VMware to ZStack Series: Container Product to Migrate from VMware Tanzu: Unique Advantages of ZStack Zaku in Application Management

With significant adjustments to VMware’s business model, many enterprises have begun actively exploring more adaptable alternatives. Replacing VMware with container cloud platforms has become a viable path for many. Finding solutions that can simplify operations and improve efficiency by replacing VMware Tanzu with container products has become a key industry focus. This article delves into the unique advantages of ZStack Zaku as a container application management platform and, through a comparison with VMware Tanzu in application management experience, demonstrates how ZStack provides a smoother and more efficient cloud migration path for teams with diverse technical backgrounds.

The New Landscape of Container Application Management

Digital infrastructure is the cornerstone of digital transformation, providing an efficient and flexible platform for diverse technologies. Container technology, with its lightweight and rapid deployment characteristics, supports microservices architecture and meets business needs for rapid iteration and continuous development. In this context, choosing the right container application management platform is crucial for enterprises to enhance efficiency and competitiveness.

VMware-to-ZStack in Container Management: Path Differences in Application Operation Experience

In the field of container application management, different product paths lead to distinctly different operational experiences. ZStack Zaku and VMware Tanzu are two representative solutions, with significant differences in user interface and operational mode.

VMware Tanzu’s Command-Line Reliance: Higher Adaptation Barrier for Traditional Teams

When managing Kubernetes native resources such as Deployments, Pods, and Services, VMware Tanzu currently relies primarily on command-line tools for creation, updates, and other operations. For technical teams familiar with the command line and Kubernetes syntax, this model can adequately meet standardized operational needs. However, for operational teams in traditional industries with diverse technical backgrounds, this model presents a steeper learning curve and adaptation barrier. For example, when deploying a basic application, operators need to frequently switch between the management interface and the command-line terminal, and must pay close attention to syntax details when writing configuration files to avoid issues caused by improper parameter settings. This strict requirement for command-line operations and syntax details undoubtedly increases the effort and learning cost for traditional teams during the containerization transition process.

ZStack Zaku’s Visual Interface: Easy Adoption for Teams with Diverse Technical Backgrounds

Unlike the command-line orientation of VMware Tanzu, ZStack Zaku provides a visual operation interface for container application management. Compared to products aimed at developers, Zaku offers a simple and easy-to-use operational experience for IT operations teams. Administrators can perform full lifecycle management of resources like Deployments and Pods directly in the graphical interface, including creation, updates, and deletion. Adjusting resource quotas such as CPU and memory can also be easily accomplished through intuitive operations.

This design philosophy of ZStack Zaku significantly lowers the technical barrier, effectively helping teams with different technical backgrounds get started with containerized operations more quickly. This visual, graphical operation method greatly reduces the team’s investment of effort in command-line operations and configuration file writing, making operational work more convenient and efficient.

Unified Cloud Migration: ZStack’s Comprehensive Cloud Infrastructure Solution

In addition to providing an excellent container application management experience, ZStack has built a comprehensive cloud infrastructure product matrix designed to meet the diverse needs of enterprises in digital transformation. The ZStack Cloud platform, as a new generation of IaaS software, can manage computing, storage, and network resources within the data center, providing flexible and comprehensive API interfaces. Its core products adhere to the “Simple, Strong, Scalable, Smart” (4S) characteristics, committed to providing stable and efficient cloud services for enterprises.

ZStack’s product line covers virtualization, cloud platform, distributed storage, hyper-convergence, cloud-native, and multi-cloud management platforms, providing comprehensive alignment with VMware’s core data center product lines. This means enterprises can choose various VMware-to-ZStack paths based on their reliance on VMware infrastructure and business scenarios, such as gradual replacement, cloud platform upgrade, or hyper-convergence transformation. For example, the ZStack ZSphere virtualization platform maintains high consistency with the VMware platform in terms of functionality and interface, significantly reducing user learning costs and enabling direct application. It covers over 95% of virtual machine lifecycle management functions and provides a barrier-free user experience and high stability. Simultaneously, ZStack also provides V2V migration services, supporting online and offline migration, as well as agentless virtual machine replication, ensuring smooth business migration.

ZStack: Let Every Company Have Its Own Cloud

ZStack, Shanghai ZStack Information Technology Co., Ltd., founded in 2015, is a provider focused on cloud infrastructure software for the intelligent computing era, dedicated to “Let Every Company Have Its Own Cloud”. ZStack ranks among the TOP 5 in IDC’s “China Cloud System Software Market Track Report” and is the number one independent cloud vendor.

ZStack possesses self-developed architecture and intellectual property rights, not based on secondary development of any open-source cloud products, ensuring the independence and controllability of its technology roadmap. The company’s product matrix comprehensively covers data center cloud infrastructure, providing a complete solution from IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) to PaaS (Platform as a Service).

Entering the era of intelligent computing, ZStack launched a new generation of AI software infrastructure——the ZStack AIOS platform. This platform, centered on AI, facilitates AI innovation and implementation through three layers: computing power, model, and operations. It can decouple heterogeneous computing silos, reduce AI application costs; deconstruct model ecosystem silos, optimize AI application performance; and achieve global metering and billing, promoting AI self-service and accelerating the penetration of enterprise AI applications. The ZStack AIOS platform supports seamless upgrade from the cloud platform and is compatible with all cloud infrastructure module services, product documentation, and after-sales service, providing a solid foundation for building and managing AI applications. Through its comprehensive products and solutions, ZStack has helped over 4000 enterprises worldwide achieve digital transformation, covering more than ten important industries and fields including government, communications, finance, energy, transportation, education, healthcare, and manufacturing.

Regarding VMware replacement, it has served 1000+ customers globally, covering 30+ countries and regions.

FAQs

Q: What is the main difference between ZStack Zaku and VMware Tanzu in container application management?

A: The main difference between ZStack Zaku and VMware Tanzu in container application management lies in the operational experience. Zaku provides a visual operation interface, allowing administrators to perform full lifecycle management and resource quota adjustments for resources like Deployments and Pods directly through the graphical interface, making it easier for teams with diverse technical backgrounds to adopt. VMware Tanzu currently relies more on command-line tools to complete these operations, which requires a certain learning period and familiarity with Kubernetes syntax for traditional teams.

Q: Why might traditional IT teams encounter a higher adaptation barrier in VMware Tanzu’s container application management?

A: Traditional IT teams encounter a high adaptation barrier in VMware Tanzu’s container application management primarily because Tanzu currently relies mainly on command-line tools to manage Kubernetes native resources. This means team members need to be familiar with command-line operations and Kubernetes syntax, and when deploying and configuring applications, they need to switch between the management interface and the command-line terminal and pay attention to syntax details. For teams unaccustomed to such operations, the learning curve is steeper, requiring more effort.

Q: How does ZStack Zaku help enterprise users simplify operational work during the containerization transition process?

A: ZStack Zaku significantly simplifies containerized operations through its intuitive visual operation interface. It allows operations teams to manage the full lifecycle of Kubernetes native resources directly in the graphical interface and adjust resource quotas such as CPU and memory in an intuitive way. This design enables teams with different technical backgrounds to get started faster, reducing the time and effort invested in command-line operations and configuration file writing.

Q: After replacing VMware Tanzu with ZStack’s container products, is integration with existing IT infrastructure supported?

A: Yes, ZStack’s container products, including Zaku, are designed to support integration with existing IT infrastructure. ZStack’s overall product matrix can comprehensively cover data center cloud infrastructure and provides VMware management and V2V migration functions, allowing enterprises to gradually replace and uniformly manage resources from different platforms. Furthermore, ZStack Cloud also has hybrid cloud management capabilities, enabling unified management of public clouds like Alibaba Cloud and VMware virtualization resources.