VMware is aware of the importance of the sovereign cloud in various markets, which is why it has developed several specific solutions for them: VMware Tanzu on Sovereign Cloud, the VMware Aria Operations Compliance suite for sovereign clouds, and new open ecosystem solutions. In addition, it has announced that the providers of VMware Sovereign Cloud are already double: 25 partners worldwide.
VMware’s sovereign cloud framework and associated capabilities are in line with Gaia-X and other global data sovereignty regulations. New VMware Sovereign Cloud providers include Advanced Wireless Network Co. Ltd., Fundaments BV, Hitachi, Ltd., Macquarie Cloud Services, National Information Center, NCS PTE Ltd., PT Aplikanusa Lintsarta, Tata Communications Limited, and TM Digital Innovation Sdn Bhd.
Partners offer VMware Sovereign SaaS, upon which VMware is building the portfolio of sovereign cloud offerings, natively. For this they use VMware software, which runs in their sovereign cloud data centers and disconnected from the Public Internet. The data remains resident, and only exists within a specific sovereign region, with no access to it by foreign jurisdictions. No data leaves the country or provider.
VMware Tanzu on Sovereign Cloud
The new VMware Tanzu on Sovereign Cloud service, announced at VMware Explore 2022, is to better build, run, manage and secure modern applications consistently on sovereign cloud infrastructure, with Kubernetes built-in. Tanzu’s portfolio simplifies operations on the platform and allows developers to dedicate the most appropriate resources for operations development. Partners natively provision Tanzu on Sovereign Cloud from their sovereign cloud data centers. And they do it completely disconnected from the Internet.
VMware Tanzu on Sovereign Cloud includes Tanzu Kubernetes Grid, which offers customers simplified installation, automated operations across multiple clusters, and integrated platform services. In addition, Carvel-based tools allow you to help build, configure, and deploy your applications on Kubernetes, and reliably too.
Tanzu Kubernetes Grid includes open source components for sovereign clouds. Among them Fluent Bit, Prometheus, Grafana and Contour. They all have monitoring and input capabilities. With them, companies can monitor and, based on open source metrics, adapt to traces and logs that indicate where the Kubernetes cluster may fail, and ensure the increase in safe and allowed traffic.
Another component of VMware Tanzu on Sovereign Cloud is the Tanzu Application Platform, which is ready for cloud sovereignty and offers developers the necessary tools and services to bring code to production safely and quickly. This platform has added air-gapped facility for improved security and compliance in sovereign cloud environments. Additionally, it has added dynamic API spec logging with the Backstage API plugin to automate API publishing, consumption, and collaboration with confidence for software development.
On the other hand, it offers a centralized vulnerability control panel, with which the application teams will be able to carry out security checks before deploying apps, as well as to ensure their deployment. AThe application platform supports RedHat Openshift, Jenkins, and Carbon.
In VMware Tanzu on Sovereign Cloud there is also Tanzu Mission Control, which offers automation and policy-based cluster management at scale. This improves the visibility, control and safety of operators. It also brings more consistency and speed for DevOps, and flexibility and autonomy for developers. It enables full visibility into Kubernetes, while maintaining control over network infrastructure connectivity.
Additionally, managing the Kubernetes cluster from a single point of control helps streamline operations. VMware is also working to add support for private deployments of Tanzu Mission Control in sovereign cloud environments, and the solution is currently in private testing.
VMware Tanzu on Sovereign Cloud also incorporates VMware Data Solutions, formerly Tanzu Data Services. It supports compliant and compliant data management, and provides access to a self-service user interface as well as an API for lifecycle management of these services.
VMware Aria Operations for Sovereign Cloud
VMware Aria Operations provides a compliance suite for sovereign clouds, with ongoing security features compliance monitoring, notification, remediation and automation. It offers comprehensive availability, performance, capacity management, cost management, and compliance capabilities for both infrastructure and applications.
Aria Operations compliance packages include ready-to-use compliance kits as well as configuration checks and reports based on 20-point-of-sovereignty controls. These include micro-segmentation, encryption of data at rest and in transit, and compliance with the ISO 27000 standard. It is fully integrated with VMware Cloud Director, and has a unified control panel. This provides an automated and efficient way to demonstrate compliance across the sovereign cloud infrastructure.
Third party solutions for sovereign clouds
VMware has introduced offers from partners such as Cloudian, Veeam, and Fortanix for object storage, ransomware protection, backup and recovery, and key management. These services integrate with VMware Cloud Director for multi-tenancy deployment and improved user experience.
In terms of risk and compliance management, VMware has collaborated with Caveonix to offer an integrated security, compliance and governance platform in the sovereign domain that enables data sovereignty compliance management of the sovereign cloud.
The solution VMware Tanzu Greenplum is a massively parallel compute data warehousing platform, offered by Data Lakehouse as a service, and integrated with Cloudian HyperStore S3 compatible object storage. This way you can offer sovereign clouds the same data lake architectures as public clouds. The VMware-certified solution enables you to build and deploy advanced analytic models for complex business applications.
