Migrating away from VMware Tanzu requires careful evaluation to ensure the new Kubernetes platform can handle production workloads efficiently. Key factors include:

• Production Readiness: Automated cluster lifecycle management, smooth upgrades, and high availability are essential to maintain stability during scaling and updates.
• Multi-Environment & VM Support: Unified management of containers and VMs, compatibility with diverse hardware and OS, and consistent operations across on-premises and edge deployments.
• Simplified Operations: Declarative management, intelligent node scaling, and plugin automation reduce operational complexity and costs.
• Visibility & Observability: A unified interface for monitoring, logging and alerting with real-time data visualization simplifies troubleshooting and performance optimization.
• Networking & Security: Zero-trust networking, fine-grained RBAC, secure image management, and integration with enterprise identity systems are critical for protecting workloads.

Several platforms — such as Red Hat OpenShift, Rancher, Arcfra Kubernetes Engine (AKE), Nutanix, and public cloud services like EKS & AKS — address these needs to varying degrees.

>>Check out the feature comparisons of Tanzu alternatives from this FAQ.

In particular, AKE (of Arcfra Enterprise Cloud Platform) stands out as a robust Tanzu alternative that not only meets these considerations but also delivers integrated virtualization capabilities and enhanced operational simplicity:

• Ensures enterprise-grade stability with rolling upgrades, built-in HA, and node auto-healing.
• Provides VM and Kubernetes convergence, enabling unified resource management across virtualized and containerized workloads.
• Offers intelligent automation for cluster scaling, patching, and workload scheduling with minimal manual intervention.
• Delivers a centralized, visual operations center for full-stack observability, from infrastructure to applications.
• Enhances security and networking with microsegmentation, workload isolation, and identity-based access controls.

For more information: Arcfra Kubernetes Engine vs. vSphere with Tanzu: A Feature-by-Feature Comparison