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Istio vs VMware Tanzu Platform comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary
 

Categories and Ranking

Istio
Ranking in Service Mesh
1st
Average Rating
8.2
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
VMware Tanzu Platform
Ranking in Service Mesh
2nd
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
20
Ranking in other categories
Build Automation (7th), PaaS Clouds (9th), Cloud Management (16th), Development Platforms (2nd), Container Management (2nd), Agile and DevOps Services (2nd)
 

Featured Reviews

KR
Aug 26, 2024
Highly configurable, efficient for service mesh aspect and good customer service and support
There's a new product being worked on, with contributions from the team at Solo.io, called Ambient Mesh. This is being built into the open-source project. The purpose of Ambient Mesh was to make it more scalable, possibly getting rid of the sidecars on services to lower latency. Does it make Istio simpler or easier to use? I don’t think so. It might actually increase complexity, but it could work well for specialized use cases. But, you'd need knowledgeable engineers to implement it properly. So, I think Istio has issues with performance and scalability. I guess that's the best way to put it. I recently worked with a customer who was running a performance test with Istio. Their test involved creating 500 to 1,000 namespaces with a large number of sample services that were all being rolled out together. What we found was that Pilot, one of Istio's components, was crashing, causing the performance test to fail. This isn’t a very common use case, spinning up a thousand services all at once, but it was overloading the control plane. We found that increasing the replica count on the control plane sometimes leads to issues with leader election. Pilot doesn't handle leader election very well, but a recent bug fix by the Solo.io team has improved this aspect. So, in terms of scalability, it’s improving. That's the best way to put it.
SiddhitRenake - PeerSpot reviewer
Feb 28, 2024
Easy to register multiple Kubernetes clusters, offers a single pane of visibility on its dashboard, and perform lifecycle management operations
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The load balancing, service application, and monitoring of the life of the service are valuable features. We use it for authentication of call services, load balancing the calls among the service providers on service instances, and monitoring the health of the services."
"The tool's mutual TLS stands out. It provides secure communication between services within the cluster. Additionally, Istio offers built-in telemetry and tracing with tools like Jaeger, which aids monitoring and troubleshooting."
"The initial setup is pretty straightforward."
"Istio can save you time in terms of network troubleshooting."
"We use Istio for Service Discovery and routing traffic."
"We can implement load balancing to distribute traffic across multiple service instances. Istio also offers traffic routing capabilities and circuit-breaking functionality. For security, it handles authentication using mutual TLS (mTLS) between services. It can authorize services using JWT tokens. Istio also allows defining policies for rate limiting to control traffic within services."
"The most valuable features of Istio are the traffic management and the Sidecar they inject, which greatly helps secure the application."
"Istio's best feature is that it's easy to use."
"VMware Tanzu Mission Control has many valuable features, such as ease of use and customization."
"Tanzu is easy to upgrade and scale, whether we're talking about horizontal or vertical scaling. It is as smooth as possible without any downtime. The platform maintenance, upgrading, and operations part is very smooth."
"There are a lot of services available in VMware Tanzu Application Service, such as databases and application servers. You have everything you need in one application and you do not need to search outside of the solution."
"Tanzu Mission Control has quite a set of rich features when compared to OpenShift."
"The observability platform and end-to-end service portal provided by Tanzu are the most valuable features."
"The most important feature of Tanzu Mission Control is its integration with the other products, especially with ESX and vSAN. This is a strong part of Tanzu Mission Control. In other solutions, such as OpenShift or Kubernetes, you can find similar features, but they don't have similar integration. With Tanzu Mission Control, you get a total solution with only one provider. You have the integration with the infrastructure, virtualization of networking, and virtualization of storage. You have a natural integration, and you don't have the problem of integrating it with different products or providers. Sometimes, different companies have good integration, but it is not always guaranteed. For example, many years ago, Cisco and VMware were good partners in networking, but when VMware started to sell ESX, the relationship was broken. This is the problem that you can face when you are using solutions from two different companies."
"The valuable feature I have found to be the management of Kubernetes clusters in a private cloud or public clouds, such as Azure or Google Cloud Platform."
"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."
 

Cons

"If you're a beginner in infrastructure management and networking, learning Istio might pose some challenges. However, if you have some knowledge of networking or service meshes, you should find it manageable. Istio's website offers documentation to guide you through learning."
"If someone doesn't understand Kubernetes, they'll have issues working with Istio."
"Istio has issues with performance."
"It would be good if the solution had more community forums."
"Istio's documentation is basic and would benefit from more examples."
"Based on my experience, the solution could be improved. They could simplify the learning process so that users can understand how its features work together, especially with components like Kibana. Learning about the different components is necessary. For instance, you need to understand the traffic flow, potential bottlenecks, and the architecture within Istio."
"For our use case that we applied it to, there were graph queues and the calls that were coming in. There were the things that we couldn't apply at the time, but it kind of worked."
"Istio needs to be more mature and user-friendly."
"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."
"The solution is currently focused on VMware infrastructure and I would like to see more options made available."
"We want to see a new feature that helps build more security architecture like Zero Trust Security or shifting left in Kubernetes."
"VMware Tanzu Service Mesh could add better integration with other cloud platforms, such as vRealize Automation or VMware vCloud Director for cloud providers."
"I would like to see additional support for things outside of Cloud Foundry."
"The infrastructure is quite challenging."
"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."
"The solution could improve by having better integration with other solutions such as HPE."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is on the less expensive side. It provides a significant saving for us in terms of cost and other things. It is open-source. We just download it from the open-source framework and use it."
"We use the tool's open-source version, so there are no hidden fees or additional costs associated with it."
"You can deploy Istio free of cost and don't need to pay for it."
"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."
"Since we were at a large data center, the price might not have been a concern for us."
"It is not the most expensive option, and I believe the capabilities align well with the value it provides."
"The solution is only for large or medium size enterprises because it is expensive."
"VMware Tanzu Mission Control is cheaper than Red Hat OpenShift."
"The product is not expensive, but it is not cheap."
"The license for VMware Tanzu Application Service is expensive. The license should be cheaper."
"The licensing cost is expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
21%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Retailer
6%
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Istio?
Istio provides a significant saving for us in terms of costs since it is open source. However, Istio can still come at a price. It has a steep learning curve and might require more manpower hours ...
What do you like most about Istio?
We use Istio for Service Discovery and routing traffic.
What needs improvement with Istio?
Istio has very few community forums. It would be good if the solution had more community forums. Recently, we have faced an issue. We were using an old version of Istio. Our Kubernetes version in o...
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 VMware Tanzu Application Service?
The solution is integrated very well with a lot of other systems. Also, its GUI is very good.
 

Also Known As

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

Learn More

Video not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Verizon, Cerner, Zipcar, Avarteq
Find out what your peers are saying about Istio vs. VMware Tanzu Platform and other solutions. Updated: August 2024.
800,688 professionals have used our research since 2012.