Overview

VMware Container Networking with Antrea is a comprehensive solution designed to enhance Kubernetes networking and security. Leveraging the open-source Project Antrea, it provides seamless network connectivity and policy enforcement for Kubernetes clusters across various environments, including on-premises, public clouds, and edge locations. Built upon Open vSwitch (OVS), Antrea ensures high performance and programmability, supporting both Linux and Windows workloads. As part of the VMware Tanzu portfolio and integrated with VMware vSphere 7, it offers enterprise-grade support, signed images, and binaries, ensuring reliability and trust for production environments.

Features and Capabilities

• Unified Networking Stack: Antrea delivers a consistent networking experience across multiple Kubernetes platforms, simplifying operations in hybrid and multi-cloud environments.
• High Performance: Utilizing OVS, Antrea accelerates packet processing. It supports hardware offloading to SmartNICs, enhancing performance for CPU-intensive applications like big data analytics and machine learning.
• Comprehensive Security: Antrea enforces Kubernetes NetworkPolicies and introduces advanced cluster-wide policies with tiering and role-based access control. It also offers traffic encryption between pods, ensuring secure communication even over untrusted networks.
• Enhanced Visibility and Diagnostics: Operators benefit from tools like Traceflow for visualizing pod-to-pod connectivity, Prometheus integration for monitoring, and detailed network policy audit logs, facilitating efficient troubleshooting and network management.
• Multi-Platform Support: Antrea is compatible with various managed Kubernetes services, including Amazon EKS, Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), and Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE). It also supports both Linux and Windows container workloads, providing flexibility for diverse deployment scenarios.
• Enterprise-Grade Support: Backed by VMware, Antrea offers 24/7 enterprise support, ensuring that organizations can confidently deploy and manage their containerized applications in production environments.
• Advanced Security and Manageability: Integration with VMware NSX-T provides centralized multi-cluster policy management, comprehensive Kubernetes object inventory, and advanced connectivity troubleshooting capabilities, streamlining operations and enhancing security posture.