Harbor: Your Enterprise-Ready Container Registry for a Modern Private Cloud

What is Harbor Container Registry? Setting Up Harbor Container Registry Prerequisites Deploying Harbor on a VM Using Harbor as an Image Registry Conclusion Discover more from VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) Blog Related Articles Upgrading VMware Cloud Foundation 5.2 to 9.0: Webinar Takeaways Mapping VLAN Tags to Virtual Private Cloud Subnets VMware Cloud Foundation is the Gold Standard for Virtual Desktop Infrastructure In the evolving landscape of application deployment, containerization with Kubernetes (K8s) has become the new standard. As organizations adopt Kubernetes at scale, public image registries often create challenges, from rate limits to escalating costs and limited control over sensitive data. Harbor bridges this gap as an open-source, enterprise-grade container registry that brings security, performance, and sovereignty to container image management. It seamlessly integrates with existing operational paradigms, providing a robust solution for modern container image management needs. Originally developed by VMware by Broadcom in 2014 and open-sourced in 2016, Harbor joined the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) on July 31, 2018, and graduated on June 15, 2020, as its eleventh project – a milestone that reflects both its maturity and its vibrant community. Today, Harbor remains one of the most widely adopted CNCF projects for secure image management across hybrid and private cloud environments. Its active community drives continuous innovation, each release adds new integrations, security features, and performance improvements, ensuring Harbor evolves alongside enterprise cloud-native needs as a container registry. Recent highlights include: ​​v2.13: Integration with CloudNativeAI (CNAI) for AI model management, extended audit logging and enhanced OIDC with PKCE support v2.12: Integration with ACR and ACR EE Registry v2.11: Native SBOM generation and management At its core, Harbor provides a centralized repository for managing container images. Think of it as a private, feature-rich registry for your organization, with robust security and management features built-in. Key features include: Security: Image vulnerability scanning, content trust, and role-based access control. Replication: Replicate images across multiple Harbor instances for disaster recovery and content distribution. Management: A user-friendly UI for managing projects, users, and images.