DEVOPSdigest

VMware announced a comprehensive portfolio of products and services to help customers modernize their applications and infrastructure—marking a new chapter for the company.

VMware introduced the newly expanded VMware Tanzu portfolio for modern applications, and VMware Cloud Foundation 4 with Tanzu, the automated, turnkey hybrid cloud platform that now supports both traditional VM-based and container-based applications featuring the new VMware Cloud Foundation Services using Tanzu Kubernetes Grid and the new VMware vSphere 7 to drive developer productivity. With the most comprehensive software stack for modern applications—spanning application to infrastructure—VMware is positioned to enable and guide customers to develop new modern applications as well as modernize existing applications and infrastructure.

“Today, we bring to market a comprehensive portfolio for modern apps to help customers accelerate their pace of innovation,” said Pat Gelsinger, CEO, VMware. “VMware gives developers the freedom to deliver apps to any cloud, remove barriers to Kubernetes adoption, and help IT administrators transform their skills in support of a new wave of modern apps.”

VMware Tanzu is a portfolio of products and services that enable enterprises to deliver better software faster. Customers can use the suite to automate the modern app lifecycle, run Kubernetes across clouds, and unify and optimize multi-cloud operations. Today, VMware is introducing the initial products in the VMware Tanzu portfolio:

- VMware Tanzu Kubernetes Grid – Newly available, Tanzu Kubernetes Grid is a Kubernetes runtime that helps customers install and run a multi-cluster Kubernetes environment on the infrastructure of their choice. It is designed to run Kubernetes consistently across any environment including data centers, hyperscalers, service providers, and at the edge. It includes the industry-standard open source technologies needed to stand up and support a cloud-neutral Kubernetes environment, is packaged for enterprise readiness, and is fully supported by VMware.

- VMware Tanzu Mission Control – Previewed in August 2019, Tanzu Mission Control is a centralized management platform for consistently operating and securing Kubernetes infrastructure and modern applications across multiple teams and clouds. It provides operators with a single control point for consistent management across environments and increased security and governance. Developers have self-service access to resources so they can get code into production faster. This service is now available.

- VMware Tanzu Application Catalog – Newly available, Tanzu Application Catalog delivers a customizable selection of open source software from the Bitnami catalog that is verifiably secured, tested, and maintained for use in production environments. The service gives developers the productivity and agility of pre-packaged apps and components, while enabling operators to meet the stringent security and transparency requirements of enterprise IT. This service was originally previewed as Project Galleon in August 2019.

Beyond today’s new product announcements, VMware is further expanding the Tanzu portfolio. Following the close of the Pivotal acquisition in December 2019, VMware has moved quickly to integrate the Pivotal team, technology and products. This includes VMware rebranding Pivotal Application Service (PAS)—purpose-built for developers to boost feature velocity and operations teams to deliver world-class uptime—to the Tanzu Application Service. Additionally, VMware has re-branded Wavefront by VMware to Tanzu Observability by Wavefront and aligned NSX Service Mesh with the portfolio as Tanzu Service Mesh, built on VMware NSX. These additions to the portfolio will help enterprises to further increase developer velocity, holistically observe and monitor apps running in multi-cloud environments including Kubernetes-based environments, and simplify the way they connect, monitor and secure microservices.

VMware Cloud Foundation 4 with Tanzu will provide hybrid cloud infrastructure with consistent management for both VM-based and container-based applications while delivering intrinsic security and lifecycle management across software-defined compute, storage and network resources. The platform helps to bridge the gap between developers and IT—enabling developers to rapidly build and update apps while providing IT operations with control and enhanced security. Available across diverse private and public clouds including the hyperscalers, VMware Cloud Foundation 4 with Tanzu will include the following components:

- New vSphere 7: Newly rearchitected using Kubernetes, vSphere is now optimized to run both modern container-based and traditional virtual machine-based workloads. Initially, vSphere 7 with Kubernetes will be available solely through VMware Cloud Foundation 4.

- New vSAN 7: To provide storage virtualization including File Services and Cloud Native Storage for modern apps.

- New vRealize 8.1: To provide self-driving operations and modern infrastructure automation capabilities for virtualized, cloud-based and containerized workloads and applications.

- NSX-T: To provide full stack networking and security services that connect and protect VMs and containers.

VMware Cloud Foundation 4 with Tanzu also introduces VMware Cloud Foundation Services, an integrated Kubernetes and RESTful API surface to enable organizations to drive API access to all core services. VMware Cloud Foundation Services will include:

- Tanzu Runtime Services: These services will deliver core Kubernetes development services including an up-to-date distribution of Tanzu Kubernetes Grid.

- Hybrid Infrastructure Services: Powered by the new VMware vSphere 7, these enhanced services will provide full Kubernetes API access as well as the infrastructure-as-code automation APIs delivered by vRealize Automation to span the world of VM-based applications and cloud-native applications deployed with containers.

Optimized to run all applications, VMware Cloud Foundation delivers a cloud operating model on-premises in a private cloud that extends to public cloud, enabling developers to use the latest development methodologies and container technologies for faster time to production. Enterprises will benefit from simplified management of containers and VM workloads across heterogenous clouds like AWS, Azure, Google, Oracle, Rackspace, and IBM as well as VMware Cloud Verified partners, optimizing performance, resilience and availability.

VMware also introduced VMware vSphere 7—the biggest evolution of vSphere in a decade. VMware vSphere 7 was previewed in August 2019 as Project Pacific—which focused on rearchitecting vSphere into an open platform using Kubernetes APIs to provide a cloud-like experience for developers and operators. A foundational component of the VMware Tanzu portfolio, the new release will support all applications including modern and traditional applications using any combination of virtual machines, containers and Kubernetes.

VMware vSphere 7 will further help enterprises to increase developer and operator productivity, enabling faster-time-to-innovation combined with the security, stability, governance, and lower costs of traditional enterprise infrastructure. New capabilities and features will enable enterprises to:

- Boost Productivity: Developers will benefit from self-service access to infrastructure and additional productivity capabilities that reduce the amount of time they are required to spend managing infrastructure. Tanzu Kubernetes Grid is embedded into vSphere 7 with Kubernetes as part of VMware Cloud Foundation 4 to deliver Kubernetes clusters as a service to developers.

- Achieve Agile Operations: IT operations teams will benefit from new application-focused management, simplified lifecycle management capabilities, and a unified platform for consistent operations across clouds, data centers and edge environments.

- Accelerate Innovation: All enterprise applications will benefit from the advancements into vSphere 7 to accelerate innovation. Applications will be able to further leverage GPU hardware to accelerate the performance of AI / ML applications using elastic pools of GPU resources. Additionally, customers will be able increase the performance of latency-sensitive applications using improved DRS, enhanced vMotion, and augmented support for persistent memory (PMEM) capabilities.

VMware vSphere 7 will also allow enterprises to continue to take advantage of existing investments in vSphere technology, tools and skillsets.

VMware Tanzu Application Catalog, VMware Tanzu Kubernetes Grid and VMware Tanzu Mission Control are all available today.

VMware Cloud Foundation 4, VMware vSphere 7, VMware vSAN 7, VMware vRealize Automation 8.1 and VMware vRealize Operations 8.1 (both on-premises and as SaaS) are all expected to become available by May 1, 2020 (the end of VMware’s Q1 Fiscal Year 2021).

VMware vSphere 7 will be available in two major configurations. The first configuration, vSphere with Kubernetes, will be available in VMware Cloud Foundation 4 with Tanzu to power container- and VM-based applications. vSphere 7 will also be available in a configuration for VM-based applications in a number of editions including VMware vSphere Standard Edition.