What is VMware Tanzu Application Platform v1.1?
There is no question that VMware is undergoing a metamorphosis from the traditional days of a hypervisor running virtual machines. VMware is now a powerful software company spearheading the pathway to the cloud for companies and facilitating multi-cloud architecture for businesses looking to take advantage of the best that each cloud service provider has to provide. The VMware Tanzu platform drives this shift that VMware is making and provides organizations with the architecture and tools needed to build modernized applications. The VMware Tanzu Application Platform is one component of the Tanzu platform. What is the VMware Tanzu Application Platform? What features are included with VMware Tanzu Application Platform v1.1?
What is driving app modernization?
The Kubernetes platform has emerged as the dominant force in cloud-native technologies, allowing organizations to modernize their applications using containers. Kubernetes helps solve the problems associated with orchestrating and provisioning containers for high availability, scalability, and DevOps processes with a powerful API interface.
However, plain vanilla Kubernetes is difficult to provision, configure, and manage. Many companies are trying to solve the issue of managing Kubernetes itself. VMware has come up with one of the best ways to do this, in my honest opinion, by building on technologies that enterprise customers know and use today, VMware vSphere.
VMware Tanzu is the umbrella solution containing many different products and solutions, including VMware Tanzu for vSphere. You can read my walkthrough of how to standup Vmware vSphere with Tanzu Home Lab here:
What is the VMware Tanzu Application Platform?
A component of the VMware Tanzu portfolio is VMware Tanzu Application Platform. As defined by VMware, the VMware Tanzu Application Platform is a package set of components that helps developers and operators easily build, deploy, and manage apps on a Kubernetes platform. As noted by VMware, the Tanzu Application Platform provides simplified workflows using two different concepts they refer to as an inner loop and an outer loop. What are these?
VMware Tanzu Application Platform inner loop and out loop
The two loops are described as the following:
- Inner loop – This is the developer’s local development environment. It is where coding takes place, along with testing applications. These activities involve writing code, committing to a code repository like Git, deploying to a lower-level development pipeline and environment such as development/staging/test, and making any needed changes.
- Outer loop – This loop describes the steps to deploy apps to production and maintain them. The outer loop includes building container images, integrating container security, and configuring CI/CD pipelines.
For businesses looking to move quickly, VMware Tanzu Application Platform shortcuts the process to get code rolled out into production running on top of Kubernetes. It does this by easily implementing the needed security and scalability to satisfy security, governance, and compliance guidelines that need to be met to align with their business objectives.
With the VMware Tanzu Application Platform, the roles of developers and operators are clearly defined so they can work collaboratively and integrate their efforts. Developers can quickly get started developing, building, and testing code. Likewise, operations teams can create the infrastructure needed for developers to begin building and testing applications rapidly, regardless of whether they are familiar with Kubernetes.
When the container is built, it is updated every time new code is deployed and committed.
Install the Tanzu Application Platform
The VMware Tanzu Application Platform has been described as a “DevOps in a box” solution. It is installed on top of Kubernetes in the public cloud or in a private data center. Note the following benefits:
- It is modular
- It is application-aware
- It can scale to serve multiple developers at the same time
- It modernizes the software supply-chain
- It allows you to have an effortless Kubernetes application deployment
- It helps businesses deploy serverless computing capabilities
You can get up and running with the VMware Tanzu Application Platform using readily available downloads. There is a walkthrough step-by-step of how to install the VMware Tanzu Application Platform here:
I am not posting the full screenshots of installing the VMware Tanzu Application Platform. However, with the VMware Tanzu Application Platform, you can run this on Minikube in Windows 10 or Windows 11. Below is a screenshot of installing Minikube in Windows 11 using the Chocolatey solution.
Starting the Minikube cluster using the Hyper-V driver.
New capabilities and features found in the VMware Tanzu Application Platform 1.1
Recently, VMware has introduced the VMware Tanzu Application Platform 1.1. It provides exciting capabilities for customers, including the following:
- Accelerate workload deployment across multiple clusters and gain visibility across environments.
- Dramatically simplify platform deployment processes with installation profiles.
- Drive greater agility with software supply chain ability to use pre-built container images.
- Get instant visualization on workload status as it moves through the supply chain.
- Build a strong security foundation with consistent Role-Based Access Controls (RBAC).
VMware is also hosting a webinar on accelerating development using the new VMware Tanzu Application Platform. You can read more details about the webinar here:
VMware Tanzu Application Platform FAQs
- What is VMware Tanzu Application Platform? The VMware Tanzu Application Platform allows businesses to accelerate their application development on top of Kubernetes. It provides the perfect balance between developers and operations, allowing both teams to seamlessly provide the resources needed for modern applications while bolstering security, scalability, and flexibility.
- Is VMware Tanzu free? – VMware Tanzu Community Edition is free. The VMware Tanzu portfolio of products is a paid offering from VMware that comes in different product versions, including Basic, Standard, and Advanced Editions, each including the capabilities contained in the lower level SKUs.
- Are containers and Kubernetes the same thing? While containers and Kubernetes work together, they are not the same thing. Containers allow applications to run with self-contained dependencies packaged together. They are an extremely small footprint. Kubernetes is the orchestration engine that manages the containers to ensure they are highly available, scale, and can be used for modern applications.
- What is VMware Tanzu Community Edition? VMware Tanzu Community Edition is a free version of VMware Tanzu that allows all to get their hands on VMware Tanzu for learning, POC, local development, etc.
Final Notes
The new VMware Tanzu Application Platform is a great solution that provides a balanced mix between development and Ops, accelerating the application development lifecycle.
