Broadcom’s VMware focus shines brightest on its Cloud Foundation (VCF) platform, but the vendor’s open-source efforts continue to garner their own rays, with the latest flash beaming light on its VMware Kubernetes Service (VKS), new platform partners, and sending a long-gestating project to play outside in the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) sandbox.

The VKS enhancements are part of its new 3.6 iteration, packing updates targeted at security upgrades, more predictable operations, and broader support for database and regulated applications.

Those updates include support for the Kubernetes 1.35 release that was unveiled late last year. Broadcom’s angle provides those updates backed by a two-year support program designed to alleviate deployment and ongoing support concerns for enterprises looking to move to the latest Kubernetes iteration.

The latest VKS also includes a supported path for partner networking add-ons allowing container network interface (CNI) plugins to integrate natively with VKS; The ability to more easily support regulatory and security requirements without “locking clusters into rigid hardening; centralized API-driven management of node-level firewall rules across all supported operating systems; and support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 9 operating system.

That last one has RHEL joining previous support for Photon OS 5, Windows Server 2022, and Canonical’s Ubuntu 22.04 and 24.04 that was part of a broader cozying up with Canonical announced during last year’s VMware Explore event.

The Red Hat support is also notable as it has been one of the vendors most pointed in attempting to poach fleeing VMware customers.

“This is around providing more and more choice and flexibility, not only in terms of the ecosystem partners, but also in terms of the enterprise OS’ that they can run their applications on,” Prashanth Shenoy, VP of product marketing for Broadcom’s VCF division, noted in a press briefing.

That broader parter ecosystem gained new members, including a list of third-party platform providers and services that have been validated to work with VKS. This list now includes F5’s Big-IP Container Ingress Service for traffic management; Kong’s API Gateway that provides a standardized ingress and traffic management layer for microservices; and Tigera’s Calico Enterprise to provide a single management plane for workload communication across a cluster environment.

Play time

Broadcom also moved VMware’s Velero project to CNCF’s Sandbox ecosystem, marking a significant step toward broadening the project’s vendor-neutral, community-driven governance opportunities.

The Velero project was begun in early 2019 as an open-source tool for Kubernetes, providing backup, recovery, and migration for Kubernetes clusters and persistent volumes. It operates at the Kubernetes API layer and basically provides a data storage pocket for Kubernetes-orchestrated containers to allow those containers to support stateful applications.

Shenoy noted that Velero has seen “really strong ecosystem support across the cloud-native community, including public support from companies like Microsoft, Dell, Red Hat and others. So this truly demonstrates Velero's role as a foundational capability for our customers’ Kubernetes operations.”

Shenoy added that the project has passed CNCF’s initial review for acceptance into its Sandbox ecosystem and is now being voted on by that group’s technical oversight committee for official adoption.

CNCF’s Sandbox level is considered the entry point for early stage projects and is designed to garner visibility, help align support, and work through any legal or governance issues for a project. Once those requirements are obtained the project can petition for movement to “Incubating” status within CNCF, with the ultimate goal of a project garnering ecosystem “Graduation.”

Is Broadcom gaining open-source clarity?

Broadcom’s latest open-source updates and moves come as it continues to adjust its cloud-native and Kubernetes efforts in the market.

The vendor currently offers a pair of platforms targeted at this space: VKS and Tanzu.

Operationally, VKS is VMware’s Kubernetes runtime and orchestration service that is included in VCF. It stands apart from the vendor’s Tanzu platform-as-a-service (PaaS) offering that allows users to run applications regardless of the underlying infrastructure.

Broadcom’s VKS platform late last year garnered a gold star from the CNCF Certified Kubernetes AI Conformance Program. That program was established to level-set expectations for AI workloads running in Kubernetes-managed container environments.

Tanzu itself gained updates last year tied to last year’s VMware Explore event, though Broadcom CEO Hock Tan spoke more broadly during that event about how VKS was supportive of the vendor’s VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) platform. Purnima Padmanabhan, VP and GM of Broadcom’s Tanzu Division, spun that focus toward “Hock’s theory” that “if he doesn’t win the private cloud, all the castles we build on top of private cloud will come crashing down.”

This meant Tan had to “strip out everything and made it purely a private cloud show so that he could create feedback on private cloud,” Padmanabhan said.

Regardless of the channel, Shenoy during the press briefing did note that Broadcom has continued VMware’s traditional open-source community support, stating the vendor “was among the top-five long-term contributors to the Kubernetes community.”

“Open source is a big part of our identity,” Shenoy added. “We're not only the consumers of these projects, but active contributors to the project to help simplify Kubernetes operations, increase resiliency, enhance security, etc.”

Despite the ongoing support, Gartner last year did ding Broadcom’s cloud-native offerings, noting that the vendor’s “broader portfolio remains muddled,” and clients “continue to express confusion over repeated changes” as to how VMware was offering its services, with some concerned about “if and how the different offerings are integrated.”

Gartner added that to stay competitive in the container space, Broadcom “must successfully add value that differentiates its container solutions from its cloud partners, software competitors, and hosted/managed container services.”

It should be noted that Gartner’s comments were before the latest round of VKS and Tanzu updates.