SAN FRANCISCO – VMware today introduced updates to its Tanzu Kubernetes portfolio including compatibility with Red Hat's OpenShift platform in an effort to simplify DevSecOps and improve cloud native developer productivity.

Part of the Tanzu portfolio updates relate to VMware's Tanzu Application Platform, which notably includes support for the popular OpenShift Kubernetes orchestration platform from fellow industry stalwart Red Hat.

Tanzu Application Platform 1.3 adds flexibility in terms of customers' choice of Kubernetes platforms, allowing Red Hat customers to take advantage of their existing investment in Red Hat OpenShift while using VMware's Tanzu platform.

"It's about improving developer productivity and simplifying the DevSecOps delivery process," Ajay Patel, VMware SVP and GM of Modern Apps, said during a press briefing. To that point, "we've made a significant amount of investment in open source technology," he added. The OpenShift integration will be generally available late this year.

Another update to the platform includes air-gapped installation for highly regulated and disconnected environments. VMware says this ensures components, upgrades, and patches are consistently available to the system and operate as planned in a controlled environment.

"We've also heard from our customers that air-gapped installations are critical to their deployment, whether it's highly regulated industries, whether it's a federal market air gap, it's something we constantly hear from our customers. We're excited to provide an air gap installation for many of our largest customers," Patel said.

The Tanzu platform also works to shift security left with new features the company says will increase efficiency for both dev and ops. First, the platform is introducing a beta integration with VMware's Carbon Black vulnerability scanner, along with a centralized vulnerability monitoring dashboard that will support pre-deployment security checks and secure app deployment.

Other new capabilities on the platform include Jenkins CI/CD integration and dynamic API specification registration.

"When you deploy your APIs to production, they are going to be dynamically registered with the Backstage API catalog. What does that mean? You can browse or consume APIs automatically out of the gate based on your rules," VMware senior technical marketing architect Dave Morera said during the VMware Explore keynote address. "That's API-first development," he touted.

All of these new capabilities will be generally available to VMware customers later this year.

The vendor's updates to Tanzu for Kubernetes Operations extend to its Tanzu Mission Control, VMware Aria Operations, and Tanzu Kubernetes Grid products with the aim of optimizing multi-cloud and multi-cluster Kubernetes management.

Another major Tanzu Mission Control capability now in preview is direct provisioning and management of Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS) clusters to remove friction for developers and operators.

VMware is also introducing Mission Control integration with VMware Aria Automation in an effort to consolidate Kubernetes platform operations. This integration allows cloud infrastructure and its underlying services to be built on any public cloud and provides developers a path for deploying Kubernetes clusters via the vendor's Aria Automation tool. This can be done by inheriting Tanzu Mission Control policies in cluster groups and applying automation rules from Aria, according to the company.

Read all of SDxCentral's VMware Explore 2022 coverage here.