Overview
VM Operator enables management of virtual machines with a Kubernetes-style, declarative API. Developed in the VMware Tanzu (Broadcom) organization, it is the component behind vSphere with Tanzu that lets users provision and operate VMs through Kubernetes resources instead of vSphere-specific tooling.
Key Features
- Declarative VM lifecycle management through Kubernetes CRDs
- Self-service consumption of virtual infrastructure with namespace-scoped quotas and permissions
- VM images, classes, and publish requests expressed as API objects
- Integrates with vSphere Supervisor for scheduling, storage, and networking
Use Cases
- Offering self-service virtual machines to tenants on a shared Kubernetes platform
- Running workloads that require full VM isolation (OS-level tooling, licensed software, legacy systems) alongside containers
- Provisioning GPU or compute-heavy VMs for AI and data workloads through a unified Kubernetes API
Technical Details
- Defines CRDs across API versions (v1alpha1 onward) including VirtualMachine, VirtualMachineClass, VirtualMachineClassBinding, VirtualMachineImage, ContentSource, and VirtualMachinePublishRequest
- VirtualMachineClassBinding and ContentSourceBinding bind VM classes and image catalogs to individual namespaces, enforcing tenancy boundaries
- Built with Kubernetes controller-runtime reconcilers that watch desired state and drive vSphere toward it
- Supports VM image publishing workflows as first-class API objects (VirtualMachinePublishRequest)