We are excited to announce the general availability of VMware Tanzu Kubernetes Grid 1.4. This release introduces improvements and updates to networking, packages, the user experience, and as always, Kubernetes versioning, with support for Kubernetes 1.21.2.
In this post, we will focus on some of the new capabilities offered in Tanzu Kubernetes Grid 1.4 that further support our customers with their Kubernetes journey.
Packages
All extensions and add-ons have now been migrated to the Carvel packaging format and APIs, enabling several improvements to the user experience. User-managed packages (including Contour, External DNS, FluentBit, Harbor, Multus, Prometheus, and Grafana) can be installed and updated from the VMware Tanzu Standard package repository. And the lifecycle of user-managed packages can now be managed via the packages CLI instead of out of band. This means that instead of downloading a tar file with the packages yaml and installing via kubectl, customers can leverage the Tanzu packages CLI plugins to install, upgrade, and update packages.
UX improvements
We are committed to providing customers with a better user experience, which includes making regular improvements to installation, accessibility, and support. To that end, in Azure, you can now deploy to regions that do not contain any availability zones, only availability sets. All regions available for deployment are shown in the Kickstart UI. We’ve also made improvements to accessibility with VPAT for both UI and CLI, and you are now able to select “AzureUSGovernment” cloud as an option during creation of your management cluster. We are also providing the ability to configure private cluster support on Azure using the Kickstart UI and the CLI.
Networking
With Tanzu Kubernetes Grid 1.4, we are introducing greenfield support for single stack IPv6-only clusters for vSphere and static load balancing. We are also making improvements to the UX for proxies with bootstrap cluster support; proxy support can now be configured in the bootstrap cluster, with support for air-gapped environments. We have also introduced support for NSX Advanced Load Balancer as a control plane endpoint provider; the virtual IP for the control plane used in kubeconfig is now backed by NSX Advanced Load Balancer instead of kubevip.
Get up to speed on the new features
To learn more about the new features in Tanzu Kubernetes Grid 1.4, please refer to the release notes. And be sure to register for VMworld, for free, where you can attend sessions on Tanzu Kubernetes Grid and the Tanzu Editions.
Here are some sessions to look out for:
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Cloud Infrastructure Transformation with VMware Tanzu Basic and Tanzu Standard [APP2454]
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Tanzu and NVIDIA AI deliver AI-Ready Enterprise Platform [APP2170]
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Modernize Windows Apps: Introduction to Windows Containers on Kubernetes [APP1999]
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Why Adopt Containers and Kubernetes in Your Organization [APP2655]
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VMware Tanzu Kubernetes Grid [GWS-HOL-2233-02-MAP]
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Running Frictionless Kubernetes Deployments with Tanzu Kubernetes Grid [APP2726]
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Meet the Expert: Tanzu Kubernetes Grid with Tom Schwaller [APP2436]
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Meet the Experts: VMware Tanzu Basic and VMware Tanzu Standard [APP1663]
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The Fast Path to Kubernetes with VMware Tanzu [APP1630]
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A Guide to vSphere with VMware Tanzu: Day 2 Operations for the VI Admin [APP1718]
