VMware Tanzu Platform Reviews

In previous discussions, we have covered VMware solutions, specifically VMware Site Recovery Manager and other Dell products.

We have discussed VMware products we are working with, particularly VMware Site Recovery, and have raised some concerns. We have seen pros and cons of VMware Site Recovery Manager.

We are working with VMware products such as vCenter, vROps, Telco Cloud, and vCF, VMware Cloud Foundation. These products are currently in use in my company.

Safaricom Ethiopia has their own platform, their own wallet, the M-Pesa wallet. Every top-up involves running many applications, and those applications run on this Tanzu cluster.

We are using vSphere with Tanzu for this. VMware with vSphere with Tanzu is one of the features similar to HA, DRS, in vCenter. We are enabling this feature, and we can use Kubernetes on the vCenter side. It is very simple to manage and monitor, as most of our applications run on containerization. We are using this solution for that purpose.

Aria Operations, formerly known as VMware vRealize Operations, has been renamed to vROps. We are currently using this for monitoring purposes.

For orchestration, we are using VCD to automate Telco Cloud. VCD is an automation tool, and we are also using VMware Tanzu Platform for the Kubernetes environment, alongside TKG, Tanzu Kubernetes Grid. These are also other solutions for the Tanzu Kubernetes environment. For Telco Cloud, we are using it to automate our company's operations, which is for a telecom company. We are familiar with these products, especially vCenter, ESXi, VCD, vCF, and vROps.

It is very easy to integrate applications when we deploy vCenter and ESXi since we can enable vSphere with Tanzu feature. We can build namespaces and provide application developers the platform to deploy their applications on pods within containerization. We can easily manage, pull results, and create containers efficiently, making it a simple way to handle applications. We provide namespace labels for application developers, and we can manage their resources along with other aspects easily.

Regarding security, we use many tools such as CDX and LDAP, AD for integrating our Kubernetes cluster with the developer teams. We can manage roles and permissions simply. It is very straightforward to integrate with EDX and other third-party tools, Active Directory, to the Kubernetes cluster, allowing easy access and management.

The price is very high compared to other Kubernetes environments because Kubernetes is open source. We can easily work with Docker, and when we compare it with OpenShift, the price is very high. We have a long-term plan to move towards OpenShift or other Kubernetes environments in the future because the price is very steep.

There are some bugs when upgrading the Kubernetes cluster, especially on the Valero pod. When we upgraded, we encountered an issue, and during that time, we contacted the Broadcom team for assistance. They provided information, and we worked on a patch after resolving that bug.

In the previous time, we upgraded our environment, Kubernetes, vSphere with Tanzu Kubernetes cluster to the latest version. Broadcom recommended this upgrade because there was a bug in the previous solution. After we upgraded to the latest version, we encountered an issue with our backup solution, PPDM, Dell PowerProtect, which also supports the Kubernetes environment. We faced a problem where the Kubernetes cluster could not be discovered for backup, as the Valero pod was not in a running state. We contacted the Broadcom team for support, and they resolved the problem with some scripts and recommended we wait for their bug release. After that, the problem was fixed.

VMware Tanzu Platform clusters are deployed in on-premises data centers. We have no experience with cloud solutions. I read some blogs from Broadcom teams stating that vSphere TKG's support multi-cloud, but vSphere with Tanzu is dedicated to Broadcom products, not for other solutions such as AWS or Google Cloud. It is not supported with vSphere with Tanzu.

The support from Broadcom is very good. We have a service level agreement with our company that states if the severity is P1, which is the highest critical level, the support teams engage within 30 minutes to resolve the issue, involving their senior team and even developers when we face critical issues. I rate their support teams as good, 9 out of 10.

Positive

vSphere with Tanzu is one of the features for vCenter.

It is very beneficial as the world is moving towards containerization. VMware Tanzu Platform is a very good product for our company, especially in Ethiopia, which is not highly developed in technology. We are improving ourselves, and we can easily get support from Broadcom teams when we face any issues beyond our knowledge. Kubernetes is open source, and we are not able to adapt this technology easily without support teams. Currently, the support team from Broadcom is also good in my view.

I recommend VMware Tanzu Platform to other companies because Ethiopian developers or engineers are not capable of handling the Kubernetes environment by themselves without support teams. I recommend this solution, which offers flexible support from Broadcom.

We are using Broadcom vSphere with Tanzu currently for our containerization environment.

On a scale of 1-10, I rate VMware Tanzu Platform an 8.

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 connectivity with third-party tools for observability and security. The platform also supports encryption at rest and transit, and the integration with NSX-T provides micro-segmentation functionality.

Customers have noticed a considerable price increase after VMware's acquisition by Broadcom. Another issue is the dependency on VMware's ecosystem, as Tanzu cannot be independently deployed on other hypervisors or cloud platforms.

I have been working with VMware Tanzu for six months.

As a platform, VMware Tanzu is quite stable. However, when customers transition from monolithic to microservices architectures, there can be issues due to technology interdependencies in terms of libraries that Tanzu currently supports.

Scalability is excellent; I would rate it as nine out of ten because of the extensive scalability features offered by the platform.

The quality of VMware's customer service varies depending on the customer. For enterprise customers, VMware offers exceptional support, but general support can be slow to initiate because of queues. 

I would rate the general support as seven out of ten.

Neutral

The initial setup is relatively easy with the latest version, which is more matured and has a broader availability of skilled personnel. 

I would rate the initial setup experience as an eight out of ten.

The least expensive licensing cost for VMware is around $350 per core. Pricing varies based on commitment and volumetric, with discounts provided for long-term commitments. VMware sells directly or through distributor channels.

Potential users should be aware of the associated costs and the timeline required for deployment. Tanzu offers excellent stability, scalability, and flexibility features. 

My overall rating for VMware Tanzu platform is eight out of ten.

We are using the VMware Tanzu Platform in our customer environment.

The VMware Tanzu Platform provides excellent services such as Postgres, RabbitMQ, and the platform as a service capabilities. We are particularly satisfied with the PCF (Pivotal Cloud Foundry) functionality. We feel very good about these features.

The VMware Tanzu Platform has been maintained by the customer, so we have not encountered any major issues.

One potential area for expansion would be leveraging AI capabilities, which my customer might be interested in exploring as they grow.

The VMware Tanzu Platform has been implemented for almost five to six years.

We are satisfied with the performance.

I am only on the consuming side of the VMware Tanzu Platform. As they grow, they might want to establish or set up additional details for platform expansion. Leveraging AI could be another choice that my customer would be interested in exploring.

Positive

I used different solutions approximately nine to ten years ago.

We are only consuming the VMware Tanzu Platform. It is managed by the customer's infrastructure teams. We are not directly involved in setting up anything, as we are solely users of the platform.

The infrastructure team handled the implementation. Since we have some application setup, we do not have direct interaction with them.

Based on my experience, I would rate the VMware Tanzu Platform between 8 and 8.5 out of 10.

The product has a lot of business applications in our company. It is a platform for running Kubernetes and microservices applications.

The most important thing about the solution is its flexibility. We can divide all our environments into namespaces and give developers their own space to do anything they need to do. The security features can be managed via policies. From an operations point of view, it is much better than using monolithic, Windows-based servers like IAS and SQL Server.

The network control and security policies must be improved.

I have been using the solution for almost two years.

The tool’s stability is moderately high. I rate the stability a seven or eight out of ten. We had an issue with the increase in the storage spaces in the Tanzu data stores, and it caused some outages.

The tool is highly scalable. We grew from three servers to 201 in one day without any interference in the business process. I rate the scalability a nine out of ten. We have only one business application in the production environment. We have around 1500 users. We are planning to increase the usage.

Previously, we used IAS and SQL Server that were Windows-based. Most of our applications were monolithic ones. We would have to redevelop all the platforms to scale up and down our business applications. So, we decided to switch to VMware.

The initial setup is easy. However, it becomes a little complicated if we want to change something, especially on the network or security side. We didn’t need to spend much time or resources to set up the tool. I rate the ease of setup a seven to eight out of ten. For now, the product is deployed on-premise. We might deploy it in the cloud when we scale up.

It took us a few weeks to deploy the tool. The time taken depends on the number of human resources we have. Two people in my organization are in charge of the environment, and we have an external integrator who supports us. We need one person to maintain the product. We do not have to do much maintenance.

The solution saved me money because I didn’t need to hire a new specialist. I only had to choose an integrator who knows the Tanzu environment, and we have plenty of them here in Israel.

I work in a government organization. There are no cheap solutions for us. One of the main competitors of Tanzu is much cheaper than Tanzu. I rate the pricing a seven or eight out of ten. The product is not expensive, but it is not cheap. Tanzu comes with many other tools like ESXi Server and vCenter, making it expensive. Based on our use cases, the tool becomes more expensive.

We evaluated other options. We chose VMware because we were familiar with all VMware products. It's easy to deploy. It is much easier to work with than any other solutions we have worked with before. It also provides flexibility and visual support.

It is too early to see the benefits of the product in our organization. We are still on our way to redeveloping our application to be microservices and Kubernetes-based. The issues we encounter with the product will probably be resolved in a few months with the newer versions.

We on the operation side have noticed improvements, but the business side has not noticed improvements yet. We do not use support. We mostly solve the problems with the help of our internal personnel or our integrator. I will recommend the product to others. Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

We are just trying to set it up. It's very young at this point in time. We haven't done much. We're still trying to evaluate the scale and at what level it can work. We are currently working with the Tanzu product team, and we are seeing how it can be leveraged specifically for our environment. 

I have multiple Kubernetes environments within my environment. TMC gives me a single pane view, which is good for managing everything.

The other part is that Tanzu is coming up with vRA integration. It's a vRA product for infrastructure management and virtualization. On top of it, we have VCF as well. With that, the management of all the clusters isn't a big time management task. So, the management of all the clusters becomes very easy for me, and my administrative activities are coming down. This is something that isn't available with OpenShift.

Tanzu provides better manageability as compared to OCP, but when it comes to tagging it with other products, it's a bit rigid. If I have to bring in any new product or something out of the box from a different vendor, working with Tanzu becomes a little difficult. For example, if I want to use the F5 services, I have to add one more layer of Avi, but I don't want to do that. If I have a list of the products that I want to use, such as for firewall services, with Tanzu, I will have to go through another layer, which creates complexity. 

The other part is that the virtualization and the database have to be at separate levels. That is another problem for me. We are a big Oracle customer. Oracle and VMware don't go very well. From a licensing point of view, it never works.

It has been only two months. 

We're in the early stages. So, I cannot comment on its stability, but I'm assuming it'll be good.

I'm yet to see its scalability.

In some of the areas, they are not that technical, but overall, they have a good amount of knowledge. They do have the knowledge, but sometimes, they struggle when it comes to a large environment. I would rate them an 8 out of 10.

Positive

We were mostly using OpenShift on the data analytics platforms. We are now replacing the open system and putting all the containers here. We have a very strong bond with VMware. We have VMware for all of our layers and the network. We have NSX, ESX, etc. 95% of the environment is completely virtualized on the VMware platform. So, we thought of spinning off another product in order to keep other scales balanced. We have about 20,000 servers and 600 large applications. We are managing a hundred petabytes of data. So, going with a single product or single vendor is always a risk for us. So, in order to mitigate that kind of risk, we wanted to have an alternative product. That's where Tanzu came into the picture. Tanzu is not yet as mature as OpenShift. They can gain that only by putting more customers into their product. 

Because this is an enterprise-level product, we hired professional services from VMware, and they're helping us with it. I would rate them a four out of five. Tanzu is not yet a mature product, and it's not present in large environments. It's not widely used at this point in time. So, the professional services team is inexperienced with large setups. They struggle in that area. For a smaller environment, they might do a very good job, but when it comes to a big environment like ours, they're struggling a little.

Its pricing is very competitive. We get around 70% or 75%, sometimes even 80%, discount on the product. I would rate it a four out of five in terms of pricing.

One of the reasons why we didn't go for Rancher or any other product is that we are a big VMware virtualization customer. So, it was a natural choice for us. Otherwise, from a product point of view, personally, I would've chosen Rancher over any of the other products.

I would rate it an 8 out of 10 for now.

It was used for seamless cluster management of Tanzu Kubernetes Grid clusters, providing a user interface for Kubernetes management. PMC serves as the management control plane for TKG, allowing for lifecycle management of the platform.

We were an infrastructure service provider. Our primary use case was upgrading the Kubernetes cluster.

It was intended for a single cluster. We couldn't operationalize it due to the customer's compliance concerns with the SaaS-based offering, which didn't support an on-premise implementation model at that time.

Moreover, we didn't leverage the policy management feature of Tanzu Mission Control extensively, as we had basic role-based access control at the Tanzu Kubernetes cluster layer. However, Tanzu Mission Control offers fine-grained policy management functionality.

From a product perspective, it really differentiates in streamlining operational experience for cluster management. Without a user interface or dashboard, managing clusters traditionally involves command line interface (CLI).

My team managed clusters non-graphically through CLI, from implementation to entire lifecycle management. TMC provided a graphical interface, offloading some operational management from CLI to TMC.

As an infrastructure service provider, our customers deployed cloud-native applications. We provided Tanzu to them. So, there's a clear distinction between the infrastructure and the application. The application lifecycle management, which is cloud-native application management, was done by the customer, not us. We were providing Tanzu to the customer, and the customer would then implement or deploy their cloud-native applications.

So, there isn't really any integration required with TMC itself. You just register your existing cluster using a token with TMC, and you're done. There's no separate integration needed. 

But, 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. 

For example, it shows you how many applications you're running, how much storage you're using, and all other sorts of things associated with your application. Without TMC, you would need to see this information using the command-line interface. So, that makes developers' and application owners' lives a little bit easier, in terms of visualization.

The ease of registering multiple Kubernetes clusters, having a single pane of visibility on its dashboard, and performing lifecycle management operations. It's intuitive and offers an app store-like interface for installing applications on Tanzu Kubernetes Grid clusters.

So, ease of use is one of the aspects I really liked about it. 

From my understanding, the user interface and application visibility didn't present major downsides. Everything was manageable from the console or dashboard.

Our TMC usage was limited, and exploring it further was hindered by the lack of an on-premise model. Due to compliance issues with the SaaS model, we couldn't proceed with it as a production-grade product.

So, an on-premises model would have been useful for us. VMware rolled out an on-premise model for TMC, allowing for an on-premises implementation, which we learned about six months ago. 

Also, cost is always a concern. Smaller companies might find the price a bigger issue. Since we were at a large data center, the price might not have been a concern for us. 

Smaller and medium businesses might hesitate due to the price tag. VMware can be quite expensive.

I have experience with this product. 

We never had any stability issues and no complaints from the team.

So, I would rate the stability a ten out of ten. 

Since it's a SaaS offering, scalability is entirely handled by VMware.

It scales well, but in our case, we only had to manage a single cluster. We never needed to scale beyond two clusters.

It was only used internally by our cluster administrators. We hadn't opened it up to a broader audience yet.

The support was very good. We just had to raise a case through the standard VMware support channels, and they would assist us with any issues quickly.

The VMware support was excellent.

Positive

We used a lot of open-source-based solutions, but not specifically for this use case. As a cloud service provider, we use various tools depending on the customer and use case.

We always look for products that seamlessly integrate with VMware.

So, before Mission Control, there wasn't another product considered. VMware directly suggested it.

I would rate my experience with the initial setup a ten out of ten, with one being difficult to set up and ten being easy to set up.

The implementation was very straightforward. There were no caveats or hiccups we encountered during the implementation. 

My company is actually a cloud provider itself, based in India. So, it's a private cloud, not a public cloud provider like AWS or Azure.

As Asia's largest VMware cloud service provider in the APAC region, we get direct assistance and suggestions from VMware for evaluating new products. For this deployment, we had a dedicated Technical Account Manager from VMware who helped us get it set up quickly.

We had a dedicated team member who worked on it. So, there were a total of two people. 

The deployment took about an hour. It's really just a matter of registering your cluster with Tanzu Mission Control (TMC).

It's mainly a registration process. You register your cluster on the TMC website. Considering that I use a private cloud (I have a Cloud Service Provided), I'd have a partner account with VMware. I log in to the TMC website with my partner account credentials. 

Once logged in, I'll see a panel where I can register the Tanzu Kubernetes cluster (TKG) against TMC. I'll need a registration token extracted from the target PKG cluster. Once I copy and paste the token and enter the necessary information, the deployment starts.

Two to three people are typically involved in maintenance. 

It involved a license enablement process from the OEM. My team was responsible for evaluating and productionizing it.

Overall, I would rate the solution a ten out of ten. I would definitely recommend it. 

If it meets your requirements and expectations, definitely go for it. It offers both on-premise and SaaS models, and the graphical management makes the entire Tanzu platform much easier to use. It simplifies the lifecycle management of your clusters. So, I would definitely recommend it.

I use the product for running containerized workloads efficiently while avoiding the complexities of containerization and Kubernetes management complexities.

The observability platform and end-to-end service portal provided by Tanzu are the most valuable features. These allow comprehensive monitoring of the entire stack and customization according to specific needs, which improves visibility and operational control.

Addressing the high upfront costs could improve the product. Implementing a subscription-based model with tiered service options could make it more accessible to a broader range of customers.

I have been using VMware Tanzu for approximately two and a half years. 

The product is stable. I rate the stability an eight and a half out of ten. 

The platform is highly scalable and can run on various platforms, including public cloud infrastructures. I rate the scalability an eight. 

We work with service providers for support issues.

The setup is moderately complex. It is relatively straightforward if you have the required hardware and VMs ready.

We implemented the product in-house. 

The ROI is significant, with a reported return of approximately six times compared to public cloud solutions.

We evaluated other solutions but switched to Tanzu due to its advanced features and better integration with the VMware ecosystem.

I rate the platform a nine out of ten. 

A few of our organization's customers use VMware Tanzu Mission Control to manage multiple Tanzus and other Kubernetes entities, especially in demilitarized zones. The product is also used for Tanzu cluster provisioning. 

The Day 2 operations support is the most vital feature of VMware Tanzu Mission Control. 

The product should support integration with Google Cloud Platform (GCP). The tool's flexibility in onboarding different clusters needs to improve, it's presently limited to a few clusters on the list.

The lower version clusters are mainly unsupported by VMware Tanzu Mission Control. In a hybrid model, it's not possible for our organization's team to predict whether all clusters belong to the same vendor or version, that's another challenge with VMware Tanzu Mission Control. 

I have been using VMware Tanzu Mission Control for a year. 

I would rate the stability a seven out of ten. Our company functions as a VMware Tanzu Mission Control system integrator, so we cannot focus on a specific architecture; we are inclined towards an open model. The number of upgrades or changes brought about in a year for VMware Tanzu Mission Control affects the tool's stability. At our company, if a tool brings less than four upgrades in a year, we don't prioritize it. 

I would rate the scalability a six out of ten. VMware Tanzu Mission Control is most suitable for enterprise-level businesses. 

I would rate the technical support an eight out of ten. The tech support experience from VMware Tanzu Mission Control can be further improved while Broadcom manages the support. 

Positive

Other advanced cluster manager tools are simpler to set up than VMware Tanzu Mission Control. The solution allows the creation of Helm charts and Terraform customization. Our company's team mostly deploys the solution on-prem and for hybrid models. 

The price of VMware Tanzu Mission Control is greater than that of Red Hat's competitor solution. I would rate the pricing of VMware Tanzu Mission Control as four out of ten. 

One of the competitor tools is Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management, and I believe it is better than VMware Tanzu Mission Control. The licensing structure of Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management is easier to comprehend, and every feature can be managed using the single Red Hat OpenShift Platform Plus.

Due to the aforementioned reasons, in our company, we are unable to onboard more customers in VMware Tanzu Mission Control than for Red Hat solutions. 

In our organization, we have added multiple Tanzu clusters to the product and the clusters can be managed better than before, thus VMware Tanzu Mission Control has helped in improving operational efficiency. The product is able to manage clusters in AWS and Azure but fails to handle clusters of GCP. VMware Tanzu Mission Control is used in automation, Kubernetes and Day 2 operation management. 

The product is also used for automation cluster lifecycle management. For one of our organization's customers, managing around eleven or thirteen clusters was difficult, but once VMware Tanzu Mission Control was deployed, managing the Kubernetes environment became quite easy with self-service widgets.

Our company team is already developing Terraform scripts for which VMware Tanzu Mission Control is leveraged to automate certain aspects. I would overall rate the product a seven out of ten. I would recommend the tool mostly to organizations where a VMware infrastructure is already present. 

The primary use case includes application modernization. So our customers need to have suitability and backups. So, the DMC helps in achieving those things.

It is a single offering. So no matter the number of clusters, the customers can manage it from a single console. So the backup, the life cycle, and everything can be managed from this solution. So that's a key takeaway.

Previously, there was no on-premises solution for VMware Tanzu Mission Control (TMC) for the air gap customers. Now, they have launched that as well. So then, the frequent change in the product. So, previously, it was sent to TMC Essential, Standard, and Advance. Now, it's just Essentials and Standard. So, there is no longer a need for the customer to upgrade to some other SKU every time we engage with them to renew their contract, maybe because the product has changed. That's the main challenge we're facing currently.

Another area of improvement is pricing. 

I have been using this solution for one year. 

It's a stable solution. 

It is a scalable solution. Scalability is about adding new VMs to the cloud is a one-click process. So it's not an issue. And upgrade, everything can be set up within minutes, maybe within a couple of minutes.

We are working with medium-sized businesses. 

The customer service and support are okay. So we don't have any option to connect to the engineer or phone or something. So, depending on the priority, they will just send the case, and it will take some initial time. So, the time to get the support is like four hours or six hours.

So that may not be good for customers. Once it's assigned to an engineer, I think the support is okay. However, the prioritization would take some time for customers facing some delays in getting certain things sorted out. 

If it is not a production issue, that's the main challenge. If it's a production issue, you will get the upfront support, but If it is not a production issue, it will take some business.

Neutral

VMware TMC is better than Rancher Labs in terms of manageability. VMware offers virtualization, so the lifecycle management is somewhat easy. But in Racnher, we have physical work on the node center where the lifecycle management is a headache for admins.

The initial setup is easy. It took us around four to five hours. If everything is ready, we can deploy it within less than four hours.

Only four engineers are required for the deployment process. 

Moreover, it is easy to maintain the solution. Two people are enough for the maintenance of the solution. 

The solution is more expensive than Rancher. The licensing cost is on a yearly basis. It is a subscription-based license, so it comes with support.  

It's a good product to start with the app organization, but the licensing changes every now so the customer needs to have a word with their account management before choosing a license scheme. Whether it exists or not. So that's the only challenge we face with TMC, wherever everything is good.

Overall, I would rate the solution an eight out of ten. 

This solution is an integrated build tool for their CI/CD within Cloud Foundry. It works fine. I was not personally as involved with this solution as others in our organization because my team chose not to use it. This was because we had deployments that were outside of Cloud Foundry that we needed to service and we only wanted to have one CI/CD tool.

The biggest gap for me was just that the solution is relatively tied to Cloud Foundry. If you have anything you need to deploy outside of that, it becomes burdensome. I would like to see additional support for things outside of Cloud Foundry. 

From what I gathered, the stability was fine. I didn't hear about any problems with it. 

We never experienced any problems with scalability. 

I did not ever use tech support, but I knew of others that did and they were satisfied. 

This solution is moderately straightforward to set up. 

The solution is bundled in with Cloud Foundry so the pricing is not independent. 

I would rate this solution as a seven out of ten.