Using VMware Tanzu with ONTAP to accelerate your Kubernetes journey
Chance Bingen
Do you think that deploying infrastructure to support the development of next-generation cloud-native applications running on Kubernetes is too daunting a challenge? It’s a challenge that can be overcome. It doesn’t require investing in totally new data centers or abandoning your on-premises investments to go all-in on public cloud. Thanks to a strong partnership between VMware and NetApp, you can leverage the trusted vSphere hypervisor and ONTAP 9 storage systems already in your core, edge, and cloud.
You use your NetApp storage systems and NetApp’s ONTAP® software the world’s #1 storage operating system, optimizing compute and storage together with the NetApp FlexPod® platform, because that’s the leading converged infrastructure solution that adopts a private or hybrid multicloud approach to Kubernetes with VMware Tanzu. Tanzu is VMware’s vSphere-integrated Kubernetes (K8s) solution for modern development of cloud-native applications. Tanzu lets you use your IT staff’s existing vSphere skills to make the transition easy and successful.
You might have noticed that the NetApp virtual appliance for Virtual Storage Console (VSC), VASA Provider, and Storage Replication adapter (SRA) was recently reintroduced with ONTAP 9.8 as ONTAP tools for VMware vSphere, or just ONTAP tools for short. Along with this new name is a new focus on simplification.
In addition to visual and branding simplification, you’ll find a host of other changes and new features. For example, you get to use simple scale-out datastores based on NetApp ONTAP FlexGroup volumes and new, easier-to-use storage capability profiles.
What you might not have noticed is that NetApp has also verified support for First Class Disks (FCDs) using VMware virtual volumes at a massive scale. Along with FCD support is support for VMware Tanzu.
Tanzu extends vSphere’s native Storage Policy Based Management (SPBM) to provide storage services automatically as K8s storage classes, without you having to do any configuration of storage classes within Kubernetes.
Join me in the first video in a multipart series on deploying VMware Tanzu with NetApp’s ONTAP data management platform:
