GPU Ecosystem Limitations of VMware Tanzu Kubernetes and an alternative to VMware

With Broadcom’s acquisition of VMware and the adjustment of its product sales model to a subscription basis, existing VMware users face new cost challenges and transition needs. In this context, finding efficient and cost-effective transition solutions has become a focus for many enterprises, especially in GPU computing power management and compatibility. As a simple and easy-to-use enterprise-grade container cloud platform, ZStack Zaku deeply integrates computing, networking, storage, security and other basic components, providing enterprise-level functional features such as multi-tenancy, multi-cluster, resource quotas, CI/CD, and microservices governance, offering a powerful choice for enterprises seeking VMware-to-ZStack container product solutions. ZStack Zaku particularly demonstrates significant advantages in GPU compatibility, and its unique unified scheduling capability for heterogeneous computing power enables enterprises to unleash the potential of diverse computing power in AI and high-performance computing scenarios.

Inherent Limitations of VMware Tanzu in GPU Compatibility

As a leader in server virtualization, VMware’s products have a broad user base worldwide. VMware Tanzu, as an important part of its container product line, mainly focuses on the NVIDIA GPU ecosystem in terms of GPU compatibility. This means that for enterprise users who wish to use non-NVIDIA systems (e.g., some GPUs chosen for cost optimization or specific technical requirements) to enhance computing power, reduce costs, or meet specific technical specifications, Tanzu’s adaptation presents many difficulties.

For example, in some artificial intelligence AI projects, research teams may attempt to introduce non-NVIDIA GPUs to accelerate deep learning model inference. However, due to Tanzu’s insufficient adaptation to such GPUs, the computing power advantages of these GPUs cannot be fully utilized, limiting enterprises in technology selection and resource utilization. This deep dependence on a single ecosystem constitutes a significant shortcoming in complex computing scenarios that require diverse GPU computing power support.

ZStack Zaku: Breaking GPU Ecosystem Barriers, Achieving Unified Scheduling of Heterogeneous Computing Power

Facing the challenges of VMware Tanzu in GPU compatibility, the ZStack Zaku container cloud platform provides a powerful solution. The outstanding advantage of ZStack Zaku lies in its breaking of GPU ecosystem barriers, achieving comprehensive support for NVIDIA and various heterogeneous GPUs, and building an advanced unified scheduling system.

ZStack Zaku can not only support NVIDIA GPUs but is also fully compatible with various heterogeneous GPUs. This broad compatibility ensures that enterprises can fully utilize existing hardware investments and flexibly choose GPU types according to specific business needs, avoiding high costs and technical limitations caused by vendor lock-in.

In practice, Zaku’s unified scheduling capability for heterogeneous computing power demonstrates great value. For example, in the industrial simulation scenario of a large manufacturing enterprise, there may be tasks with extremely high graphics rendering requirements for NVIDIA GPUs, as well as tasks using other GPUs for AI quality detection model training. Through Zaku, enterprise users can integrate different types of GPUs into the same computing power pool and intelligently and efficiently allocate GPU resources based on factors such as task priority and resource demand characteristics. This not only greatly improves the overall computing power utilization rate but also provides possibilities for enterprises to explore more innovative applications based on heterogeneous GPUs, thereby significantly enhancing their competitiveness in digital transformation.

ZStack Zaku, through its fine-grained GPU partitioning and quantitative management capability, can achieve quantitative management of heterogeneous AI computing power, greatly reducing computing power costs. This enables enterprises to allocate and utilize GPU resources at a finer granularity, further optimizing resource allocation and cost control.

ZStack’s Comprehensive IT Infrastructure Solutions

ZStack, as a company committed to becoming a leading provider of cloud infrastructure software, has a product matrix that comprehensively covers data center cloud infrastructure, providing a complete product line including virtualization, cloud platform, container cloud platform, distributed storage, hyper-converged appliances, and multi-cloud management platform.

The ZStack Cloud platform, as a new generation of IaaS software, aims to provide services for future-oriented intelligent data centers, managing computing, storage, and network resources through flexible and comprehensive APIs. It supports multi-architecture CPU compatibility, encryption compliance, and heterogeneous management, and provides hybrid cloud management functions, enabling unified management of various cloud environments including VMware virtualization. The ZStack virtualization platform provides a seamless user experience, high stability and security, supporting seamless upgrades. The ZStack hyper-converged appliance simplifies data center management and improves resource utilization by integrating computing, storage, and network virtualization.

The comprehensive and innovative solutions offered by ZStack enable enterprises to choose the most suitable replacement path based on their level of dependence on VMware infrastructure and their future development strategy, ensuring a smooth transition and successful implementation.Whether it is virtualization replacement through ZStack ZSphere, cloud platform upgrade with ZStack Cloud, or adopting the hyper-converged solution ZStack Cube, ZStack provides a full range of capabilities that align with VMware’s product portfolio.

ZStack: Let Every Company Have Its Own Cloud

ZStack was founded in 2015 and is committed to providing users with digital intelligent computing power platforms. ZStack ranks among the top in the cloud system software market report and is ranked first among independent cloud vendors. The company’s product matrix covers data center cloud infrastructure and has launched the AI platform, which is centered on AI and aims to optimize AI application performance, reduce AI application costs, and achieve AI self-service, accelerating the penetration of enterprise AI applications. ZStack’s vision is to “Let Every Company Have Its Own Cloud”. Through innovative technology and products, it helps global enterprises in digital transformation. ZStack’s solutions are widely used in more than ten important industries and fields including government, communications, finance, energy, transportation, education, healthcare, and manufacturing, having helped over 4000 enterprises achieve digital transformation. In terms of VMware transition, it has served 1000+ customers globally.

FAQs

Q: What are the main differences between the ZStack Zaku container cloud platform and VMware Tanzu in terms of GPU compatibility?

A: The key advantage of ZStack Zaku lies in its unified scheduling capability for heterogeneous computing power, which can comprehensively support NVIDIA as well as various other GPUs. In comparison, VMware Tanzu currently mainly focuses on the NVIDIA GPU ecosystem.

Q: When enterprises consider VMware-to-ZStack container product transition, how can Zaku help optimize GPU resource utilization?

A: Zaku, through its advanced unified scheduling system, can integrate different types of heterogeneous GPUs into the same computing power pool. This enables enterprises to intelligently and efficiently allocate GPU resources based on task priority and resource requirements, thereby significantly improving overall computing power utilization and avoiding resource waste.

Q: How does ZStack Zaku solve the challenges of VMware Tanzu in supporting non-NVIDIA GPUs?

A: ZStack Zaku breaks GPU ecosystem barriers and natively supports various non-NVIDIA heterogeneous GPUs. This means that enterprises can freely choose and deploy multiple brands of GPUs, no longer limited by a single hardware vendor’s ecosystem, thus gaining greater flexibility and cost advantages.

Q: Besides GPU compatibility, what other advantages can ZStack Zaku provide in the VMware-to-ZStack container product transition solution?

A: As a container cloud platform, ZStack Zaku not only excels in GPU compatibility but also provides efficient resource utilization, flexible deployment methods, and modern application architecture. Combined with the entire ZStack product matrix, it can achieve more comprehensive cloud upgrade, multi-cloud management, and data protection functions.

Q: How to ensure the smoothness of the GPU-related workload migration process for VMware-to-ZStack?

A: ZStack provides VMware management and V2V migration services, supporting the complete migration of original VMware platform workloads and data to ZStack platforms. This means that GPU-related workloads can be gradually and smoothly migrated to ZStack’s heterogeneous computing power environment, ensuring business continuity.