Table of Contents
Introduction
VMware has been on a mission to empower today’s businesses and existing customers to transition from running traditional infrastructure to cloud-native microservices running on top of Kubernetes. VMware recently detailed that customers had some 70+ million virtual machines running inside VMware vSphere. So, the potential for introducing these customers to containerized workloads is tremendous. VMware Tanzu is a product portfolio that allows customers to adopt a fully supported and open-source aligned Kubernetes solution to run containerized workloads using very familiar tools they have already been using.
What are the different versions of VMware Tanzu, and which version is right for your organization?
VMware Tanzu Versions
Like most of VMware’s product portfolio, there are multiple editions of Tanzu. What are these, and which version is the correct version for your organization? There are three different Tanzu editions, including:
- Tanzu Basic
- Tanzu Standard
- Tanzu Advanced
Tanzu Basic
The first edition of VMware Tanzu is Tanzu Basic. What is VMware Tanzu Basic, and what is the target customer for this edition of VMware Tanzu? VMware Tanzu Basic provides an easy path for organizations looking to get containerized workloads running quickly inside Kubernetes and have a straightforward way to manage and implement the solution. You can think of VMware Tanzu Basic as the way to begin transforming and modernizing your infrastructure landscape.
With Tanzu Basic, organizations who have been running VMware vSphere for years now can use the same toolsets to configure and manage VMware Tanzu Kubernetes clusters in parallel to traditional virtual machines. With vSphere with Tanzu, Kubernetes functionality is built into vSphere without bolting on additional products to provision Kubernetes clusters.
VMware Tanzu is helping drive the shift for many businesses away from the static three-tier applications that have traditionally been shipped in the enterprise. Instead, development has now shifted to using a distributed microservices architecture. With Kubernetes driving the development capabilities to move quickly, IT has to navigate the changing landscape of containers.
Kubernetes brings challenges in and of itself. When organizations transition over to a modern app development lifecycle on top of Kubernetes, the cloud-native landscape can be overwhelming. Tanzu Basic delivers an open-source aligned Kubernetes distribution packaged specifically for the enterprise. It is offered as part of the existing VMware vSphere infrastructure, which significantly helps to modernize existing applications.
If it could be described as challenging to set up a Kubernetes cluster from scratch, finding skilled professionals to manage Kubernetes is even more challenging. Tanzu Basic, as mentioned, removes this complexity by making it part of the existing VMware vSphere infrastructure. As a result, it includes everything businesses need to provision Kubernetes clusters quickly, using existing workflows.
By embedding Kubernetes into the VMware vSphere control plane, IT ops can manage Kubernetes resources using the vSphere Client with the same familiar tools and processes they already use to provision virtual machines. It reduces CapEx and OpEx expenses by having the same shared stack of infrastructure operated by the same skilled team of vSphere administrators.
It eliminates the need to retool and restaff to take advantage of Kubernetes technologies. It also helps the development team use advanced Kubernetes APIs to quickly deploy clusters directly to vSphere. With VMware Tanzu Basic, developers have self-service access to resources and environments while maintaining policy and security controls to meet IT requirements. This self-service access is fully-compliant and fully conformant. Developers can also use Kubernetes APIs against vSphere to access resources without an IT ticket and IT ops involvement. Tanzu Basic is built on top of an open-source aligned Kubernetes distribution. It is packaged to make it easy to adopt open-source projects and their capabilities into applications. The open-source technologies found in Tanzu Basic include:
- Cluster API – Lifecycle management
- Harbor – Image registry
- Fluent Bit – Monitoring
- Antrea – container to container networking
Tanzu Standard
VMware Tanzu Standard builds on top of the features and functionality included with VMware Tanzu Basic and is one of the editions in the broader Tanzu portfolio. It also adds multi-cloud support, allowing organizations to deploy their Kubernetes clusters between on-premises, public cloud, and even edge locations.
For businesses needing to bring in clusters that have already been provisioned and multi-cloud support, Tanzu Standard edition provides a centralized multicluster SaaS control plane to manage all Kubernetes clusters centrally. The centralized control plane provides a more consistent and efficient operational experience across Kubernetes environments. According to VMware, this helps to reduce the time and complexity of managing and running Kubernetes by more than 90%.
With the enterprise-ready Kubernetes runtime, organizations can run Kubernetes across their multiple clouds, including hybrid cloud in vSphere, public cloud (AWS and Azure), and at the edge. As a result, you can have the same Kubernetes distribution deployed across environments with the same interface and operations workflows.
Different teams may have already provisioned Kubernetes clusters in many environments, making it difficult to standardize a solution. It is where the global control plane offered by VMware Tanzu Standard comes into play. The global control plane helps you operate your Kubernetes clusters across environments consistently and efficiently.
Using Tanzu Mission Control, you have visibility into the Kubernetes footprint in your environment wherever your clusters are running. This visibility helps you troubleshoot issues in the environment, no matter what Kubernetes vendors used or where clusters are running. In addition, with Tanzu Mission Control, you can centralize all clusters’ lifecycle operations, improving operational efficiency.
In Tanzu Standard, you have the tools to improve governance and security. For example, you can automate policy management for all clusters with the centralized Tanzu Standard global control plane, including creating access policies to a group of clusters simultaneously. As a result, developers are onboarded to suitable clusters with a single operation and correct permissions.
It allows applying consistent security policies across environments to ensure these meet your security requirements. It enables inspecting clusters to ensure they are correctly configured, and the operations conform to Kubernetes specifications set by a CNCF. When security needs to change and new policies are required, it allows for quickly adapting and operationalizing these changes. Tanzu Standard allows backing up and restoring your clusters and namespaces quickly for disaster recovery, keeping apps and data protected.
VMware Tanzu Advanced
Finally, the VMware Tanzu Advanced edition includes the features of both Basic and Standard along with built-in capabilities involving the container lifecycle, including simplifying and securing lifecycle processes. This added feature set helps organizations accelerate the delivery of app modernization across their cloud environments. In addition, VMware Tanzu Advanced edition adds a global control plane that provides global management, observability, and service mesh capabilities. On top of the global management and service mesh features, organizations get a full suite of ingress services, developer frameworks, data services, container catalogs, and CI/CD automated builds.
VMware Tanzu Advanced edition is a superset of VMware Basic and Standard editions, adding additional features for managing Kubernetes clusters as scale. It simplifies the Kubernetes clusters’ lifecycle. The technology stack is modern and modular that automatically builds and deploys a stream of compliant containers. As a result, you can secure your software supply chain end-to-end. As a result, developers maintain the self-service experience, while IT Ops can manage and secure operations more efficiently and quickly.
Tanzu Advanced allows building applications faster and at scale. It provides a container build service with the tools needed to push commits so that new containers are built automatically. The container build includes all dependencies and base OS packages. Updates to the container generate a new container image ready for production deployment, using existing CI/CD pipelines.
With VMware Tanzu Advanced and Tanzu Mission Control, developers and IT Ops can create new clusters while adhering to business policies. In addition, teams can build new clusters in a straightforward, wizard-like process, resulting in developers achieving speed and agility with self-service access, keeping the organization compliant and secure.
VMware Tanzu Advanced puts governance and security at the forefront. It gives developers access to a private, curated catalog containing the latest open-source software. Images and Helm charts from the Bitnami collection are listed in the private repositories. In addition, it provides an ala carte workflow to pick what is needed. Containers are continuously updated and include metadata identifying the software as trusted and verified.
VMware Tanzu Advanced helps to secure the connectivity services at the application layer. Applications can be placed into logical groups and apply granular policies and encryption features based on team or user. In addition, it automates best practices for securing access to containers and their information.
Management with VMware Tanzu Advanced contains the centralized global control plane to specify new policies for clusters and applications across cloud environments. IT Ops and SecOps can set the high-level objectives for Kubernetes environments, including any conformant clusters. In addition, development teams can set their own boundaries when needed.
Using WaveFront, VMware Tanzu Advanced provides full-stack observability with advanced analytics with the health and performance metrics needed across clouds. In addition, you get real-time events and alerting to help diagnose performance or other issues.
Wrapping up
VMware Tanzu is an all-encompassing Kubernetes platform allowing businesses to choose the right edition for their needs. Between VMware Tanzu Basic, Standard, and Advanced editions, they have access to all the tools needed to fit their individual business needs, which helps achieve a competitive advantage.
Learn more about the individual features found in each VMware Tanzu edition here: VMware Tanzu Editions Comparison | VMware Tanzu.
Related Posts:
An Introduction to VMware Tanzu
VMware Tanzu Community Edition – Cluster API
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