VMware Tanzu Basic edition is generally available as of June 16, 2021 for our Cloud Provider Partners. With the global growth in cloud-native developer experiences and DevOps/Developers yearning for infrastructure transition to container environments, Tanzu Basic is the solution that enables cloud providers to offer multi-tenant managed Kubernetes as-a-Service (KaaS) on existing vSphere environments. Tanzu Basic and VMware Cloud Director (VCD) 10.2 version enable multi-tenant K8s managed services for tenant DevSecOps and developers. Tanzu Basic edition and VCD help cloud providers attract developer workloads with K8s managed services and with the rest of Tanzu portfolio become developer ready for cloud-native application services.
Tanzu Basic edition has both TKGs (Tanzu Kubernetes Grid Service) and TKGm (Tanzu Kubernetes Grid multi-cloud) K8s run-times. With Tanzu Basic on VCD, cloud providers have a choice of deploying K8s run-times in three different ways:
- TKGs is for vSphere 7 environments requiring vSphere Pod Service
- TKGm is for VCD based multi-tenancy deployments that do not need vSphere Pod Service (expected GA June 24, 2021)
- Native K8s on VCD with CSE for a purely DIY model with community supported K8s
How is VMware helping cloud providers offer multi-tenant managed Kubernetes services?
Cloud Providers that are already hosting virtual machine services or IaaS can now start offering Kubernetes and containers as a managed service. By offering multi-tenant managed Kubernetes services with Tanzu Basic and VMware Cloud Director 10.2 version, they can attract developer workloads starting with test/dev environments to their cloud. Cloud providers can thus target DevSecOps and Developers, enabling them to quickly deploy test/dev K8s clusters on-premise and accelerate their cloud-native app development and transition to production environments. With the IT governance in place and having familiarity with existing VI admin constructs, the tenant DevSecOps would also find it easy to administer and manage container workloads.
What K8s managed services can cloud providers offer using Tanzu Basic?
Tanzu Basic edition features are now supported through VMware Cloud Director 10.2, for vSphere 7 and vSphere6.7u3 environments. This following K8s managed services are possible:
- Managed Services for K8s Cluster Creation and Management:
- Creation of K8s clusters
- VMware Storage service for developer environment
- Content library of Kubernetes versions
- Full-stack network service on K8s cluster and load-balancing (NSX ALB Basic), NAT capability etc.
- Antrea Container Networking Interface (CNI) plug-in (default)
- Lifecycle management services using Cluster API
- Self-service access for DevSecOps and Developers:
- Create and manage K8s clusters
- vSphere Pod Service
- Download and install open source aligned packages for observability using Fluent Bit and image registry using Harbor and Calico CNI plug-in.
How to deploy Tanzu Basic and Tanzu Mission Control for multi-tenancy and maximize developer experience?
VMware Cloud Director (VCD) 10.2.2 release also supports the Tanzu Basic TKGm (TKG Multi-Cloud) K8s run-time with Container Service Extension (CSE) 3.0.3 plugin. TKGm with CSE 3.0.3 brings VCD-based enhanced multi-tenancy for Tanzu Basic for vSphere 6.7u3+ environments and is meant for deployments that do not require vSphere Pod Service capabilities. The TKGs run-time that is part of Tanzu Basic is meant for vSphere 7 environments that require vSphere Pod Service capabilities.
Once the clusters are created with Tanzu Basic and VCD, VMware Tanzu Mission Control (TMC) can attach to these clusters and enable the cloud provider to offer additional self-service access to these K8s clusters, bringing operational scale, governance, consistency, and efficiency to Kubernetes operations. Here is a demo showing TMC managing Tanzu Basic clusters created on VCD.
How does Tanzu Basic and Tanzu Mission Control help cloud providers be developer ready?
With K8s clusters being created by Tanzu Basic and VCD and additionally managed by TMC, the tenant developers are ideally setup to build their cloud-native applications on VMware cloud Provider clouds. Further, cloud providers can also increase the developer velocity by offering containerized Bitnami applications that are available through Application Launch Pad (ALP) version 2.0 already supported by VCD.
The combination of Bitnami and VMware Tanzu Kubernetes offerings allows cloud providers to expand their multi-cloud services and address the needs of Developers and DevSecOps. A significant effort is expended by developers in getting all the open-source components in one environment. VCD, Tanzu, and Bitnami make it easier for developers to focus on their innovative applications by providing the most up to date developer tools and simplified container infrastructure in a secure environment. This enables developers to quickly get their prototypes built and have a faster path to deploying them in production environments.
Partners who deploy Tanzu Basic for on-premise vSphere also have a path to grow their K8s managed services for multi-cloud environments. With TMC they can already expand their K8s managed services to public cloud environments. With the Tanzu Standard edition with VCD support on the roadmap, cloud providers can extend their K8s footprint to multi-cloud including native public clouds. With Tanzu Advanced edition they can move beyond IaaS into cloud-native application managed services.
How can cloud providers license and order Tanzu Basic edition?
Tanzu Basic for cloud providers is available as a term license and requires a Cloud Provider Term contract. The process of working with your Aggregator to sign up for a Term contract is described here. Once cloud providers sign a single Term License Subscription Software (TLSS) contract that covers all term license subscription products (non-SaaS) from VMware. Tanzu Basic is the first of the products covered by this Term contract with other term license products from VMware to follow. Tanzu Basic can be ordered through the one-off-order process on VMware Commerce Portal. Tanzu Basic for Cloud Providers provides two licensing options:
- Available as Flex Core add-on: vSphere 7 and vSphere 6.7u3 (pricing is based on vRAM metric)
- On VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) (pricing is based on per-core)
Learning more about Tanzu Basic edition cloud providers:
Here are the additional learning and training resources available to you on Tanzu Basic edition and the overall VMware Tanzu portfolio:
Tanzu Basic Edition Resources:
- Tanzu Basic Solution Brief
- Tanzu Basic for Cloud Provider FAQ
- Cloud Provider Term Contract Process for Tanzu Basic
- VMware Tanzu Editions – Basic
- VMware Developer Ready Cloud (White papers, reference architecture, Ebooks etc)
- Demos & videos:
- TMC managing Tanzu Basic clusters created on VCD
- vmLIVE Session through VMware Partner University – Cloud Providers: Deliver new Container & Application Services with VMware Tanzu
- Blogs:
- VCD 10.2 integration with Tanzu Basic
- VCD 10.2.2 enhancements for Tanzu Basic (part 1, part 2 and part 3)
- VCD 10.2.2 and Tanzu Basic with TKGm (expected GA June 24, 2021)
- VCD and Tanzu Basic Reference Architecture
- VMware Partner University and Educational courses on Tanzu:
- https://modernapps.ninja – vSphere with Tanzu 101 and 102
- VMware vSphere with Tanzu [V7]
- vSphere 7 with Tanzu – Hands on Labs
Please reach out to your VMware contacts with any questions.
We are excited about Tanzu Basic adding K8s managed service offerings for our cloud provider partners, and the future innovation possibilities that we can bring to their portfolios. We will continue posting new technical and product information on our VMware Cloud Provider blogs. Join us by following the blog directly using the RSS feed, on Facebook, LinkedIn and on Twitter, and by visiting our YouTube channel too.
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