VMware Tanzu Service Mesh, built on VMware NSX is Now Available!

VMware marked its entry into the service mesh space with the announcement of VMware NSX Service Mesh. Today, we have some exciting developments to share.

First, VMware NSX Service Mesh is now VMware Tanzu Service Mesh. This new brand aligns with the VMware Tanzu Portfolio for modern applications that we launched today. Second, and more importantly, we are announcing that Tanzu Service Mesh, built on VMware NSX is now available for purchase.

What is Tanzu Service Mesh?

Tanzu Service Mesh provides consistent connectivity and security for microservices – across all your Kubernetes clusters and clouds – in the most demanding multi-cluster and multi-cloud environments. Tanzu Service Mesh can be installed in Tanzu Kubernetes Grid (TKG) clusters and third-party Kubernetes-conformant clusters. It can be used with clusters managed by Tanzu Mission Control (i.e., Tanzu-managed clusters) or clusters managed by other Kubernetes platforms and managed services.

What Makes Tanzu Service Mesh Different?

Beyond its multi-cloud focus, one of the other differentiating characteristics of Tanzu Service Mesh is its ability to support cross-cluster and cross-cloud use cases via Global Namespaces (GNS). A GNS abstracts an application from the underlying Kubernetes cluster namespaces and networking, allowing you to transcend infrastructure limitations and boundaries, and securely stretch applications across clusters and clouds. Global Namespaces allow you to have consistent traffic routing, application resiliency, and security policies for your applications across cloud siloes, regardless of where the applications are running.

Cross-Cluster and Cross-Cloud Support via Global Namespaces (GNS)

A leading telecommunications company that ran a proof of concept (POC) with Tanzu Service Mesh said it well,

This is the first time I have seen a federated policy across clusters and clouds that actually works and is done in a smart way. This is a fantastic way to abstract across clouds.

By enabling and delivering true multi-cloud capabilities, GNS can offer improved agility, business continuity, visibility, and better security for your modern applications.

In addition to providing an abstraction for your applications, GNS also provides strong isolation so it can be used a tenancy model for application teams and business units. Each of these groups can have as many GNSs as they need for their applications. If you would like to learn more, my colleague Niran Even-Chen recently wrote about using Global Namespaces to secure multi-cloud applications.

Tanzu Service Mesh can also automate and simplify the installation and lifecycle management of the service mesh bits running inside your Kubernetes clusters, while maintaining intended configuration values.