The Cloud Native Computing Foundation accepted Broadcom's VM API as a Sandbox project this week, supporting users looking to manage VMs and containers on Kubernetes through a single API.
VM API is designed to support Kubernetes through pluggable providers for different hypervisors in which VMs, containers and bare metal can share the same control plane. The contribution of VM API could reduce vendor lock-in concerns while allowing for customers to more easily run a common control plane across Kubernetes environments.
By making VMs first-class in Kubernetes alongside containers, Broadcom could quell concerns about hypervisor-layer lock-in for enterprises, while steering customers toward a common control plane on VMware Cloud Foundation (CCF) rather than moving to KubeVirt or other open platforms. KubeVirt underpins rival Red Hat's OpenShift Virtualization product, which has made inroads among VMware customers unhappy with Broadcom pricing and licensing changes the past two years.
"Open source is good for everyone, even competitors,” said Torsten Volk, an analyst at Omdia, a division of Informa TechTarget. “Organizations' fears of vendor lock-in and previous licensing cost concerns over VMware offerings during the immediate post-Broadcom acquisition days have not fallen on deaf ears. Broadcom’s open source support and contributions can be seen as offering an olive branch to the entire community.”
In the past week, Broadcom has also changed its tune around low end VMware customers with a new entry-level vSphere Express product for customers with fewer than 128 CPU cores.
VM API and Velero vs KubeVirt
KubeVirt puts VMs side by side with containers within a single API, but is based on native Kubernetes functionality for orchestrating VM storage, networking and other advanced infrastructure features. With VM API, user organizations could have more options for running VMs alongside containers at scale if other vendors such as SUSE, Rancher or Red Hat opt to invest in the project.
The plot could also potentially thicken in VM portability with another recent Broadcom open source infrastructure move: VM API handles the infrastructure definition contract for VMs, while a CNCF sandbox contribution the company made in March, Velero, handles data protection, backup, and state migration.
If customers use the portable VM API to spin up workloads across different hypervisors, Velero becomes a crucial bridge to move persistent data and cluster state between those environments, according to one Broadcom official.
“Together, the two pieces give enterprises a predictable, standardized path to modernize private cloud infrastructure without giving up reliability or data sovereignty,” said Dilpreet Bindra, senior director of engineering, VCF Division, Broadcom, in an interview. “The API's openness will let customers start standardizing their workload definitions and operational workflows on their own, serving as a natural on-ramp before they commit to full VCF deployment.”
Open source Broadcom infrastructure platform emerges
Also in the open source realm, Broadcom introduced TrueSource by Broadcom for Spring Enterprise vulnerability management earlier this year, then broadened TrueSource in August with support for Node.js, Java libraries, Bitnami container images, and specific data engines including PostgreSQL, RabbitMQ, MySQL and Valkey. The program patches upstream application components to help cope with a flood of AI-driven vulnerabilities.
Spring is a major open source application framework for which Broadcom is the primary corporate steward and committer. It is well-known for its enterprise Java support, which now extends directly to AI workload development.
Recent Spring releases have also focused on supporting AI-driven applications, including compatibility across the entire Spring ecosystem, said Sergi Almar i Graupera, Spring engineer and organizer of the Spring I/O and Wasm I/O conferences.
“This is all necessary integration for modern platform engineering," Graupera said.
In addition to Spring and Velero, Broadcom supports Backstage’s IDP, Crossplane for infrastructure provisioning, and Argo CD for GitOps. Projects such as Harbor, Antrea, and Contour form part of the wider CNCF landscape that platform teams can draw on for container registry, networking, ingress, and backup/restore capabilities. Additional foundational work in CNCF's Kubernetes Cluster API and etcd projects further supports multi-cloud cluster lifecycle management.
Together, these components provide modular building blocks that can be composed into governed AI-ready platforms. Ultimately, this could translate into more secure and streamlined operations across VMware Cloud Foundation, the Tanzu platform, and other open source projects that anchor Broadcom's portfolio.
Still, Broadcom must also contend with Red Hat, which builds VM management features into its OpenShift platform, and stood up its own open source vulnerability management clearinghouse called Lightwell this year.
Disclosure: The author's company uses VMware's free Hands-On Labs sandbox and is considering purchasing vSphere Express.
Bruce Gain is founder and principal analyst at ReveCom. His byline has appeared in Wired, PC World, CIO, Technology Review, Popular Science, and EETimes
