VMware Tanzu Platform Reviews

We use Mission Control for cloud-native developments where the underlying layer is Kubernetes. We do deployments, and we check the code in GitHub and integrate with GitLab. In GitLab, we have the Git Actions, and it triggers the CI/CD pipeline.

It's all based on the underlying cloud-native development perspective and the actual deployment in the cloud. It depends on the particular flow from the development environment to the staging environment and the cloud deployment. That's why it's in a hybrid cloud, and we have two deployment topologies. One is vm cloud, and the other is vCloud on AWS.

AWS is the public cloud part of it. We also have the Azure Cloud, and Azure is our hybrid cloud environment. This is basically for the use cases around the CI/CD and monitoring the CI/CD cloud-native deployments in the azure cloud. If we have containerized images that have to be deployed in azure cloud, we monitor them using the Tanzu Mission Control.

Tanzu Mission Control has quite a set of rich features when compared to OpenShift. I like the dashboard for monitoring the CI/CD pipeline, the entire process of releasing it into the cloud, and deploying it to the cloud.

We want to see a new feature that helps build more security architecture like Zero Trust Security or shifting left in Kubernetes. It would help if they build something like that into the product and actually make all the containerized images deploy into the Azure Cloud in a secured manner.

I've been using VMware Tanzu Mission Control over the past year.

VMware Tanzu Mission Control is a stable product.

It's scalable but takes one day because the underlying architecture is all Kubernetes. Kubernetes has got the master-worker clusters and the slave nodes. The master cluster manages multiple pods on slave nodes, and then there is a control plane. These three are the major components in the Kubernetes underlying architecture, which allows you to scale faster. You can scale easily, and you can scale based on the business KPIs. You can also scale based on the technical KPIs.

VMware has an extended team. The VMware onsite engineers are deployed to the account as the extended team is involved in 24/7 support because ours is a very big account for them. Not only that, it means we are rolling out the cloud-native development, which is very business-critical. It goes through support and is made available by VMware on a regular basis. But it's in terms of the deployment, monitoring, and fixing any possible bugs.

The initial setup is straightforward. Once we created the cluster in Azure Cloud, it doesn't take more than six to eight hours to deploy Tanzu Mission Control on top of it.

We have a large infrastructure team that works as a VMware standard team, offsite and onsite. They are involved in doing the configurations and deployments. We don't need more than five people to deploy this solution.

VMware Tanzu Mission Control is cheaper than Red Hat OpenShift.

We initially had a hybrid cloud in the Red Hat hybrid cloud environment, and I think they provided OpenShift, and it was evaluated. But Red Hat was expensive. OpenShift has integrations with all kinds of cloud-native libraries, but even Tanzu Mission Control supports most cloud-native libraries. New cloud-native projects can also be integrated easily. But I think, in terms of the features, Tanzu Mission Control has quite a rich feature set compared to the OpenShift.

On a scale from one to ten, I would give VMware Tanzu Mission Control a six.

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. 

Since I have a developer team, they use the solution for testing purposes.

The solution is integrated very well with a lot of other systems. Also, its GUI is very good. The solution is also integrated with its other components, like PKS, a Kubernetes upgrade. Then, there is the PMC and Observability. In short, it is a well-integrated solution within the VMware product family.

The solution could benefit from improved customization and visibility for its users. This would allow end users to better correlate and apply practical use cases.

I have been using VMware Tanzu Application Service for a year. Regarding the version, we are using Tanzu Kubernetes Grid in our company. My company has a partnership with VMware.

There are no direct end-users using the solution since we only consider it a testing platform.

The solution's initial setup process was complex because the person involved in the setup process should know about networking, storage, and other technicalities.

The deployment process took place in a few hours since we planned to use the tool for testing.

The number of personnel required for maintaining the solution depends on the size of the setup that one wants in their company, so if it is a smaller setup, then one person can manage it.

We did the implementation process in our company after referring to VMware documentation.

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.

We are primarily utilizing it for racking and debugging purposes. However, as we use Mission Control with cluster integration, we are also using it to track our Kubernetes clusters; monitoring our rank, whether a cluster is active or not, which product application is deployed on this cluster, etc.

It has provided us with one central point where we can easily track our product QA, and our project resources, across multiple projects and multiple business units.

A feature we find valuable is that other products can also be integrated with Mission Control. This means that we can see the status of specific clusters, as well as view the monitoring application logs all from one point. 

The disaster recovery feature could be improved to provide better tracking of issues. I would also like to see the introduction of a dashboard view, for even further integration of all the areas that Mission Control looks at.

I have been using the solution for around two years.

It is stable.

We have found the solution to be scalable.

The technical support is okay for the standard tool, but they sometimes don't support our customized version when issues occur.

It was very easy to set up; deployment took a matter of seconds.

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.

I would rate this product seven out of ten.

The cost is a major factor in this solution; anything above the standard version comes at a high price. 

Tanzu brings many modern applications to life across different garages and environments, while customers can deploy and develop some new applications as a BPO application. Tanzu is used for testing purposes and then rolling out into production, as well.

It is also used to deploy certain docker-based services and provide a developer-friendly environment. The developers do not need to worry about the continuing edges also. They can use the ZA files and then simply deploy the service on them. Developers can just push it rather than getting into a container image level, image creation, and all those complicated things.

Tazu is a developer-friendly and highly mature product. 

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.

If we had to shut down and put the entire product into maintenance, there are certain steps administrators have to take and barriers to going into maintenance mode. I'd like to see them add some automation. 

We've been using Tanzu for about three years.

Tanzu is a highly stable product. Everything is automated end to end and it has self-healing capabilities built in. By that I mean, it automatically starts rebuilding things when something goes wrong, but most of the time it is stable. 

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.

VMware support is great. I haven't had any issues with it.

I've worked with some open-source solutions, like Kubernetes. The biggest difference is that Tanzu is a developer-friendly product, whereas Kubernetes is not. Tanzu's integrated monitoring is better, too.

Setting up Tanzu is slightly complex in terms of configuration because there are multiple permutations and combinations. Prerequisites have to be completed, like the domain name configuration and various IP addresses that need to be located. 

The subject has to be pre-configured to unload this product, and we have to determine how many different virtual machines we want to spin up at the start. That is all somewhat complicated. I would not say it's a limitation, but the DNL or NTP has to be intact before you can install this product. If we don't meet those prerequisites, then it's not possible.

The amount of time needed to deploy Tanzu depends on the expertise. A small deployment can be completed in six hours if all the product visits are already in place. Generally, I think Tanzu is most suitable for a medium-sized deployment. In a huge organization, it takes a long time for the back-end operations to complete because it requires a lot of computational power and various features of multiple virtual machines. That's why I say it would be better for a mid-sized deployment, but it should not be too challenging for a larger one.

I rate Tanzu 8.5 out of 10. If you are planning to implement Tanzu, I would say that planning ahead for how you will deploy the product is crucial. With the right planning, this is an excellent product overall. You can utilize it in a more optimized way.

We use the solution to put the image and as a backup for managing and observing the containers. We can check our applications and flow using the solution.

The most valuable feature of the solution is the ability to check the flow of all the different variants within our applications.

The solution is currently focused on VMware infrastructure and I would like to see more options made available.

The cost of the solution has room for improvement.

I have been using the solution for a few months.

The initial setup is straightforward. VMware Tanzu Application Service is a central appliance and it takes a few days to implement.

We implement the solution for our customers.

The licensing cost is yearly. The licensing cost is expensive.

I give the solution a nine out of ten.

I recommend the solution to other users.

VMware Tanzu Application Service is similar to Kubernetes but VMware Tanzu Application Service is more advanced. Everything is built-in and ready as a service. You only need to integrate your application into those services. One of my customers is currently a large financial institution.

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.

I have been using VMware Tanzu Application Service for approximately eight months.

The technical support is very good.

The implementation is not easy, it is very complex and can take a day or two to complete.

I did the implementation myself. We have approximately 30 people that are available to do implementations and supporting of this solution.

The license for VMware Tanzu Application Service is expensive. The license should be cheaper.

I rate VMware Tanzu Application Service a nine out of ten.

Typically, VMware customers who already have a VMware data center and SDDCs in place adopt VMware Tanzu Mission Control to extend their existing infrastructure into Azure or multi-cloud environments and maximize applications. Tanzu Mission Control enables platform teams to centralize Kubernetes operations.

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. This static, graphical user interface is highly useful.

The infrastructure is quite challenging. That reflects the solution's insight. The Tanzu suite could be improved to make it easier for clients to use. People coming from a programming background prefer client tools to be easier to work with and manage.

I have been using the solution for over two years.

I give the stability an eight out of ten.

I give the scalability an eight out of ten.

Tanzu's professional technical support team offers responsive service when a client registers for it. However, the community part may not be as helpful when the technical questions get too complex.

Neutral

The initial setup is satisfactory. It was straightforward for me to configure, but more complex decisions on the architectures are still quite difficult. There are still some areas of friction, but overall the setup is acceptable.

The solution is only for large or medium size enterprises because it is expensive. This solution is not for startups.

I give the solution a seven out of ten.