About VMware Tanzu for Kubernetes Operations

Building, operating, and managing a Kubernetes-based container infrastructure can be challenging. VMware Tanzu for Kubernetes Operations simplifies the deployment and management of a Kubernetes-based container infrastructure. It is the foundation for building a modern container infrastructure at scale, on-premises, and across all your clouds. It simplifies container management with tools, automation, and data-driven insights.

The ease of operations that Tanzu for Kubernetes Operations provides you, in turn allows you to focus on boosting developer productivity, securing applications and data, and optimizing infrastructure performance across all your on-premises and cloud deployments.

What’s included with Tanzu for Kubernetes Operations

When you purchase Tanzu for Kubernetes Operations, you get the VMware Tanzu products and services described in the following table. The VMware Tanzu products described in the table enable you to set up and manage your Kubernetes infrastructure. You can use all the components in the table in your deployment or start with only the components that you need for your existing Kubernetes setup.

Component	Platform	Documentation	What it provides
VMware Tanzu Mission Control	SaaS	VMware Tanzu Mission Control Documentation	A centralized, intuitive control console for managing your deployment. You can manage any CNCF conformant Kubernetes cluster using Tanzu Mission Control.
VMware Tanzu Kubernetes Grid For multi-cloud or standalone deployments	On-premises	VMware Tanzu Kubernetes Grid Documentation	Kubernetes-based container solutions that can be deployed across vSphere, Amazon EC2, and Microsoft Azure
Tanzu Kubernetes Grid 2 with vSphere with Tanzu For Tanzu embedded in vSphere 8 deployments	Included with vSphere 8.0.x	VMware vSphere with Tanzu Documentation	Integrated Tanzu Kubernetes deployment on vSphere
VMware NSX Advanced Load Balancer Enterprise Edition (Optional)	On-premises	VMware NSX Advanced Load Balancer Documentation Avi Documentation	Load balancing, web application firewall, and container ingress
VMware Tanzu Observability by Wavefront	SaaS	VMware Tanzu Observability by Wavefront Documentation	Observability with high-performance alerting and streaming analytics with metrics, histograms, and traces/spans
VMware Tanzu Service Mesh	SaaS	VMware Tanzu Service Mesh Documentation	Enterprise-class service mesh for consistent control and security for microservices, end users, and data
VMware Container Networking with Antrea	On-premises	VMware Container Networking with Antrea Documentation	A unified networking stack across multiple managed Kubernetes providers and manage Windows and Linux workloads across multiple clouds

What you can do with Tanzu for Kubernetes Operations

Depending on your existing environment and your current needs you can choose which Tanzu for Kubernetes Operations components to use.

You can do the following:

• Deploy a consistent Kubernetes runtime across on-premises, public clouds, and at the edge. The enterprise-ready Kubernetes runtime packages, key open-source technologies, and automation tooling enable you to get a scalable, multi-cluster environment up and running quickly. Tanzu with vSphere is natively integrated with vSphere. Use Tanzu with vSphere if you are working in a vSphere software-defined data center (SDDC) environment. Deploy Tanzu Kubernetes Grid to extend and run your Kubernetes environment with consistency across your public clouds and edge environments.

• Centrally manage the lifecycle of any CNCF conformant Kubernetes cluster. Tanzu Mission Control provides a central hub that allows you to easily apply consistent policies, such as security and network policies, across clusters and do cluster backup and restore.

• Monitor, observe, and analyze application and infrastructure health and performance at massive scale. SREs and DevOps teams can quickly identify and troubleshoot performance issues, shortening mean time to repair with Tanzu Observability.

• Build application resiliency and data security policies. This enables you to bake security testing into your existing DevOps toolchain.

• Enterprise-grade load balancing, ingress, and container networking. You can easily implement container ingress services, including L4-L7 local and global server load balancing (GSLB), web application firewall (WAF), DNS, and IPAM in a single platform across any cloud with VMware NSX Advanced Load Balancer. The built-in container networking leverages Antrea, which makes it easy for you to apply and change network policies without the risk of disruptions and with guaranteed security enforcement into each cluster.

• Discover, analyze, and transform applications in VMs to containers, therefore, simplifying your application modernization efforts. Use application modernization tools to scan and introspect the entire vSphere or VMware Cloud-based data center to discover application components and dependencies.

What platforms are supported

You can deploy Tanzu for Kubernetes Operations to operate and manage any CNCF conformant Kubernetes infrastructure. This document supports the following platforms:

• VMware vSphere
  • vSphere with Tanzu (Supervisor cluster)
  • Tanzu Kubernetes Grid (Standalone management cluster)
• AWS
  • vSphere on VMC on AWS (Standalone management cluster)
  • Tanzu Kubernetes Grid on AWS (Standalone management cluster)
  • EKS on AWS
• Azure
  • Tanzu Kubernetes Grid on Azure (Standalone management cluster)
  • AKS on Azure