FAQ

Here are answers to frequently asked questions. This FAQ covers general topics; if you need help with troubleshooting, see the installation guide or the page on troubleshooting.

What is Photon Platform?

VMware Photon Platform is a container-optimized cloud platform that delivers on-demand tools and services for developers to build, test, and run modern applications while enabling IT to maintain security, control, and performance of its data center infrastructure.

Purpose-built for cloud-native applications with integrated container infrastructure support, Photon Platform is an API-driven, multi-tenant platform that brings the scale, performance and features previously accessible only to hyper-scale web companies into enterprise data centers. Its compute, networking, and storage technologies bring performance, reliability and ease-of-use to cloud-native workloads.

For more information, see the Photon Platform Data Sheet.

What are the major components of Photon Platform?

• Photon Controller
  • A scale-out control plane that turns compute hosts into an easy-to-manage single system
  • Aggregates and exposes IaaS services for secure container and modern app runtimes
  • Simplifies deployment and life cycle management of compute, networking, security, storage, and operations
  • Complete life-cycle management of advanced developer services (Kubernetes and Harbor)
• Photon OS
  • A lightweight Linux operating system optimized for containers
• VMware ESXi
  • Hypervisor running on bare metal for virtualization
• Networking
  • Networking virtualization with VMware NSX technology
• Storage
  • Hyper-converged storage with VMware vSAN technology

What are the key features of Photon Platform?

• Production-grade, fully supported Kubernetes distribution
• Comprehensive compute, storage, networking, security, and operations
• Granular multi-tenancy for resource isolation and security throughout the stack
• Highly-available control plane for web scale deployments
• Robust Docker registry via Harbor, an open-source container registry server designed for the enterprise
• Support for Docker containers, including enterprise service registry and authentication
• Integration with Pivotal Cloud Foundry
• Easy-to-use API and CLI tools
• Rich HTML5 web interface for management and consumption
• Optimized for high churn container environments and large number of concurrent API requests

Why do I need base images?

To create clusters in Photon Controller, you must use a base image that's been designed to support the framework you want to use, such as Kubernetes. These base images bootstrap the type of cluster that you're aiming to create.

Why can't I use DHCP on my Management Network?

Photon Controller uses a highly-distributed key-value store called Zookeper to keep track of all the nodes in the management cluster.

For example, if you have two single management nodes (say, Node A and B) and later add another node (Node C). Node C, when it is initially brought online, can look up the other management nodes in the cluster by querying Zookeeper, which has records indicating the management cluster consists of Nodes A and B.

DHCP, by its very nature, is dynamic. Thus, if a management node changes address, Zookeeper's records would be inaccurate, which would likely result in a failure of the management cluster.