Computer virtualization software provider VMware Inc. is increasing its bets on its Tanzu application development tools. The company decided to add to these data protection capabilities for Kubernetes to help companies run critical workloads more confidently and securely in this environment.

VMware’s Tanzu portfolio is a collection of tools released earlier this year that can be used to build and manage modern applications that are hosted in software containers and managed with the open-source Kubernetes orchestration software.

“With Tanzu, and specifically Tanzu Mission Control, we have included a data protection capability … that allows you to provide data protection for your fleet of Kubernetes clusters, regardless of which distribution, regardless of which cloud they’re running on, and regardless of how many teams you might have running on a particular cluster or set of clusters,” said Tom Spoonemore (pictured, left), product line manager, modern applications platform, at VMware.

Spoonemore and Efri Nattel-Shay (pictured, right), director of product management at Dell Technologies, spoke with Stu Miniman, host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio, during VMworld. They discussed the features of the new data protection capability, how it is based on Velero, and how it fits into the evolution of the container and Kubernetes market. (* Disclosure below.)

Built in the Velero project

VMware’s new data protection capability is built on its open-source project called Velero, designed to back up and migrate Kubernetes resources and persistent volumes.

“Mission Control operates Velero in your clusters from a central UI, API and CLI,” Spoonemore explained. “That allows you to do data protection, initiating schedules of backups, doing restores, and even migration from cloud to cloud from a single control point.”

The goal is not only to provide an API that VMware can handle directly with its own Velero-based implementation, but also to make it available to partners.

“And this is where we’re working with Dell, specifically, to be able to provide that single API but yet have Dell, for instance, with their PowerProtect solution, be able to plug in and be a data protection provider underneath Tanzu Mission Control,” Spoonemore explained.

The solution follows the evolution of the container and Kubernetes market and the needs of business in this environment.

“When we looked at customer environments three years ago, people talk mainly about stateless applications,” Nattel-Shay pointed out. “But over time, when more storage solutions, persistent data solutions came along, there came the need to not only provision the data, but also protect it and be able to do backups, and restores, and cyber recovery solutions, and disaster recovery, and the whole set of use cases that allow a full life cycle of data along the cloud native set of applications, not just a traditional one.”

Tanzu’s capability aims to help IT infrastructure teams on the one hand and a new set of users, DevOps, on the other hand, according to Nattel-Shy.

“With VMware, with the community, with Velero, we are introducing a solution that is capable of doing both management for the DevOps people, as well as for the other team infrastructure,” he said.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of VMworld. (* Disclosure: Dell Technologies sponsored this segment of theCUBE. Neither Dell nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE