We are excited to announce the general availability of VMware Tanzu Kubernetes Grid 1.2 with support for Kubernetes 1.19. Tanzu Kubernetes Grid 1.2 follows the announcement of four new VMware Tanzu editions, each of which package capabilities of the Tanzu portfolio into solutions that directly address common customer challenges. Tanzu Kubernetes Grid is the enterprise-ready Kubernetes runtime across all of the Tanzu editions, and as of today, Tanzu Basic, Tanzu Standard, and Tanzu Kubernetes Grid 1.2 are generally available.
In this post, we’ll focus on some of the new capabilities—broken down into five themes—offered in Tanzu Kubernetes Grid 1.2 that further support customers with production readiness.
Expanding platforms
One of our goals with Tanzu Kubernetes Grid is to make Kubernetes ubiquitous. As such, we are constantly expanding the breadth of coverage across infrastructure platforms and tapping into the advanced capabilities of those platforms. With this release, we are introducing support for Microsoft Azure as well as enhancements to Amazon Web Services support, such as improved support for availability zones.
Many of our customers have standardized around specific operating systems and configurations for their workloads—and they expect a container platform to support their choice. To that end, VMware is adding support for customers to bring their own node image to Tanzu Kubernetes Grid by introducing alternate operating systems as well as a validation tool.
Operator experience
We want to reduce the operational complexity associated with managing multiple Kubernetes clusters in a production environment, so we are introducing standardized templating and deployment of components using Carvel open-source tools. Carvel provides a simpler experience for managing components, such as in-cluster extensions with composable tools that aid with configuration and deployment. We are also adding flexibility by allowing platform administrators to customize the cluster plans, such as by configuring MachineHealthCheck or creating a default storage class.
We have also enhanced the crash diagnostics tool by extending its configurability capabilities and expanding the number of data points that are collected.
Enterprise management
To facilitate the integration of Tanzu Kubernetes Grid into existing enterprise environments, we are providing additional tools and documentation. With this version, we introduce back-up and restore of the Tanzu Kubernetes Grid management cluster to assist with disaster recovery. Additionally, through CAPI Provider for vSphere, customers have a way to integrate with IPAM systems.
VMware integration
To enable customers to continue realizing value from their existing investments in VMware technology, we are building integration with components across the VMware portfolio. In this release, we have added VMware Container Networking with Antrea as the default, supported container networking interface for Tanzu Kubernetes Grid. Starting with Tanzu Kubernetes Grid 1.2, when you create new clusters either by using the Tanzu Kubernetes Grid CLI or from a saved YAML file, Antrea is enabled automatically.
And Tanzu Kubernetes Grid is now integrated with the VMware Customer Experience Improvement Program (CEIP), which will give us valuable insights into customers’ use of it. Doing so will enable us to improve our product and guide our customers on how to best deploy and use it.
Delivering a robust application platform
To realize the full benefits of Kubernetes, customers need a set of platform services that enables them to deliver applications to end users, so we have added support and a streamlined deployment experience for Harbor. The Harbor registry can be used to host and distribute the images needed to manage the lifecycle of Kubernetes clusters and the images necessary for customers to run workloads. And to help customers monitor their platform and their applications, we have added open-source projects Prometheus (with Alertmanager) and Grafana. Like all add-ons included with Tanzu Kubernetes Grid, these are packaged as VMware signed binaries.
Your effort to modernize applications is already complex; Tanzu editions simplify your access to the tools you need to move forward. The new features in Tanzu Kubernetes Grid 1.2 bring immense value to all of the editions and—by extension—our existing Tanzu Kubernetes Grid customers. As we continue to build out functionality for Tanzu Kubernetes Grid, any new enhancements will cascade into each of the Tanzu editions as well.
Read more about Tanzu Kubernetes Grid Service on vSphere® 7.0 U1 here, or learn more about the Tanzu editions in this solution brief.
