VMware Tanzu Advanced Expands Scope of Kubernetes Platform

VMware’s advanced edition of its Tanzu distribution of Kubernetes promises to simplify deployment and management of cloud-native environments.

In addition, VMware has launched the Project Iris initiative, through which the company says it will develop a tool to discover and analyze an organization’s application portfolio. Based on that information, and on VMware-defined best practices, the Project Iris tool will surface recommendations to rehost, replatform or refactor those applications.

Ajay Patel, senior vice president and general manager of the modern applications platform business unit at VMware, says the advanced edition of Tanzu will make it easier to adopt DevSecOps best practices by layering a wide range of VMware tools and associated open source software on top of the Tanzu platform.

In addition to the open source Istio service mesh, Tanzu Advanced also includes the open source Harbor container registry, developed by VMware, as well as support for the Spring framework for building Java applications. Spring is now part of the VMware portfolio following its acquisition of sister company Pivotal Software. Other elements of the advanced edition of Tanzu include an ingress controller, monitoring tools, diagnostic tools, policy management tools, backup and restore software and a curated application catalog.

Tanzu

Previously, VMware only made its basic and standard editions of Tanzu, which can be deployed as an add-on to VMware vSphere, available. The standard edition provides a Kubernetes distribution, curated bt VMware, that can be deployed on any platform.

Patel says rather than having to integrate multiple open source and commercial tools themselves, IT organizations prefer a more turnkey platform from an an IT vendor that can meet the needs of enterprise site reliability engineers (SREs).

The availability of Tanzu Advanced, coupled with Project Iris, signals VMware’s evolution beyond virtual infrastructure, adds Patel. The two offerings lay the foundation for expanding the company’s strategy into the realm of microservices-based application development and deployment in a way that spans multiple clouds, adds Patel. In many cases, Project Iris will be analyzing monolithic applications that currently run on VMware vSphere with an eye toward determining the practicality of running them on Tanzu or, potentially, some other distribution of Kubernetes.

It may take time for VMware to fully realize that vision, but it’s worth noting that adoption of DevSecOps best practices within enterprise IT organizations is far from uniform. VMware sees an opportunity to provide a portfolio of tools enterprises need to achieve that goal on top of a distribution of Kubernetes that can run anywhere, says Patel.

For now, monolithic applications and microservices-based applications will continue running side by side in the enterprise. The issue IT organizations must come to terms with is which approach will enable them to achieve that goal in the most cost-effective way.

Mike Vizard

Mike Vizard is a seasoned IT journalist with over 25 years of experience. He also contributed to IT Business Edge, Channel Insider, Baseline and a variety of other IT titles. Previously, Vizard was the editorial director for Ziff-Davis Enterprise as well as Editor-in-Chief for CRN and InfoWorld.

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