If you work in IT, you know the drill. You hear "VMware" and you immediately start calculating CPU licenses in your head. You hear "Tanzu" and you think, "That’s the fancy enterprise Kubernetes distribution that costs more than my car."
VMware finally realized that the best way to sell the steak is to give away the sizzle. Go download TKG. Your homelab will thank you. vmware tanzu kubernetes grid free
Well, grab your coffee. VMware just changed the game. If you work in IT, you know the drill
If you are a VMware shop tired of paying for Rancher, or a DevOps engineer who wants to practice for a VCTA/VCP exam without paying for a course, Go download TKG
Because when your startup gets acquired by a Fortune 500, they won't freak out about "community software." TKG is upstream Kubernetes with VMware's QA stamp on it. It behaves exactly like the paid version.
You are trading money for time. TKG is heavier than K3s (it wants resources). It is not "lightweight." But it is mature .
But if you are running standalone clusters in a dev environment, a CI/CD pipeline, or an edge location? You don't need those. You might be thinking, "Why wouldn't I just use K3s or MicroK8s?"