VMware introduces solutions for managing virtual machines and containers in a single environment.
At VMworld 2019 in San Francisco, VMware introduced a toolkit for managing virtual machines and containers in a single space. The new addition to the company’s family of products and services goes under the package name VMware Tanzu and includes a variety of Kubernetes-related solutions built using Heptio technologies.
According to VMware’s own stats, the amount of application developers and apps by themselves is constantly growing, with an estimated number of apps hitting 792 million by the year 2024.
At the same time, servicing virtual machines is becoming increasingly fragmented, and the growing use of Kubernetes containers makes managing all of this somewhat chaotic. To add even more challenges, companies want to manage their resources and apps from several clouds, as well as from their on-premise data centers.
Put all together, these trends bring about certain scalability, management and security issues that VMware is planning to address with Tanzu.
One of the solutions introduced as part of VMware Tanzu is Project Pacific, VMware’s effort to embed Kubernetes in vSphere. In essence, it implies the extension of vSphere for all modern applications and beyond. With Project Pacific, operations teams will now have one platform to manage VMs and applications, while developers will be able to access cloud resources using Kubernetes APIs.
VMware Tanzu Mission Control, another tool in the Tanzu package, should tackle the challenges of Kubernetes cluster management. In particular, the solution offers a single point of control that allows customers to operate their entire Kubernetes estate consistently across vSphere, VMware PKS, public clouds, managed services, packaged distributions or even DIY. Providing this level of operational efficiency conformed to a company’s toolkit, Tanzu Mission Control is a real game-changer.
Equipped with a SaaS-based control plane, platform operators will be able to perform a wide array of operations on individual clusters and groups of clusters, including cluster inspections, backup and restore, quota management and resource usage visualization and more. The hosted control plane works on-premises, at the network edge, or in the public cloud.
In the meantime, VMware promises that its Tanzu package will continue to evolve and provide leading solutions for customers to build modern applications, operate Kubernetes with consistency across environments, and manage their Kubernetes with total control.
