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Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform vs VMware Tanzu Platform comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 9, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Red Hat OpenShift Container...
Ranking in Container Management
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
49
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
VMware Tanzu Platform
Ranking in Container Management
3rd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
21
Ranking in other categories
Build Automation (13th), PaaS Clouds (12th), Cloud Management (25th), Development Platforms (3rd), Service Mesh (7th), Agile and DevOps Services (2nd)
 

Featured Reviews

Vlado Velkovski - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides automation that speeds up our process by 30% and helps us achieve zero downtime
OpenShift has a pretty steep learning curve. It's not an easy tool to use. It's not only OpenShift but Kubernetes itself. The good thing is that Red Hat provides specific targeted training. There are five or six pieces of training where you can get certifications. The licenses for OpenShift are pretty expensive, so they could be cheaper because the competition isn't sleeping, and Red Hat must take that into account. There are a few versions of OpenShift. There is the normal OpenShift and an OpenShift Plus license. Red Hat could think of how to connect those two subscriptions because, with Red Hat Plus, you have one tool called ACM (Advanced Cluster Management), where you can manage multiple clusters from one place. We deployed this functionality by ourselves, but if you don't pay the license for Red Hat OpenShift Plus, you'll lack this functionality. If you have a multi-cloud environment and you have a lot of work to do, it would be a plus if the Red Had OpenShift Plus license came in a bundle with the regular solutions. This ACM tool should be available in the normal subscription, not just the Plus version. There are new versions on an almost weekly basis. I found myself that the upgrading of OpenShift clusters is not a task that will successfully finish every time. It's a simple and quick, but not reliable process. That's why we use multiple clusters. We use v4.10.3, but we want to move to v4.12.X. The upgrade process itself can fail, and we don't have backups of our OpenShift cluster because we have backups of all the Kubernetes manifests on GitHub. We destroy the cluster, bring up a new one quickly, and apply those scripts. The upgrade itself could be more resilient for us as administrators of OpenShift to be sure that it'll succeed and not occasionally fail. They can improve the reliability of their upgrade process. They also have implementations of some Red Hat-verified operators for a lot of products like Elasticsearch. They're good enough for development purposes, but some of the OpenShift operators still lack resilient production-grade configurations. Red Hat says that we have a few hundred operators, but I believe that only half of them are production-grade ready at this moment. They need to work much more on those operators to become more flexible because you can deploy all of them in development mode, but when we go to production grade and want to make specific changes to the operator and configuration, we lack those possibilities.
DarshanChaudhari - PeerSpot reviewer
Empowers seamless connectivity and integration through APIs while offering robust auto-scaling
I am involved in IT services and we provide a solution to customers. We work with VMware, Nutanix, OpenShift, and Microsoft Hyper-V The Tanzu platform is highly available, scalable, and flexible. It offers native services for autoscaling and integrations through APIs, allowing seamless…

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"Autoscaling is an excellent feature that makes it very simple to scale our applications as required."
"It has been a good solution to deploy all containerized applications."
"The most valuable feature is that the solution can be deployed in the cloud which removes the expense of a server."
"OpenShift's core-based licensing model provides significant benefits regarding enterprise support and scalability."
"Openshift is a very developer-friendly product."
"The solution's security throughout the stack and the software supply chain is very reliable. When it was on-prem, it was by default secured by our company firewalls and security tools, and now it's in the cloud, which has its security and systems in place. This provides stability to our infrastructure."
"The stack in the software supply chain is one of the main reasons that we use OpenShift. When I came to this company, we bought hardware from IBM named Bluemix, and they used ICP, which stands for IBM Cloud Private."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is its scalability on demand, which allows for potentially lower costs, and Built-in resiliency."
"Defining security metrics has proven beneficial for customers in maintaining a safe environment."
"The multi-tenancy with the VCD is great."
"The solution is integrated very well with a lot of other systems. Also, its GUI is very good."
"It definitely gives the end customer a good overview and perspective of running applications in terms of overall workload footprint. TMC provides a very detailed description of your cloud-native application in the form of graphical visualization."
"The Tanzu platform is highly available, scalable, and flexible."
"The most popular feature of VMware Tanzu Mission Control is its graphical user interface for describing network policies on the Service Mesh, which is highly integrable with other tools commonly used in supply chains such as security."
"I have multiple Kubernetes environments within my environment. TMC gives me a single pane view, which is good for managing everything."
"The initial setup is easy."
 

Cons

"OpenShift Container Platform is an expensive solution, and its pricing could be improved."
"One challenge is that sometimes it may be difficult to find the answers to your questions if you are not a Red Hat customer."
"With the recent trend of cloud-native, fully managed serverless services, I don't see much documentation about how a customer should move from on-prem to the cloud, or what is the best way to do a lift-and-shift. Even if you are on AWS OCP, which is self-managed infra services, and you want to use the ROSA managed services, what is the best way to achieve that migration? I don't see documentation for these kinds of use cases from Red Hat."
"One area for improvement is that we can't currently run Docker inside a container, as it clashes with security consents. It would be good if we could change that."
"The support costs are too high."
"Another thing that bugs me is that they removed the software in NFS storage. I don't understand why because this is a common type of storage. I am having problems with that, so I wish they would put it back."
"The product's interface is a bit buggy."
"We've encountered challenges when transitioning applications between these environments."
"Another area of improvement is pricing."
"Cost is always a concern. Smaller companies might find the price a bigger issue."
"The network control and security policies must be improved."
"Tanzu could provide more granular control over whatever networking is being done on the containers. I would also like to see a slightly more detailed view of application-level tracing. I'm referring to the connections between different microservices. If they added a service-matching feature, that would be helpful for the customers to build or be more effective."
"I would like to see additional support for things outside of Cloud Foundry."
"It is not easy to build a solution with containers. It has a graphical user interface, but you need to have a lot of knowledge of Linux and how to work in the command mode. Its support can also be improved. Currently, its biggest disadvantage is that it is a new product, and the clients prefer to go for a solution that has been in the market for a long time. There are not that many people who know this product."
"Having a unified dashboard to manage all infrastructure, whether it involves additional IT infrastructure or modern apps, would be highly advantageous"
"The infrastructure is quite challenging."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I'm not familiar with pricing or financial aspects. In terms of effort versus benefit, it's worth it."
"The pricing and licensing are handled on an upper management level, and I'm not involved in that, but I understand the solution to be somewhat pricey."
"Its price is a bit high because it's a premium product, but as long as the business is ready to pay for that, it's okay."
"It depends on who you're talking to. For a large corporation, it is acceptable, other than the significant infrastructure requirements. For a small organization, it is in no way suitable, and we'd go for Amazon's container solution."
"The pricing is expensive for licensing."
"OpenShift with Red Hat support is pretty costly. We have done a comparison between AWS EKS (Elastic Kubernetes Services) which provides fully managed services from AWS. It's built on open-source-based Kubernetes clusters and it is much cheaper compared to Red Hat, but it is a little expensive compared to ECS provided by AWS."
"OpenShift Container Platform is highly-priced."
"Its licensing is completely incomprehensible. We have special people within our company. They discuss with Red Hat subscription managers. It is too complex, and I do not understand it. We are from the government, and we are trying to be as cheap as possible. Sometimes, I am just amazed at the amount of money that we have to pay. It is crazy."
"The license for VMware Tanzu Application Service is expensive. The license should be cheaper."
"The solution is only for large or medium size enterprises because it is expensive."
"One of our Spanish customers told us that VMware Tanzu Service Mesh is a very expensive product for their data center."
"The least expensive licensing cost for VMware is around $350 per core."
"I would recommend that businesses look into the full price for their requirements. The price is high, but there are some open-source add-ons that can be used for customization while keeping costs down, although these might not be suitable for everyone."
"VMware Tanzu Mission Control is cheaper than Red Hat OpenShift."
"The licensing cost is expensive."
"The solution is bundled in with Cloud Foundry so the pricing is not independent."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
22%
Computer Software Company
12%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
16%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

Which is better - OpenShift Container Platform or VMware Tanzu Mission Control?
Red Hat Openshift is ideal for organizations using microservices and cloud environments. I like that the platform is auto-scalable, which saves overhead time for developers. I think Openshift can b...
What do you like most about OpenShift Container Platform?
The tool's most valuable features include high availability, scalability, and security. Other features like advanced cluster management, advanced cluster security, and Red Hat Quay make it powerful...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for OpenShift Container Platform?
OpenShift pricing varies by region. For example, a simple cluster with three nodes in DAL-10 might cost around $560 to $580 per month, subject to specific configurations like memory and CPU cores.
What do you like most about VMware Tanzu Application Service?
The solution is integrated very well with a lot of other systems. Also, its GUI is very good.
What is your primary use case for VMware Tanzu Application Service?
Since I have a developer team, they use the solution for testing purposes.
What advice do you have for others considering VMware Tanzu Application Service?
I would definitely recommend the solution to those planning to use it. I rate the overall solution an eight and a half out of ten.
 

Also Known As

No data available
Tanzu Application Catalog, Application Platform, Application Service, Hub, Mission Control, Service Mesh, Build Service, Concourse for VMware Tanzu
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Edenor, BMW, Ford, Argentine Ministry of Health
Verizon, Cerner, Zipcar, Avarteq
Find out what your peers are saying about Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform vs. VMware Tanzu Platform and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
849,686 professionals have used our research since 2012.