Danielle Burrow and Munjal Munshi contributed to this blog post.
Every modern enterprise is building applications to generate revenue, connect people and systems, and automate processes. Modern applications, architected to take advantage of the flexibility and efficiencies of the cloud, are projected by IDC to surpass traditional apps by 2024.
Yet, the same teams working to deliver innovation are usually tied to out-of-date software stacks and legacy infrastructure as well, consuming valuable time and IT budget. That’s why 91 percent of executives saw app modernization and migration as a major initiative when surveyed in a recent Market Insights Report by VMware. As part of the pivot to modern apps, organizations are turning to containers and Kubernetes to run software reliably across environments and clouds. VMware’s recent State of Kubernetes 2022 report found that 76 percent of organizations are significantly increasing their investment in containers.
VMware Tanzu products and services constitute a flexible, cloud native application platform that enables development and operations teams to deliver more easily on their modern app initiatives. At VMware Explore 2022, we are thrilled to announce new capabilities and enhancements to Tanzu that continue to improve the developer experience, support successful DevSecOps practices, and make it simpler for platform teams to securely streamline and scale Kubernetes across public and private clouds.
Boost innovation and security with a better developer experience
App developers are generally indifferent about where their apps run or how a container is configured. Most just want to get their code to production with as little fuss as possible. VMware Tanzu Application Platform is designed to unlock developer potential to build and deliver better apps to production faster on any Kubernetes, which in turn helps organizations deliver the best, most secure software to meet changing market dynamics and customer demand.
Enhance DevX with Tanzu Application Platform 1.3
At VMware Explore 2022, VMware is pre-announcing new capabilities in Tanzu Application Platform that can enhance developer and application operator experiences, increase supply chain security and visualization, provide additional Kubernetes run-time support, and offer additional API integrations.
New functionality, expected to become generally available in late 2022, includes:
Availability on RedHat OpenShift gives increased flexibility to our customers regarding their Kubernetes platform choice. Tanzu Application Platform 1.3 will be available on RedHat OpenShift, running in vSphere and on bare metal. Leverage your existing investment in RedHat OpenShift to realize the value of Tanzu Application Platform.
Support air-gapped installation for regulated and disconnected environments, helping to ensure that the components, upgrades, and patches are made available to the system and that they operate consistently and correctly in the controlled environment and keep data secure.
Secure software supply chain enhancements help seamlessly shift security left with three new capabilities that increase efficiency across dev and ops and accelerates the path to productions:
- Tanzu Application Platform expands the ecosystem of supported vulnerability scanners with a beta integration with VMware Carbon Black scanner (in addition to Snyk and Grype) to enable customer choice and leverage their existing investments in securing their supply chain.
- A new, centralized vulnerability monitoring dashboard will aid app teams with their pre-deployment security checks and secure app deployments.
- Software bill of materials (SBoM) support for SPDX in addition to CycloneDX to give teams choice in how they import and export SBoMs via the VMware Tanzu insight CLI plug-in.
Dynamic API specification registration to improve the developer experience for workloads exposing API specifications. Workloads will be able to define a given set of APIs, and a secure supply chain will auto-register the workload’s specification with the Backstage API catalog. This will allow Backstage’s API Docs plugin to display them for discovery and consumption of those APIs defined in the specification, based on role-based access control settings.
Jenkins integration for users with existing Jenkins pipelines will be able to use them alongside Tanzu Application Platform. The integration will allow Jenkins and Tanzu Application Platform to manage specific steps in the overall CI/CD pipeline, and to automate triggering of Jenkins jobs from Tanzu Application Platform. This feature will enable users to leverage and extend investments in existing CI/CD processes on Jenkins.
Continuous delivery at scale with VMware Tanzu Application Service 3.0
VMware Tanzu Application Service provides application development teams with an automated path to production for custom code, and a secure, highly available runtime that scales to support the most demanding operations teams for continuous delivery across clouds. At VMware Explore, we are pre-announcing new capabilities planned for release in Tanzu Application Service 3.0 that will enhance the overall experience for both developers and operators using the platform. Here’s a quick look at some of the new features expected to be made available in October 2022.
Developer-focused features in Tanzu Application Service 3.0 will include shared routes between spaces, improvements to Apps Manager search, Apple M1 architecture support for CLI, and step-up autoscaling in Apps Manager.
Operator-focused features will include a new release versioning format, more frequent updates in the long-term support program, the ability to mute noisy application logs, support for Jammy Jellyfish stemcell rollouts, and the addition of fair CPU entitlement.
Platform extensions include Application Service Adapter for Tanzu Application Platform, a Cloud Foundry compatibility layer for Tanzu Application Platform that is expected to become generally available in late 2022. This will offer a base level of Cloud Foundry compatibility for customers interested in trying out Kubernetes and Tanzu Application Platform without re-tooling.
Learn more about what's coming next for Tanzu Application Service.
Scale Kubernetes operations across your clouds
Let’s face it, even though cloud native technologies are industry-changing, containers and cloud-based infrastructure introduces some complexity. With silos of cloud usage across on premises, in public cloud, and at the edge, you can have widely inconsistent experiences for operations and development. This makes scaling and security a challenge.
VMware Tanzu for Kubernetes Operations can offer platform teams an enterprise-ready foundation for operating a modern, multi-cloud container infrastructure. Comprising the full set of operations-focused technologies in the VMware Tanzu portfolio, Tanzu for Kubernetes Operations provides the tools, automation, and data-driven insights to help optimize infrastructure performance across one’s entire multi-cloud IT estate. Today we are announcing numerous enhancements to VMware Tanzu Mission Control, VMware Tanzu Kubernetes Grid, VMware Tanzu Service Mesh built on VMware NSX, VMware Aria Operations for Applications, and VMware NSX Advanced Load Balancer, that contribute to improved operational simplicity, security, and optimization of cloud native infrastructure for platform teams.
Expand multi-cloud and multi-cluster management with Tanzu Mission Control
Tanzu Mission Control is gaining new features that extend its management capabilities for multi-cloud and multi-cluster Kubernetes.
Preview for lifecycle management of Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS) clusters can enable direct provisioning and management of Amazon EKS clusters so that developers and operators have less friction and more choices for cluster types. Teams will be able to simplify multi-cloud, multi-cluster Kubernetes management with centralized lifecycle management of Tanzu Kubernetes Grid and Amazon EKS cluster types. Learn more about the upcoming preview for lifecycle management of Amazon EKS clusters.
Integration with VMware Aria Automation, formerly known as VMware vRealize Automation Cloud, will help customers consolidate their Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Kubernetes platform operations. Operators can design cloud infrastructure and underlying services on any VMware vSphere-based or public cloud and also deploy Kubernetes clusters directly via Aria Automation with Tanzu Mission Control policies that also comply with Aria Automation rules and constraints. Learn more about integration with VMware Aria Automation.
Continuous delivery via GitOps enables users to deploy clusters via GitOps for consistent cluster configuration. This feature provides a method for managing cluster configurations with Tanzu Mission Control via continuous delivery from a git repository. Learn more.
Reliability with cross-cluster backup and restore enables application operators to move applications between any cluster, running on any cloud, or on-prem data center for improved application resiliency and simplified site recovery. Learn more about driving clusters via GitOps in Tanzu Mission Control.
Unify the app experience across clouds with Tanzu Kubernetes Grid 2.0
Tanzu Kubernetes Grid is an enterprise-ready Kubernetes runtime and with the release of Tanzu Kubernetes Grid 2.0, now includes a unified experience for applications whether running hybrid, private, or public cloud. This can help streamline the management, provisioning, and lifecycle management of Kubernetes clusters. Tanzu Kubernetes Grid 2.0 is tightly integrated with vSphere 8, bringing open-source API alignment, improved application lifecycle management capabilities with Carvel-based tooling, and greater flexibility and control thanks to the Cluster API feature, ClusterClass. Learn more about what's in Tanzu Kubernetes Grid 2.0.
Achieve full-stack observability with VMware Aria Operations for Applications
VMware Aria Operations for Applications (formerly VMware Tanzu Observability) is bringing together metrics, traces, and logs in one solution with Unified Observability. The introduction of log management makes integrated observability a reality. This can give users a unified view of logs, metrics, and traces in a single solution; and can make log analysis faster and more relevant in the context of metrics and trace data. Learn more about VMware Aria Operations for Applications.
Address threats faster with NSX Advanced Load Balancer bot management
VMware NSX Advanced Load Balancer adds new bot management capabilities to help enterprises address threats quickly and efficiently, providing enhanced multi-layer application protection with existing Web Application Firewall, DDoS protection, and API security.
Deliver enterprise-grade application connectivity and security with Tanzu Service Mesh
Connecting, securing, and scaling modern applications automatically is key for enterprises to be successful in a Kubernetes environment. VMware Tanzu Service Mesh provides enterprise-grade service mesh capabilities based on the popular Istio technology, plus numerous add-ons that address critical enterprise-level needs for connectivity, security, visibility, and scale.
Today, we're announcing the addition of several enterprise and application resiliency capabilities into Tanzu Service Mesh: support for customer-owned enterprise certificate authority through integration with Venafi, improved security with enterprise-approved container image registries, data services support, external services support, and a global SLO dashboard that allows developers and site-reliability engineers to view all managed service SLOs, helping with capacity planning, troubleshooting, and understanding the health of their applications. Learn more about these additions to Tanzu Service Mesh.
Get consistency across Oracle and Google Clouds with VMware Tanzu Standard
To provide customers the opportunity to further eliminate management silos, we’re happy to announce the availability of VMware Tanzu Standard on Google Cloud VMware Engine and VMware Tanzu Standard on Oracle Cloud VMware Solution. Enterprise customers can now standardize with a consistent runtime across clouds and run VM and container workloads side by side with a single point of governance for operations teams. This can also provide full control over their underlying infrastructure to maintain operational models whether private cloud, public cloud, or at the edge.
Enablement resources for platform teams using VMware Tanzu
A common goal of these new capabilities and enhancements is to enable teams to get more value from their applications. Doing so requires technology as well as cloud native skills and practices. More and more organizations are building dedicated platform teams, usually training existing operations talent in cloud native technologies and the skills and practices needed for platform engineering, DevOps, DevSecOps, or site-reliability engineering.
Whether newly implemented or well-established, a platform team will have ongoing enablement needs as it develops and manages a cloud native app platform. The new VMware Tanzu Tech Zone makes it easy to find all the information, learning assets, and tools needed to understand, evaluate, and deploy VMware Tanzu solutions. Learn about the Tanzu Tech Zone launch.
Phew! That wraps up our preview of the VMware Tanzu announcements at VMware Explore 2022. We have many sessions covering these new features and enhancements across three tracks, plus lightning talks, demos, and more. Check out our curated list of not-to-miss sessions.
