Container platform

Containers do not require virtualization at all, because they can run on bare metal. And you can use different solutions for managing and deploying them.

But in the VMware vision, VMware vSphere is used to provide a CaaS solution with two different approaches:

• Using VIC (previously described), useful if you have containers that you need to put into production and use your existing production VM monitoring systems to monitor inpidual containers
• Using vRA to deploy VMs (with Photon OS or Core OS) that can host multiple containers

Both approaches have a similar infrastructure and only the management part is different depending on whether you have vRA for cloud management, orchestration, and automation.

And of course, vSphere may be not needed at all, because containers can run on bare metal or other platforms, and be managed by other tools. Also, in this case, VMware can still be present, because Linux-based containers still need an operating system to run on, and VMware Photon OS could be a possible option.

For more information, see Choosing a Container as a Service (CaaS) Solution at https://blogs.vmware.com/services-education-insights/2017/07/choosing-container-service-caas-solution.html.