This is a special edition of Eye on VMware as I’m out at VMworld Europe this week in Barcelona, Spain. I will provide a day-to-day recap of announcements. If you missed the VMworld announcements in Vegas, take a look at this previous post.
Today, VMware announces a series of products and collaborations at today’s VMworld Europe 2017. Below is a summary:
VMware introduces VMware HCX; Empowers Cloud Provider Partners to Drive Innovation and Accelerate New Service Delivery
- Initial availability of VMware HCX technologies to enable multi-cloud and multi-site application migration and portability; Basically, HCX allows customers stretch their Network to the Cloud and vMotion/Replicate their VMs to a VMware Cloud Provider Partner (formerly known as vCloud Air Network/vCAN Partner) Cloud. It is up to our 4,000+ Service Provider partners if they choose to offer this to their customers. IBM and OVH will be the first 2 making this available initially.
HCX’s state of hybridity is made up of 2 primary components –
- HCX interconnect Service
- The interconnect service provides resilient access over the internet and private lines to the target site while providing strong encryption, traffic engineering and extending the datacenter. This service simplifies secure pairing of site and management of HCX components.
- WAN Optimization
- Improves performance characteristics of the private lines or internet paths by leveraging WAN optimization techniques like data de-duplication and line conditioning. This makes performance closer to a LAN environment.
- Network Extension Service
- High throughput Network Extension service with integrated Proximity Routing which unlocks seamless mobility and simple disaster recovery plans across sites.
The operational advantages that the state of hybridity provides are many. Below are a few:
- Explore New Hybrid Datacenter Architectures. For e.g. DB tier on-premises while App and Web tier in the public cloud, allowing to take advantage of price and performance.
- Migrate VMs between a mix of vSphere-based clouds and that are over the WAN. For e.g. On-Premises vSphere/vCF Private Cloud and a vSphere/vCF Public Cloud.
- Take advantage of Zero-Downtime migrations and no Application Dependency Mapping (ADM). For e.g. Datacenter consolidations require large ADM exericises, as Production Apps reside in the to-be-retired-Datacenters. With HCX, this will no longer be a concern.
- Establish a simplified and complete Disaster Recovery solution. For e.g. DR site can be a public cloud or another private cloud across the WAN.
- Debut of VMware Cloud Provider Platform to address the strategic business imperatives of Cloud Providers globally; VMware Cloud Provider Platform combines a core set of VMware’s industry-leading cloud infrastructure, with cloud provider management and operations software, and new a tested and validated Certified Reference Design, to empower VMware Cloud Providers with:
- Flexible, tenant-specific metering for subscription and on demand services
- Self-service multi-tenant compute, network, storage, and other infrastructure services
- Granular, role-based access per tenant to VMware NSX-based networking services
- Valuable ecosystem services through key vendors
- Lower OPEX and accelerated time to revenue
- New VMware Cloud Verified Trust Mark and initial VMware Cloud Verified partners; To help customers identify a provider that can deliver services with VMware Cloud Infrastructure technology, VMware is announcing a new class of VMware Cloud Verified partners, signified by a VMware Cloud Verified trust mark. The initial VMware Cloud Verified partners are CenturyLink, Fujitsu, IBM Cloud, OVH and Rackspace.
- Continued innovation and success of VMware Cloud Providers globally
Read more about the announcement here. Hands on Labs HOL-1881-01-HBD – VMware HCX – Getting Started with Cross-Cloud Mobility lab available soon after VMworld.
IBM and VMware Partnership Speeds Cloud Adoption in the Enterprise
IBM and VMware announced that more than 1,400 enterprises in nearly every industry around the world are extending their VMware environments to the IBM Cloud. Enterprises are able to run their VMware workloads in the cloud and leverage IBM’s AI and analytics services as an extension of their VMware deployment. IBM Cloud for VMware solutions are available across IBM’s global network of nearly 60 cloud data centers in 19 countries.
Today, IBM and VMware each made announcements that further this strategic partnership and support continued adoption of IBM Cloud for VMware solutions:
- Adoption of VMware HCX Technologies: IBM is one of the first partners to adopt VMware HCX technologies. HCX technologies deliver seamless interoperability and application mobility between IBM Cloud and any VMware-based cloud, enabling large scale application migration and ongoing portability with zero application downtime or refactoring. HCX technologies will allow IBM Cloud customers to modernize data centers with the most current VMware SDDC offerings while maintaining business continuity, application uptime, network architectures and performance. Read the news release here.
- VMware Horizon Cloud Service: VMware Horizon Cloud is the next generation of virtual desktop and application cloud services from VMware. The VMware Horizon Cloud service offered by IBM Cloud will be made available in Q4 2017 to customers on the IBM Cloud. Horizon Cloud will be delivered as a fully cloud-hosted service managed end-to-end by IBM or a seamless hybrid solution using on-premises hyperconverged infrastructure to enable new use cases for desktops-as-a-service (DaaS).
- Certified Public Cloud Infrastructure for SAP HANA® on VMware on IBM Cloud: IBM today announced the availability of new SAP-certified bare metal servers for SAP HANA® platform deployments in the IBM Cloud and new configurations for VMware environments. Read the news release here.
- IBM Cloud is Now VMware Cloud Verified: IBM Cloud is one of the first of a new class of partners carrying the VMware Cloud Verified trust mark. VMware Cloud Verified identifies providers that fuel business growth by driving innovation, improving efficiency and lowering costs for customers as they transform application portfolios for a multi-cloud, multi-device world. Read more in this blog.
IBM and VMware are announcing new solutions to further the partnership and IBM is launching network control and visibility solutions from F5 Networks and Fortinet so that enterprises can continue to extend their VMware environments, as they are, to the public cloud.
- F5 Networks: In Q4 2017, IBM will make F5 Networks’ BIG-IP virtual suite of products available in the IBM Cloud for VMware solutions portal. Enterprises will have the ability to order, deploy and configure the F5 BIG-IP virtual edition products for automated integration with VMware Cloud Foundation and vCenter Server on the IBM Cloud. This will offer enterprises the security-rich, intelligent network traffic management and application performance optimization for their most critical workloads. Read more in this blog.
- Fortinet: In Q4 2017, IBM will make Fortinet’s FortiGate-NGFW virtual appliance and bundled services available in the IBM Cloud for VMware solutions portal. Enterprises cannot afford to choose between security and maintaining a high-performance business infrastructure. FortiGate on the IBM Cloud will help maintain secure application availability by extending robust enterprise network firewall functionality into their hybrid cloud environments. Read more in this blog.
Dell EMC and IBM to Offer VMware Solutions on the IBM Cloud
IBM and Dell EMC today announced an agreement to help accelerate cloud adoption by providing Dell EMC’s commercial customers access to VMware solutions on the IBM Cloud. As part of the relationship, IBM has added Dell EMC infrastructure products into the IBM Cloud, and expands VMware solutions. Customers can now move workloads to the cloud while continuing to leverage the benefits of Dell EMC infrastructure and the VMware platform.
Dell EMC will begin by offering VMware vCenter Server® on the IBM Cloud to its customers, which will enable them to rapidly extend on-premises data center capacity into the public cloud using VMware HCX, while taking advantage of their existing investments in VMware tooling and scripts, and training. This gives VMware users a familiar, predictable and valuable experience so they can move their on-premises and public cloud workloads to the IBM Cloud with ease.
Read more about the announcement here.
VMware Speeds Customer Time to Value for SDDC and Multi-Cloud Management with New vRealize Suite 2017
The introduction of VMware vRealize® Suite 2017 will integrate the latest releases of vRealize Operations™, vRealize Automation™, vRealize Business™ for Cloud, and vRealize Log Insight™ and feature new lifecycle management capabilities to support customers’ data center modernization and cloud integration efforts.
New vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager
- One-Click install and upgrade
- Deployment and topology view
- On-going configuration management and drift report
- Notification system
- Align with VMware recommended reference architecture and validated designs
Component Upgrades to vRealize Suite 2017
- vRealize Operations 6.6 – vRealize Operations 6.6 offers substantial new intelligence to workload placement decisions to fully automate workload balancing across clusters and data stores based on business requirements. It also features predictive Distributed Resource Scheduler (pDRS) and native VMware vSAN management and monitoring capabilities for hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) solutions powered by vSAN.
- vRealize Automation 7.3 – vRealize Automation 7.3 features support for Admiral™ 1.1, the highly scalable and lightweight container management portal, Virtual Container Host instances generated by VMware vSphere Integrated Containers, Docker hosts, and for Docker volumes enabling users to create and attach volumes to containers. It also delivers increased support for VMware NSX through advanced, fine-grained control for Day 2 operations across key network and security functionality such as load balancing, network address translation, security groups.
- The inclusion of our vRealize Code Stream management pack within vRealize Suite 2017 further enables IT to manage the Software-Defined Data Center (SDDC) as code. VMware vRealize® Code Stream Management Pack for IT DevOps helps IT teams to apply the same DevOps best practices of version control, unit testing and continuous delivery to infrastructure content.
- vRealize Business for Cloud 7.3 – vRealize Business for Cloud 7.3 is now included as a tab in vRealize Operations 6.6 for new insights that show how capacity utilization drives cost efficiencies by combining operational and cost metrics. Additionally, vRealize Business for Cloud 7.3 delivers improved insight into the complete costs of AWS and Microsoft Azure instances alongside VMware-based private cloud costs.
- vRealize Log Insight 4.5 – vRealize Log Insight 4.5 offers complete 360-degree log integration with vRealize Operations to deliver last-mile root-cause analysis with metrics and logs provided side-by-side and in context.
Read more about the announcement here. Blog post.
vSphere Integrated Containers v1.2 Extends to Include Support for Native Docker Container Hosts
Today, we are pleased to announce the newest release of vSphere Integrated Containers (VIC). As part of vSphere 6.5, vSphere Integrated Containers 1.2 will deliver significant new capabilities including the ability to provision native Docker Container Hosts, major security enhancements, and a unified management portal.
Read more about the announcement here.
VMware Expands Its Mobile Security Alliance to Provide a Connected, Comprehensive Approach to Securing the Digital Workspace
VMware announced an expansion of its Mobile Security Alliance (MSA) — a broad ecosystem of security vendors, deeply integrated with the VMware Workspace ONE™ digital workspace platform, that provides a connected, comprehensive approach to securing all aspects of the digital workspace. Workspace ONE provides purpose-built application programming interfaces (APIs) for the security ecosystem to integrate with the platform.
Read more about the announcement here.
VMware Offers Communications Service Providers the Fastest Path to OpenStack for Network Functions Virtualization
VMware vCloud NFV-OpenStack Edition Transforms CSPs’ Networks by Combining Carrier-Grade NFV Infrastructure with OpenStack and Container Support VMware Integrated OpenStack-Carrier Edition Delivers New Telco Functionality Enabling Enhanced VNF Performance, Dynamic Scaling, Multi-Tenancy, and Cloud Resource Reservation.
Read more about the announcement here.
At Mobile World Congress in Americas (Moscone Center, San Francisco) today, Dell EMC and VMware announced an Integrated Dell EMC and VMware NFV Solution to Accelerate Production Deployment for Service Providers
The Dell EMC NFV Ready Bundle for VMware is an integrated hardware and software solution. It includes open and standards-based Dell EMC cloud infrastructure hardware (compute, networking) powered by Intel® Xeon® and the VMware vCloud NFV platform with VMware vSAN™ or Dell EMC ScaleIO. Customers will have the option of deploying the integrated offering with either VMware Integrated OpenStack-Carrier Edition or VMware vCloud Director® as the virtual infrastructure manager.
Read more about the announcement here.
Great summary of this week’s VMworld Barcelona announcements here by Joe Baguley, Vice President & Chief Technology Officer, EMEA.
September Dates To Remember
- September vmLIVE Event Calendar
- Top Gun Tuesday (for Partner Sales):
- Sep 12: VMworld Recap
- Sep 19: IT Operations with vRealize
- Sep 26: Automate IT with vRealize
- Top Gun Tech Thursday (for Partner Technical Teams):
- Sep 7: What’s New with vSAN 6.6
- Sep 14: Transitioning to HCI with VxRail
- Sep 21: VMworld Recap
- Sep 28: Deploying IDM & IDM Best Practices
Partner Enablement
- NEW VSP/VTSP Accreditations Available:
- NEW Certification Program Badges Available:
- NEW VMware Certified Associate – Digital Business Transformation
- BETA Course: VMware vRealize Automation: Install, Configure, Manage v7.3; Oct 2-6, Burlington, MA
- AirWatch Training Course Schedules
- FY18Q3 Launch Readiness
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