VMware updated its centralized Kubernetes (k8s) management hub to include a self-managed on-premises deployment option that's ideal for regulated industries like health care, financial services, government agencies and "any organization that needs full control over the Kubernetes control plane," according to VMware Tanzu Product Marketing Manager Carol Pereira.

The cornerstone of Tanzu Mission Control Self-Managed is its air-gapped deployment capabilities, which help ensure outside networks can't make unwanted connections. Targeted at platform teams, the update simplifies multi-cloud and multi-cluster Kubernetes while maintaining compliance with data sovereignty requirements.

The air-gapped deployment option joins the vendor's software-as-a-service (SaaS) Mission Control offering in recognition that "not every company can take advantage of its SaaS deployment model," Pereira wrote in a blog post, citing regulated industries' extreme sensitivity to data regulations.

"As the walls of the traditional data center evaporate, the risk of data loss and the challenges of data privacy and sovereignty increase," she said. "Regulated industries need to ensure that data is managed and protected effectively within sovereign boundaries."

According to VMware's State of Kubernetes 2023 Survey, realizing the full business and operational benefits of cloud-native technologies like Kubernetes requires that the same tools and processes are in place throughout an organization. In other words, businesses need global visibility into their distributed cloud-native environments, Pereira explained.

The survey found 76% of respondents use multiple clouds – including private cloud – and regulated industries like financial services are more likely to have distributed operating environments.

To that point, Tanzu Mission Control provides visibility into distributed k8 environments by allowing platform teams to perform operations, like applying policies, to a group of distributed Kubernetes clusters at once. The offering "streamlines operations across multiple jurisdictions, with a local control plane in each jurisdiction to better comply with regional regulations governing data sovereignty, privacy and security," Pereira added.

The self-managed option provides the same functionality as the SaaS version, and it can be installed in data centers, sovereign clouds or service provider environments. VMware provides images and dependencies, however, which enables air-gapped deployment without the need for an internet connection, Pereira said.

In addition to a common interface for disparate cloud-native environments and unified policy management, Tanzu Mission Control offers data protection, crisis preparedness and application mobility at no cost to data sovereignty – and a GitOps automation integration that configures groups of clusters based on just one YAML artifact.

Tanzu Mission Control Self-Managed is now generally available and was informed by feedback from "select partners and customers" that had access to pre-general availability versions of the technology.