Docker containers on VMware Tanzu

[cyrus104]

I know this post could go into the VMware section or kind of here because I'm really interested in using Docker containers from Docker Hub.

I have a 3 host vSphere cluster that currently has 1 "larger" VM running Debian/Docker/Portainer on it with about a dozen containers running. With the introduction of Tanzu and vSphere managing containers, I wanted to see if there was a way to use Tanzu in the same way I use Portainer but do a better job at resource management.

I've come across several good article to setup Tanzu which seems overly complicated but none that specifically talk about launch docker containers from the hub.

Example article for Tanzu setup: Complete vSphere with Tanzu homelab with just 32GB of memory!

Thanks

 

[cyrus104]

After running through some of the examples, I'm pretty amazed at how complex Tanzu is to setup and it requires a fair number of additional IP space on multiple subnets.

 

[new2town]

I have a similar setup (3 host vSphere 6.7 cluster w/ SAN storage)... I have a VMUG subscription and tried playing around with Tanzu several months ago but ended up abandoning it due to the complexity and some limitations that I ran into on the storage side given that I don't run vSAN.

My objectives were similar to what you've outlined, and I was trying to move away from a single-host (Ubuntu/Docker) setup to something more scalable. I ended up going with a Rancher / K8 cluster. I run tons of Docker Hub and Linuxserver.com images, and it's been very stable over the past few months since I set it up. Be warned, the learning curve is fairly steep if you're coming from a single-host Docker/Portainer setup, but in my experience, there are much better documentation and tutorials available to help you out with Rancher than Tanzu.

Given that you're considering Tanzu, I assume that you're running vSphere. Rancher can integrate talk to the vSphere APIs and fully automate the creation/destruction of worker nodes for scaling your cluster, which is very convenient.

The YouTube tutorials that Techno Tim has done are a great place to start: Rancher - YouTube

 

[dswartz]

I run a half dozen or so linux vms on vsphere 6.7. The one time I read about container support, I also delved into howtos, and fairly rapidly the water rose WAY over my head, at which point I hit the close button on the browser