TAS for VMs [Windows] overview

VMware Tanzu Application Service for VMs [Windows] help you provision, operate, and manage Windows stemcells on Operations Manager.

After you install the TAS for VMs [Windows] tile on the VMware Tanzu Operations Manager Installation Dashboard, developers can push .NET apps to Windows Diego Cells using the Cloud Foundry Command Line Interface (cf CLI).

For the TAS for VMs [Windows] release notes, see VMware Tanzu Application Service for VMs [Windows] v6.0 Release Notes.

Requirements

To install the TAS for VMs [Windows] tile, you must have:

• Tanzu Operations Manager 3.0 and VMware Tanzu Application Service for VMs v6.0 deployed to vSphere, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Platform (GCP), or Azure.

• A Windows stemcell. For information about obtaining or creating a Windows stemcell, see Downloading or creating Windows stemcells.

The minimum resource requirements for each Windows Diego Cell are:

• Disk size: 64 GB (100 GB recommended)

• Memory: 16 GB

• CPUs: 4

Contents

About TAS for VMs [Windows]

• Product architecture

Installation guide

• Downloading or creating Windows stemcells.

• Creating a Windows stemcell for vSphere using stembuild.

• Installing and configuring TAS for VMs [Windows].

• Windows Diego Cells in isolation segments.

• Migrating apps to TAS for VMs [Windows].

Admin guide

• Upgrading TAS for VMs [Windows] and Windows stemcells.

• Troubleshooting Windows Diego Cells.

Developer guide

• Deploying .NET apps.

• Using SMB volumes in .NET apps.

• Changing Windows Stacks.

• Tips for .NET developers.

Limitations

Here are the limitations that affect Windows containers in TAS for VMs [Windows]:

• Windows Server container limitations
• TAS for VMs [Windows] limitations

Windows server container limitations

Windows Server Core Containers are used in TAS for VMs [Windows].

These are known Windows Server container limitations:

• Windows Server Core containers support the host VM’s time zone only. In TAS for VMs [Windows], the host and container time zone is always UTC.
• Windows Server 2019 Core images support only Lucida Console font. No other fonts are supported, and no others can be installed.

TAS for VMs [Windows] limitations

TAS for VMs [Windows] has the following limitations:

• TAS for VMs [Windows] can be installed in an environment with the NSX Container Plugin (NCP), but NCP cannot be used with Windows containers in TAS for VMs [Windows]. For more information about NCP, see What’s New in the VMware documentation.

• Developers cannot push Docker or other OCI-compatible images to Windows Diego Cells.

• Container-to-container networking is not available for Windows-hosted apps.

• OpenStack is not supported for TAS for VMs [Windows]. Contact your VMware representative for information about OpenStack deployments.

• SMB is supported, but Volume Services is not supported.

• Due to Known Issue #244 in Windows Server OS, apps hosted on TAS for VMs [Windows] cannot route traffic when deployed with the IPsec. For more information, see Traffic to containers via NAT stops working when using IPsec to encrypt network connections on GitHub.