There have been a number of questions that have been raised by the community regarding the specific vSphere features and/or editions that is needed to deploy Tanzu Community Edition (TCE). I honestly thought I knew the requirements quite well myself but when it came to specific vSphere Editions, it made me second guess on what features TCE actually required for functionality.
I decided to deploy a brand new setup using the latest vSphere 7.0 Update 3 (vCenter Server and ESXi) release, which was all deployed onto a single 11th Gen Intel NUC. Below are my findings which I will share back with TCE folks and enhance our documentation. Ultimately, you just need access to a vCenter Server that is managing an ESXi host which can be a standalone host or one that is within a vSphere Cluster. Hopefully this will be helpful for anyone that wishes to get started.
vSphere Version:
- As the official TCE documentation states, vSphere 6.7 Update 3 or newer is needed and this is primarily because that is the initial release that incorporates our vSphere CSI driver
vSphere Edition (minimum):
- vCenter Standard and vSphere Standard
- vCenter Essentials and vSphere Essentials Plus
Note: I did not have access to a vSphere Essential license but I am pretty confident it should also work.
vSphere Features:
- Both vSphere HA and DRS is NOT required
What is minimum vSphere edition & features for TKGm？
For basic functionality, it would be the same
vSphere Standard is support ？
Hi William, Can vSphere standard with Tanzu edition can be sold and used for production purpose? As far as i know, vSphere Enterprise version is mandatory not only for tkgs but tkgm. thank you.
Your VMware Account team would be the best folks to help answer specific licensing and SKU purchases based on your needs
Considering that the aim of Tanzu community is to bring people onto the platform, it's a big oversight in my opinion when the free Tanzu requires a $600 ESXi Essentials license (or even a ESXi Standard license, which is even more expensive). I have to question why there is no support for Tanzu Community Edition on ESXi free?
Thanks for the feedback. It would be great if you can also share this on the TCE Github as an issue if you feel strongly about this. As alternative, customers can also use the CAPD provider, which is completely free. If you want to use vSphere and ESXi, there's also VMUG Advantage route ($200 USD) for non-prod usage and you get many other products/features for that price