The Photon Platform

VMware announced the Photon Platform at VMworld last Monday.

The Photon Platform consists of a number of previously announced projects and components. Apparently the marketing department was in full swing right up to the event, so a lot of slides still have the code names. I will try and explain all the various components and how it all comes together.

Project Photon was the project responsible for building the stripped down container host running a minimal Linux core. This is now being officially referenced as Photon OS, but also has been referred to as Photon Containers and Photon Instances.

Project Enatai was the code name for the ESX compatible “microvisor” in the Photon Platform. Has also been referred to as the Photon Machine. Enatai is a lightweight version of ESX which has been stripped of features such as HA and DRS which make no sense in container architecture.

Project Fargo aka VM fork is now officially called Instant Clone. This is the technology that was revealed at VMworld last year which allows a virtual machine to spin up a clone of a running VM in seconds.

Project Bonneville is focusing on provisioning containers directly to the hypervisor. Bonneville is the Docker daemon and drivers implemented in the container host, so there is nothing required in the VM. This also potentially allows any operating system to be a container. At VMworld VMware ran a display with DOS 6.2 (running Prince of Persia) on Bonneville. The separate breakout session on Bonneville is well worth watching.

Project Lightwave is an identity and access management service for managing container workloads. It is part of the Photon Controller which along with the Photon Machine makes up the Photon Platform.

vSphere Integrated Containers is essentially Bonneville, Instant Clone and the Photon OS running on ESX.

So got all that? In a future post we will discuss how it all comes together.