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My Experience with VMware Virtualization: Tanzu and Kubernetes
Rapid change is around us; we are flooded with new concepts and technologies. As I finish designing and implementing my home lab environment based on VMware vSphere, I can deploy and test many new VMware products and features like vSphere 7 U2, vSAN, vRealize Automation 8.3, and vRealize Orchestrator 8.3. In this article, I will delve into the new possibilities of hosting cloud-native workloads in the vSphere environment.
One of the exciting features I explored is Tanzu, a new suite of products released by VMware in April 2020. Tanzu offers key capabilities in three different pillars: Run, Manage, and Build. The “Run” part is what I will focus on today, and it enables the vSphere infrastructure to natively run Containers and ease management with Kubernetes orchestration.
Tanzu is derived from the Japanese word Tansu (Jap. 箪笥), an antique lightweight wooden cabinet. No paper anymore; now it’s digital transformation. The software version offers key capabilities in three different pillars: Run, Manage and Build.
The key function of Tanzu is to enable the vSphere infrastructure to natively run Containers and ease management with Kubernetes orchestration. It offers huge enterprise-grade integrations to consume SDDC resources in the container and Kubernetes world. Furthermore, it offers a secure and efficient way to make it possible for administrators to support developers. This is truly DevOps and no bullshit bingo anymore.
Tanzu is fully upstream Kubernetes compliant; one vSphere cluster can automatically deploy and manage almost unlimited amounts of custom-size Kubernetes clusters to run enterprise services. Every department can get their DEV and PROD clusters to have isolation and security, and it runs on the same easy-to-manage and high-available platform. Despite that, you can run VMs in these supervisor clusters too—just magical!
To prepare for Tanzu, you must first ensure you have the necessary requirements:
1. vSphere 7 U2 or higher
2. NSX-T (optional but recommended)
3. vRealize Automation 8.3 or higher
4. vRealize Orchestrator 8.3 or higher
5. Tanzu Kubernetes Grid Cluster (TKG)
Once you have met the requirements, you can enable Tanzu on your vSphere cluster by following these steps:
1. Create a new TKG cluster.
2. Configure permissions in VCenter.
3. Define persistent storage with storage policy-based management (SPBM).
You now have two options to run container workloads: either natively on vSphere with ESXi hosts as container hosts or on Tanzu Kubernetes Grid Cluster. If you want to run the special native version, NSX-T is mandatory. Despite that, you can run TKG Cluster with either NSX-T or the free variant (HA Proxy or NSX advanced load balancer essential).
In conclusion, Tanzu offers a new world of possibilities for hosting cloud-native workloads in the vSphere environment. It eases management with Kubernetes orchestration and provides enterprise-grade integrations to consume SDDC resources in the container and Kubernetes world. I hope you enjoyed this article, and I’ll see you next time!