What is our primary use case?
I am still working with VMware and vCenter, and this is one of the critical and essential parts of our infrastructure at our company and in the Middle East overall.
We have a huge infrastructure, so we are utilizing all these products, including VMware, Tanzu, Azure Stack, and Alibaba Cloud. All these products are part of our infrastructure, and I prefer Tanzu and vCenter because I capitalized on virtualization over 10 years ago.
The infrastructure and operation team are utilizing VMware Tanzu Observability. They started utilizing it about five years ago, and it is still part of our infrastructure for about 50% of the workload, while the other 50% is using Azure Stack. I have Azure Stack, AKS, and other products in the market, and we also have a third party for observability that includes all these infrastructures and products.
What is most valuable?
The best feature of VMware Tanzu Observability for me was its capability of integration with multiple observability tools, not just Tanzu, but also third parties. When talking about SolarWinds, Dynatrace, or any other observability tool, you just need to implement the API and configure the integration between Tanzu or VMware and the other observability tools.
The improvement in operational efficiency is not just related to VMware Tanzu Observability dashboard. It involves the integration between all the infrastructure we have. For a huge infrastructure, when you combine network, application, VMware, and container, there is still a need for one platform that can manage all these tools and capabilities. While Tanzu is very good for the aspects related to VMware, I still need one unified platform that can integrate all these features and tools into one single dashboard.
What needs improvement?
I am one of the big fans of Tanzu, but actually, here in Saudi Arabia, it does not work as expected. I do not know if this is a mistake from the partner or if there is something missing with the product, but I know it should be the umbrella that contains all the services related to VMware. However, when we compare it with the containerization in Azure or other infrastructure environments, I cannot see it having good competition with them. But when I read the specifications and capabilities of the product, I found it to be very good, though I am unsure what is missing.
The feedback that I get from the operation team is that it was easy to deploy VMware Tanzu Observability, but they need more resources and documentation about it. Additionally, the partner in Saudi Arabia has some issues, and many people in the market are currently focused mainly on cloud services. VMware Tanzu is related to private cloud and data center internally, so this new trend towards cloud makes it a little difficult for private cloud and private data center. For the actual work and heavy duty workload, we are still using VMware products, vCenter and also Tanzu as part of this.
There are multiple dependencies related to the implementation of VMware Tanzu Observability. This is linked to the network, storage, and many other factors. For this type of project and implementation, there needs to be collaboration between the network team, SAN storage team, and the partner from whom I receive support during the implementation phase. The time for implementation depends on the workload as well. If you are talking about 100 virtual machines, it is not the same as when you are discussing 1,000 virtual machines. The implementation time will depend on the workload and the number of infrastructure team members you have, along with the virtual machines and containers.
To improve VMware Tanzu Observability, they need to conduct more POCs to raise awareness regarding their features and the integration capabilities with other tools. The current market trends lean towards AI and machine learning, and they need to play their role in the market for these features.
For how long have I used the solution?
They started utilizing it about five years ago.
What about the implementation team?
Around five to six people from my side were involved in the implementation, plus three people from the partner.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The pricing for VMware Tanzu Observability is neither too expensive nor low. We can say it is in the middle range.
What other advice do I have?
The operation team, when they are working with containerization, prefers other products such as Azure Stack or they are going to Alibaba Cloud. As a technical engineer before, I know Tanzu has all these features, so maybe you need to do more POC and make more marketing advertising about the product and its features. It may also be necessary to push your partner in Saudi Arabia to clarify things more for the customers and end users. Additionally, maybe you need to add some certification related to the product because there is something missing. If we compare Tanzu with vCenter in the beginning, there is a big gap between these products, even though they complement each other.
AWS does not have this much expansion in Saudi Arabia. We have capitalized mainly on Azure and Alibaba.
The question regarding distributed tracing features is very technical, and it comes from the operations team, so they can answer that.
Regarding machine learning and AI, we are not using these features from VMware. Instead, we have another observability tool, which is a layer of integration, and we capitalize on this observability tool for AI and machine learning. Currently, there is a project we are working on to enhance observability across all our infrastructure.
The operations team can utilize VMware Tanzu Observability's API support. They ask for APIs from VMware to integrate with the APIs from the other observability tool that we have.
My overall review rating for this product is 8.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Private Cloud
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Microsoft Azure
