Note: This product is now generally available. Learn about the release of Cloud Native Runtimes for VMware Tanzu here.
Today at our Cloud Launch Event, we highlighted how VMware is helping enterprises undertake three critical transformations: cloud native infrastructure, DevSecOps, and modern cloud native applications. That third transformation to modern applications, which is centered on creating the best experience for developers on Kubernetes, is going to be a big focus for the Tanzu team going forward. That is why we are very excited to announce that Cloud Native Runtimes for VMware Tanzu is now in public beta*. You can download the Cloud Native Runtimes for Tanzu bits from Tanzu Network and try out new serverless capabilities for Tanzu today.
Modern applications require the infrastructure they are deployed on to react automatically to their needs—whether that means provisioning or de-provisioning resources in response to traffic changes, triggering workloads based on internal or external events, or even just sending a Slack message notifying a developer of a change in their app or its environment. Kubernetes is a powerful abstraction that makes infrastructure dynamic and more attuned to application needs. Yet, development teams face a substantial learning curve when getting started, and they must perform additional work to enable deployment of applications with event-driven architectures on the platform.
Cloud Native Runtimes for Tanzu is a set of capabilities that enables developers to leverage the power of Kubernetes for serverless use cases without first having to master the Kubernetes API. Based on the open source Knative project, Cloud Native Runtimes for Tanzu can be used by itself or in concert with other Tanzu capabilities to quickly get modern cloud native applications with event-based architectures up and running on Kubernetes, regardless of a developer’s level of experience with the platform.
Serverless on VMware Tanzu
The term serverless can be confusing because it is often used to describe different abstractions. It can describe an abstraction of a language runtime in any functions-as-a-service context or, specific to Kubernetes, it can be used to describe the abstraction of the infrastructure underlying containers, pods, and other Kubernetes resources. Cloud Native Runtimes for Tanzu is in the latter category; it gives developers and application operators (who are sometimes the same person!) a simplified way to manipulate Kubernetes to accomplish serverless use cases through Knative. This enables developers to:
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Be more productive on Kubernetes, faster – Deploy, scale, access, and manage containerized workloads without writing Kubernetes manifests or other templates.
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Build event-based applications that span multiple workload types – Access a Knative eventing resource that can trigger Kubernetes workloads based on external events.
Let’s go into a little more detail for each use case.
Serving
Deploy and access workloads quickly. A developer using Cloud Native Runtimes for Tanzu can quickly get a container deployed, a service created, and a URL to access that workload on top of Kubernetes. There is no need to configure or make decisions about nodeports, clusterIPs, or load balancers to access the running app. Cloud Native Runtimes for Tanzu can also deploy multiple containers together if, for example, a workload needs a sidecar to run alongside the application container.
Automatically size workloads to meet demand. Many Kubernetes workloads do not need to be continuously running when they are not being used. One of the most important aspects of serverless technology is its ability to efficiently rightsize application workloads to meet demand or turn them off completely when they are not being used. Cloud Native Runtimes for Tanzu enables developers to automatically scale the number of running pods to meet incoming traffic, which includes the ability to “scale-to-zero” when there is no incoming traffic.
Split traffic across multiple workload versions. A huge strength of cloud native application architectures deployed on Kubernetes is the ability to orchestrate modern application upgrade patterns like Canary and blue/green deployments. Cloud Native Runtimes for Tanzu gives developers the flexibility to deploy new versions of their applications and choose how much, if any, traffic will be routed to those new versions and on what schedule. Developers can also create subroutes and tag workload versions to only be invokable by the subroute and not the main route.
Eventing
Trigger Kubernetes workloads based on external events. A developer can choose external events that automatically invoke Knative or other Kubernetes workloads from a variety of sources:
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Infrastructure sources like VMware vSphere, which makes it possible to build applications on Kubernetes that span many different kinds of workloads from non-Kubernetes systems
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Community or custom event sources, which can be used to pull in external events that are sent to Knative Eventing consumers
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Existing event pipelines, such as RabbitMQ and Kafka
Connect multiple distinct workloads with declarative event routing. A developer can connect event producers and consumers with declarative configuration separate from the code itself. This removes the need to write code specific to any individual event stream into applications.
How you can use the Cloud Native Runtimes for Tanzu beta* today
If this all sounds very exciting, but somewhat abstract, we have got you covered with demos! To illustrate how Cloud Native Runtimes for Tanzu can add value today, we have created a couple of brief walkthrough videos that highlight serving and eventing used together with other Tanzu capabilities.
In the first demo, we show how a developer can build a container with VMware Tanzu Build Service and, seconds after the build completes, spin the container up and get a URL for testing.
In the second demo, we show how a developer can connect to vSphere as an eventing source for an application running in Kubernetes.
Each of these demos shows a slice of what you can accomplish today with the Cloud Native Runtimes for Tanzu beta*. We can’t wait to hear how you as a participant put this new capability to work in your unique environments.
Join the public beta* program
Ready to try new serverless capabilities for VMware Tanzu? Navigate to the Cloud Native Runtimes for Tanzu tile in Tanzu Network and get started today!
To learn more about how to use Cloud Native Runtimes for Tanzu, you can find information in the documentation. And if you would like to formally participate in the program, reach out to your friendly VMware sales rep or solution engineer for more information.
