Category Archives: Eye on VMware Update

Eye on VMware Update, VMware News

Eye on VMware Update – May 2018

Good morning team. Welcome to Q2FY2019. In this issue of Eye on VMware:

  • Introducing VMware Virtual Cloud Network

  • Dell Technologies World Wrap-Up

  • VMware HCI Assessment leveraging Live Optics

  • vSAN Partner Practice Workshops and other Enablement Opportunities

Introducing VMware Virtual Cloud Network
Guest post from Hadi Nejatian, VMware Partner Solution Architect (Canada):

You might have already heard about the recent announcement that VMware has made on its new vision for the future of networking. We have recently unveiled “Virtual Cloud Network” as our vision for the future of networking by delivering a new VMware NSX networking and security portfolio which will enable our customers to connect and secure applications edge to edge.

This announcement is in alignment with VMware’s objective on providing a ubiquitous and consistent digital fabric extended from the data centers to the core networks of our services provider partners and then all the way to the edge. But why is this so important? The answer is very clear. Because now we are living in a hyper-connected world that requires everything to be connected from our desktops and phones to the IoT sensors on the edge of the network. In this new digital era things are more and more happening on the edge of the network and this creates lots of opportunities for our customers to leverage this connectivity to provide better services and experiences to their end users.

At the end, this requires our customers to rethink how do they do their IT. The reason for all this is because the IT landscape is transforming significantly. If in the past it was the infrastructure driving the applications then this has been inverted so today these are the application which are driving the infrastructure.

VMware NSX Networking and Security Portfolio Components
The NSX portfolio of products is made up of both new and enhanced offerings. It introduces new capabilities that expand across data centers, cloud, telco and branch locations with supported capabilities for traditional and modern application frameworks. These new capabilities allow customers to have a consistent multi-cloud and hybrid-cloud networking and security across various cloud platforms from private cloud (i.e. VMware Cloud Provider Partners such as IBM Cloud) to public cloud (i.e. AWS, Azure, GCP).

This new launch includes five offerings, under the new NSX family brand, that are put together as a portfolio of VMware networking and security products. All these products jointly together create the VMware foundation for Virtual Cloud Network:

  • VMware NSX Data Center
  • VMware NSX SD-WAN by VeloCloud
  • VMware NSX Cloud
  • VMware AppDefense
  • VMware NSX Hybrid Connect

NSX Data Center:

This is formerly known as VMware NSX which include our classic NSX-V product as well as NSX-T. As part of the enhancement the NSX Data Center has extended its support to containerized applications by providing a consistent network fabric between them and traditional applications. It extends the same micro-segmentation and intrinsic security concept to modern application platforms.

VMware NSX SD-WAN by VeloCloud:

The industry-leading SD-WAN solution has now become part of NSX portfolio by being officially called as “VMWare NSX SD-WAN by VeloCloud”. The addition of SD-WAN technology allows NSX to become a true end-to-end networking and security platform extended from data centers all the way to the edge locations. The SD-WAN capability of NSX enables our customers to securely support application growth, network agility, and simplified branch implementations while delivering high-performance, reliable branch access to cloud services, private data centers and SaaS-based enterprise applications.

By leveraging SD-WAN enterprises will be able to find new and flexible ways of branch connectivity in a very cost-effective model. It helps them to augment their expensive MPLS circuits by providing a real-time network overlay with the deployment speed, scale and automation of cloud delivered services.

NSX-SD WAN can be available and delivered to customers in three different models. First customers can have it as an on-premises deployable solution. Or they can purchase it as a service from VMware or from one of VMware’s communication service providers across the world.

Speaking of communication service providers, the new announcement reveals VMware’s new decision on adding NSX SD-WAN as part of VMware’s NFV strategy and portfolio. Being a VMware Ready for NFV certified product makes NSX SD-WAN a perfect match with VMware’s vCloud NFV. So when they are combined, the extend Cloud NFV platform is able to deliver a variety of SD-WAN and virtual/universal CPE (vCPE/uCPE) offerings. The NSX SD-WAN by VeloCloud NFV offering with support of vCPE/uCPE allows VMware to offer customers choice in intelligent x86 edge appliances which leads to reduction of capital expenditure and better investment protection.

VMware NSX Cloud:

VMware NSX Cloud is a SaaS-based product which offers consistent networking and security for application workloads running in native public clouds, such as on AWS EC2 instances or Azure or containers/Kubernetes support with PKS.

It provides an abstraction layer independent of the underlying cloud networking constructs. The customer can use overlay networking to control networking topologies, traffic flows, IP addressing, and protocols within and across cloud VPCs (AWS) and Virtual Networks (Azure). For example, the IT team can stretch NSX Cloud subnets for application workloads running in multiple availability zones and deploy multicast-aware applications in VPCs.

The focus of NSX Cloud is to overcome the immanent networking and security operational challenges when using multiple public clouds. For instance, some of these challenges include: incompatible policies and constructs across public clouds; manual process to define policy for each public cloud, region, and VPC; limited operational visibility into East-West traffic with and between AWS VPCs or Azure VNets, and; various operations tools that are developed for each specific public cloud (e.g., CloudWatch and Azure Monitor). VMware NSX Cloud delivers consistent networking and security for applications running in multiple private and public clouds, via a single management console and common API. In order to use NSX Cloud the customers do not need to purchase NSX Data Center.

VMware NSX Hybrid Connect (formerly VMware HCX):

NSX Hybrid Connect addresses one of the major challenges with application mobility and large-scale cloud migration which is consistent networking. While many customers are considering moving their workloads into the cloud but cloud onboarding at scale becomes very challenging and complex. There are also other barriers such as incompatibility (interoperability dependencies) between the environments that make cloud adoption very difficult. For instance, there are situations where customer has different vSphere architecture, versions, security models, management environments or networking solution in each of data centers.

NSX Hybrid Connect creates a consistent, secure, and reliable network fabric that seamlessly interconnects data centers and clouds while maintaining the same governance and control. Data synchronization, network extension, traffic engineering, automated VPN, and built-in security provide critical operational capabilities to enable efficient and effective hybrid cloud connectivity.

With NSX Hybrid Connect, customers can seamlessly move workloads from any VMware environment to a modern software-defined data center environment running anywhere, on-premises, in the public cloud, or operated by a VMware Cloud Provider partner. NSX Hybrid Connect is offered as an on-premise enterprise software and is available directly from VMware and through system integrator and cloud provider partners. Meanwhile, VMware offers the Hybrid Cloud Extension (HCX) solutions as a SaaS-based integrated service in leading cloud offerings such as IBM Cloud, OVH or VMware Cloud on AWS.

Virtual Cloud Network and NSX Portfolio

Dell Technologies World Wrap-Up
Guest post from William Henderson, VMware Manager Solution Engineering | Americas Commercial Channel, DESAT:

Highlight from Day 1: Pat talking about the Virtual Cloud Network in the keynote. Andrew Frumin talking about Virtual Cloud Network in the VMware booth theater at the Expo. Day 2: DTW was focused on the announcement of new DellEMC products with an unveiling of the new PowerEdge MX, which is ”ideal for dense virtualization , software-defined storage and networking.” Jeff Clarke said in the keynote that DellEMC “was the number 1 market leader in global hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) system sales, with 145% worldwide revenue growth in 2017.”  Also he announced that Dell EMC VxRack SDDC is now built on VxRail hardware. Long lines continued in the HoL’s and Paul Nadeau talked to a full house in the VMware theater about the VMware Cloud Network. Day 3: DTW was focused on emerging technologies with Ray O’Farrell participating on the keynote explaining how IoT, AI and Machine Learning will be used solve major businesses challenges and also improve people lives all over the world. The VMware booth continues to be very busy with lots of customer traffic and interactions with all product categories.

  • Michael Dell in the VMware booth doing the Virtually Speaking Podcast with John Nicholson and Jeff Hunter
  • Ray O’Farrell speaking to 14,000 attendees
  • Reed Burton hosting a guided Hands on Labs on vSphere 6.5.

Hands On Labs continues to shatter records over previous years. NPS of 73! VxRail leads as the most popular lab.

Excerpts of Attendee Feedback:

“DELL AND VMWARE PARTNERSHIP IS GREAT, I LOVE THAT (DELL) EMC IS BRINGING IN THE SAME HANDS-ON LAB TO THE USERS”

“Great work **** Great Lab******Great team working the floor”

“Awesome lab setup this year, even better than the last 2 events here!”

Event Totals Through Wednesday:

Labs 3348.00

VMs Provisioned: 24125.00

NSX Networks Provisioned: 3404.00

Top Labs:

VMware HCI Assessment leveraging Live Optics

VMware would like to formally announce “VMware HCI Assessment”, a new data gathering tool that replaces the existing ‘vSAN Assessment’.

New users: Sign up at https://app.liveoptics.com/register/vmware
Blog post detailing the new tool.

May 2018 Dates To Remember
Below from Linda Hummel, Sr. Partner Sales Enablement Manager:

Next cities to be planned:

Central:

  • St Louis, MO
  • Dallas, TX
  • Houston, TX

East:

  • Orlando, FL
  • Tampa, FL
  • Charlotte, NC/ Miami, FL
VMware invites you to an exclusive complimentary SDDC Workshop. Learn how SDDC can solve the complexities of Disaster Recovery and enable Business Transformation.
WHEN

Tuesday, May 8, 2018

Thursday, May 10, 2018

Monday, May 14, 2018

Wednesday, May 16, 2018

Friday, May 18, 2018

Monday, May 21, 2018

Wednesday, May 23, 2018

 WHERE

Reston, VA

New York, NY

Chicago, IL

Dallas, TX

Denver, CO

Los Angeles, CA

Palo Alto, CA

  

Register

Register

Register

Register

Register

Register

Register

 

Lunch will be provided. Space is limited. RSVP today!

Partner Enablement

Digital Workspace Tech Zone: Excellent resource for all things Digital Workspace!

Partners/Customers: https://www.vmug.com/attend/vmug-usercon

VMware LiveFire (Post-Sales Training)
These are free Post-Sales, highly-technical training. You will have to be nominated for an invitation:

05/08/18             05/10/18             vRO Master Class             AMER    Boston, MA

Proposed Future Schedule (Stay tuned, no invitations will be sent out yet):

07/16/18             07/19/18             EUC Livefire Hands On    AMER    Palo Alto, CA

09/10/18             09/13/18             SDDC Livefire Hands On AMER    Broomfield, CO

09/10/18             09/13/18             NSX Livefire        AMER    Broomfield, CO

09/17/18             09/20/18             EUC Livefire Hands On    AMER    Broomfield, CO

09/18/18             09/20/18             vRO Master Class             AMER    Broomfield, CO

11/12/18             11/15/18             EUC Livefire Hands On    AMER    Austin, TX

11/12/18             11/15/18             SDDC Livefire Hands On AMER    Austin, TX

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Eye on VMware Update

Eye on VMware – April 2018

In this issue:

  • SysAdmins, look beyond C# vSphere Client and upgrade your vSphere
  • VeloCloud gaining momentum, Upcoming Partner Webinars
  • VMware HCX Overview
  • VMware Cloud on AWS, are you onboard?
  • Emerging Technology, IoT – 5 Keys to Successful Industrial IoT Initiatives Webinar, 04/11

SysAdmins, look beyond C# vSphere Client and upgrade your vSphere
Guest post from Michael Moore, VMware Partner Solution Architect:

Partner Solution Architects get the best of both worlds.  We spend time with our partners, helping them to build their practices, and we also spend time with customers, helping the Partner to make the sale.  One of the things I hear quite often is how many SysAdmins want to go back to the VMware vCenter C# Client.  The C# client was, and still is, very powerful.  In my previous life as a SysAdmin, when the Web Client first came out, I used to have both open on my desktop to get my job done in the most expedient and efficient manner.  But as time moves on, and technology gets better/faster/stronger (just like the Six Million Dollar Man) then we as Technology Leaders, must also move on.

The C# client had its days, but the HTML5 Client is the future.  VMware is taking the direction that most, if not all companies, will move most workloads into a cloud of some sort.  Having the ability to manage all of the clouds, infrastructure, and VMware environments in a single interface, is the Holy Grail for SysAdmins.  Imagine vROPS, vRA, vCenter, NSX, VMare Cloud on AWS, vCD, vSAN, etc., all managed from the very same interface.  Less training, less management, less maintenance, and less money spent!

Start learning as much as you can about Cloud technologies and move forward in our career.  As an IT professional, we all realize that technology moves very fast.  If we want to maintain our position, move up the ladder, and continue to be useful to those above us, we’ll need to embrace these newer technologies.  If not, you might be relegated to the past, just like the mainframe computer, the BetaMax, and Fortran.

“The Upgrading to VMware vSphere 6.5″ eBook
REMINDER: September 19, 2018: vSphere 5.5 and vSAN End of General Support Blog Post

VeloCloud gaining momentum, Upcoming Partner Webinars, 04/25 and 04/26
Brant Scalan, Staff Channel System  Engineer, NSX invites you to a VeloCloud Partner webinar:

The feedback from all of you is that there is significant interest from our partners in NSX SD-WAN by VeloCloud.  In response to that, I worked with the Director of Solution Architecture & Deployments for VeloCloud to create these events. There will be two webinars – one in the eastern time zone and the other in the pacific time zone. The event is scheduled for two hours to ensure we have enough time to cover all the content. The webinar will be hosted and moderated by our VeloCloud Solution Architects. PDF invite.

We will be covering:

  • Simplify Branch Networking – Provision branch offices faster with automated zero-touch deployment, simplified configuration, orchestration and on-going monitoring with centralized troubleshooting tools
  • Delivering Branch Agility – Enable multiple links, devices and services to coexist and interoperate with incumbent solutions and make the branch agile.
  • Optimize Application Performance – Optimize application performance over Hybrid or Internet links with direct, secure access to enterprise and cloud applications
  • Competitive differentiation and positioning.

VMware HCX Overview
VMware Hybrid Cloud Extension (HCX) is a solution I have been tracking for years. I was the Hands on Lab Captain for HCX back when we deployed it to extend to vCloud Air in VMworld 2016. Now the HCX solution can work with OVH, IBM Cloud, other VMware Cloud Providers, VMware Cloud on AWS, and even Enterprise Customers to migrate workloads from site to site. It supports vMotion, Cold Migration, and even Bulk Migration to the remote site.

There are three main components to HCX:

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. Network Extension Service – High throughput Network Extension service with integrated Proximity Routing which unlocks seamless mobility and simple disaster recovery plans across sites.

The best part about HCX is the on-prem vSphere version doesn’t have to be the latest and greatest. You can use HCX to migrate VMs from vSphere 5.1 and above to IBM Cloud, VMware Cloud on AWS or your own second site that is running vSphere 6.5. This is a great opportunity to migrate and upgrade your infrastructure all at the same time.

Today, you can purchase HCX as an add-on to VMware Cloud on a AWS to migrate your on-prem workload to VMware Cloud on AWS. HCX would be an alternative for VMware Cloud on AWS customers who may not need Direct Connect for migration of workloads, because it may be too costly. IBM as well as other VMware Cloud Providers also offers HCX as a solution to migrate your workload to their managed hosts in their Clouds. The third and newest option is to use HCX to migrate workloads from your own Enterprise datacenter to a secondary site. This last option is what we referred to as Self-Managed Enterprises. You will need NSX on the target site, because HCX is in fact using L2VPN to stretch the network. VMware Hybrid Cloud Extension Pricing for Self Managed Enterprises is available here.

VMware Cloud on AWS, are you onboard?
With 60 million VMware VMs that are running on our 500,000+ customers’ on-prem environment today, some of our larger customers would like to move some workload to the Cloud. VMware Cloud on AWS provides that gap to those customers that couldn’t achieve that to native AWS or Microsoft Azure. You may ask why haven’t some customers just migrate their workloads to AWS or Azure? As my colleague Ryan Kelly on VMware Cloud on AWS team pointed out AWS was founded in 2006, if it was that easy to move those workloads, why haven’t they done it already? The answer is because it’s NOT very easy. I started my career as an application developer, then a software architect, so I can appreciate what VMware Cloud on AWS is offering to our customers.

A typical Enterprise application will likely have a web server, an application server, a database, lots of web services, perhaps even talk to TIBCO and IBM MQ-Series or CICS in the backend. To forklift those Enterprise applications and re-factor them to work in a native Cloud environment would be extremely difficult and perhaps dare I say impossible. Our customers would have to essentially re-design and re-write the application to achieve the same business use cases. This is where VMware Cloud on AWS comes in. We are essentially extending your Enterprise datacenter into VMware Cloud on AWS. This extension allows you to run workloads in the Cloud without re-designing, rebuilding, re-factoring, re-writing your applications. Once, the application/workload is in VMware Cloud on AWS, if the customer chooses to, they will then be able to take advantage of re-factoring some of their code into AWS services or take advantage of the hundreds of services provided by Amazon in this new environment. This is the big differentiator. This is one of the differentiators for VMware Cloud on AWS. Some of our partners are starting to help our customers with the migration effort using this solution. So, are you onboard?

Emerging Technology, IoT – 5 Keys to Successful Industrial IoT Initiatives Webinar, 04/11
My last side project was finalizing the Hands on Labs Spring Release for Internet of Things (IoT), HOL-1889-01-EMT Internet of Things (IoT): VMware Pulse IoT Center & LIOTA (Little IoT Agent). It will make its premiere at Dell Technology World. VMware Pulse IoT Center enables organizations to easily onboard, manage, monitor and secure diverse IoT edge systems and connected devices through a single unified console. Liota is an open source project offering convenience for IoT solution developers to create edge system data orchestration applications.

REGISTER TODAY! 5 Keys to Successful Industrial IoT Initiatives Webinar. 04/11, 10:00-11:00 AM PDT. In this webinar, VMware Inc., a global leader in enterprise IT, and ADLINK Technology, a global leader in integrated IoT solutions, will discuss the five keys to successful industrial IoT initiatives..

April 2018 Dates To Remember

Eye on VMware Update, VMware News

Eye on VMware – March 2018

In this issue:

  • Tax Season – Are you getting double-taxed on ESPP and RSUs?
  • VMware Q4 Earnings
  • VeloCloud Overview
  • VMware Assessments

Tax Season – Are you getting double-taxed on ESPP and RSUs?
Have you done your taxes yet? Just a reminder to review your cost-basis. The rule changed in 2014 and brokers now cannot make this adjustment on shares acquired on or after Jan. 1, 2014, through an employee stock option or purchase plan. They can only report the unadjusted basis — what the employee actually paid. Another words, your employer reports it in the wages on your W-2 already and if you don’t adjust your cost-basis on form 8949, you will be taxed twice. Take a look at this link for an example. I’m not a tax advisor. Just wanted to remind everyone.

VMware Q4 Earnings
VMware reported strong Q4 results last week. Revenues grew 14% y/y to $2.31 billion, $50 million ahead of analyst consensus of $2.26 billion (+11% y/y). License revenue grew 20% y/y with opportunities for growth. Key among these opportunities is Hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI)/vSAN, As HCI deployments allow maximum efficiency for “Hybrid Cloud Deployments,” and provides the foundation for Software Defined Data Center (SDDC) offering the extension to the public cloud (VMware Cloud on AWS) while maintaining the security of data within the local data center. HCI is a massive opportunity for backend IT growth. Dell EMC and VMware’s VxRail solution has seen good traction. If you’re not selling VxRAIL today, you’re missing out! Revenues at VMware saw acceleration across the board this quarter. Impressive considering the size of VMware. Total revenues accelerated 3 points from Q3 (where total revenue growth had been 11%) and license revenues saw a stunning 6-point acceleration (license growth was 14% in Q3).

VeloCloud Overview
As many of you know, VMware acquired VeloCloud recently and partners/customers combined are very excited about this SD-WAN solution.

Enterprise SD-WAN market will reach $8B in 2020. In 2019, 30% of enterprises will use SD-WAN in all their branches, from less than 1% today. In less than 2 years, 50% of Enterprises will use SD-WAN at some or all of their branches. Needless to say, this segment will be in hyper-growth in the next couple of years and VeloCloud will continue to be leading the way.

There are 3 major challenges businesses face today:

  1. Complexity of Branch Deployment
  2. Application Performance and Bandwidth Constraints
  3. Cloud Migration proves difficult with Static architectures

VeloCloud addresses these issues:

  1. Simplified WAN Management from a single interface
  2. Assured Application performance with Dynamic Multi-Path Optimization regardless of protocol and circuits
  3. On-ramp to the Cloud with direct Cloud access with performance, reliability and security
Dynamic Multipath Optimization

The most exciting feature in my opinion is the Dynamic Multi-Path Optimization. VeloCloud will continuously monitor the link  and path quality and correct any errors and jitters as well as auto-steering for brownouts and blackout. Performance can be improved even for a single-link scenario as well. Additionally, if you are accessing SaaS applications in the Cloud like Office 365, SalesForce, etc. VeloCloud will have direct Cloud access giving you maximum performance. All of this with a single easy-to-use interface hosted by VeloCloud. It is very easy to setup. New edges can be added and deployed with a single click.

VMware Assessments
I recently compiled a list of all the Pre-Sales and Post-Sales VMware Assessments for our partners. If you missed it, take a look at the link below to see all the details including:

Pre-Sales Assessments

Post-Sales Assessments

Partners 60-day Eval License Keys

March 2018 Dates To Remember

  • New Offline Demos: (11) Cloud Foundation Demos and vRealize Suite Standard with VMware Cloud on AWS

March vmLIVE Event Calendar

Now for a Summary of VMware News Update.

Sales News:

  • VMware Cloud Briefing Event – March 7 @ 8am PST – Tune in on March 7 to hear from VMware and AWS Executives on the next important milestone in the VMware Cloud strategy. We’ll be sharing essential updates, demos and partner program news.
  • 20% Off Price Promotion for VMware HCI Kits – When we ask customers the key reason why they choose VMware vSAN over alternatives, most of them say, “because it is so well integrated with vSphere”. When we ask about the key benefits they realize, most customers highlight management simplicity and time savings resulting from vSphere integration. It is no surprise that most customers purchase..
  • Cerner looks to VMware Cloud on AWS to Transform Service Delivery – With VMware Cloud on AWS, Cerner will be able to better ensure immediate access to data and secure data per compliance regulations required by their customers. Learn more at: https://cloud.vmware.com/vmc-aws
  • Top cloud providers 2018: How AWS, Microsoft, Google Cloud Platform, IBM Cloud, Oracle, Alibaba stack up | ZDNet -Here’s a look at the annual run rates, hybrid cloud strategies and approaches to artificial intelligence and machine learning among the public cloud providers.
  • Is there room for both MPLS and SD-WAN? – Today’s enterprises are consuming far more bandwidth than ever before as their employees and customers stream video, download large files, conduct multimedia meetings, and perform other data-intensive activities. These enterprises need reliable and high-performance network connections to their branch offices, data centers, and public cloud applications. However, IT organizations providing these network functions face major challenges with respect..
  • Connecting Healthcare with VMware SD-WAN – Healthcare organizations are actively extending their services out to affiliate clinics and hospitals. The reason for this change is due to Mergers and Acquisitions, partnership and organizations becoming service providers. In these instances, a Hospital System extends EMR and other services from their parent site to a remote facility. Independent..
  • VMWARE@MWC2018 – Showcasing NFV Without Limits – Communications Service Providers (CSPs) today realize the need to transform their business models and build essential digital capabilities that accelerate their path to 5G networks. The challenge, however, lies in abandoning incremental initiatives in favor of transformational innovation – innovation that requires them to focus more on agility and continuous learning rather than on traditional […]
  • Columbus builds its smart city operating system — GCN – The Smart Columbus Operating System will collect, analyze and share data supporting multiple smart city efforts.

Technical Sales:

Eye on VMware Update

Eye on VMware 12/11/2017

  • Announcing NSX-T 2.1
  • Announcing VMware Cloud Foundation 2.3
  • VMware AppDefense and Carbon Black Cb Defense

Anyone catch the game last night? I’m surprised the Steelers were able to pull off the win, 39-38. I’m a big Steelers fan ever since my first game at Heinz Field with the Pittsburgh Steelers beating the Buffalo Bills on Monday Night Football when I was in college. We were able to get tickets on the 50-yard line from one of our professors. Playoffs should be interesting. I heard Aaron Rodgers is coming back for Green Bay. The NFC will have some great matchups.

10 Years at VMware
I can’t believe it’s almost Christmas. This year has gone by so quick. Time flies when you’re having fun at your job. Yesterday marked my 10 year anniversary at VMware. I still remember talking to customers about Server Virtualization and using Capacity Planner to help customers virtualize their environment. Capacity Planner is still around. I can’t imagine many people still using it, since you should ALL be virtualized now!

In order to get Capacity Planner as a partner, you will need to do the following:
• Log in to the Partner Portal and go to Partner University
• Register for the training and clear the assessment tests of the VMware Capacity Planner
• Make sure that you register for the latest available module
• Once you have cleared all the tests, you can send an email to cpprovisioning@vmware.com (or to partnernetwork@vmware.com to send request to CP team on your behalf) to request access
• You will receive an email in reply, which might take around 2 days, where they will give you a temporary password that will have the access to the Capacity Planner set up for you.

Announcing NSX-T 2.1
This past week we introduced NSX-T 2.1 with Pivotal Integration. Application Architectures are evolving. The developers have moved from a 3-tier architecture to a microservices model. With NSX-T 2.1, it will enable advanced networking and security across these application architectures, just as it does for traditional 3-tier architecture. NSX-T 2.1 will serve as the networking and security platform for VMware Pivotal Container Service (PKS), a Kubernetes solution jointly developed by VMware and Pivotal in collaboration with Google. NSX-T 2.1 will also introduce integration with the latest 2.0 release of Pivotal Cloud Foundry (PCF), serving as the networking and security engine behind PCF. In these environments, NSX-T will provide Layer 3 container networking and advanced networking services such as load balancing, micro-segmentation, and more. This truly provides a platform that will support multiple heterogenous environments whether on-prem or in the Cloud.
https://blogs.vmware.com/networkvirtualization/2017/12/nsx-t-2-1.html
https://virtualizationreview.com/articles/2017/12/08/vmware-nxs-t.aspx
https://www.techworld.com.au/article/630894/vmware-targets-cloud-container-networking-latest-nsx-t-launch/

Announcing VMware Cloud Foundation 2.3
VMware Cloud Foundation today consists of vSphere, vSAN and NSX. With 2.3, VMware Cloud Foundation will expand to deliver management and provisioning of compute, network, storage and application services at scale across hybrid cloud environments via integrations with VMware vRealize® Automation™, vRealize Operations™ and vRealize Log Insight™.

VMware Cloud Foundation 2.3 is expected to be available by end of VMware’s fiscal year 2018 (Feb. 3, 2018). With VMware Cloud Foundation 2.3, VMware will introduce two new VMware Cloud Foundation SKUs featuring new cloud management capabilities.

https://www.vmware.com/company/news/releases/vmw-newsfeed.VMware-Introduces-Major-Update-for-Integrated-Hybrid-Cloud-Platform.2198620.html
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/12/07/vmware_adds_management_to_its_cloud_foundation/
VMware Cloud Foundation Hands-on Lab

VMware AppDefense and Carbon Black Cb Defense
@VMware and @CarbonBlack_Inc expand partnership to drive a new model for data center & cloud security; empower security teams w/automated threat detection and remediation to react faster and more effectively to attacks #infosec http://ow.ly/G36j30h2CxR
The newly jointly-developed solution will combine VMware AppDefense and Cb Defense’s advanced threat protection to provide a unique one-two punch for stopping threats to applications inside the data center.

The solution combines three key elements to advance cloud and data center security:

  • Enforcing Known Good Application Behavior: By leveraging the virtual infrastructure, the solution will have an authoritative understanding of how data center endpoints are meant to behave and is the first to know when changes are made. This contextual intelligence will remove the guesswork involved in determining which changes to processes, executables, and operating systems inside a given data center endpoint are legitimate and which indicate real threats.
  • Detecting Unknown Threats: The solution will leverage application context to perform advanced behavioral threat detection to provide additional protection beyond least privilege. Any threat that isn’t prevented by locking down the application’s behavior will be picked up by Carbon Black’s Streaming Prevention — a next-gen threat detection technology that uses event stream processing to correlate multiple events over time to indicate the presence of a threat. Users will see threat activity in real time, visualize the attack chain to see exactly what attackers are trying to do, and respond immediately to shut down attacks in progress.
  • Automating and Orchestrating Response: Once a threat is identified, the solution will allow for the full understanding of application context during investigation, and again, will use the virtual infrastructure to deliver a library of responses, ranging from suspending or snapshotting a VM, to quarantining the compromised machine and performing forensic analysis.

https://www.vmware.com/company/news/releases/vmw-newsfeed.VMware-and-Carbon-Black-Fundamentally-Transform-Current-Approaches-to-Data-Center-and-Cloud-Security.2198875.html

December Dates To Remember

Dec 13th: Beyond the Basics – vRealize Operations Advanced and Enterprise Features

VMUG Virtual User Conference 2017 – December 13th, 2017, 9AM-5PM
download (15)

VMware Customer Webcasts

Upcoming VMUG Meetings

Now for a Summary of VMware News Update from this past week.

Sales News:

Technical Sales:

  • Infrastructure as Code with VMware Integrated OpenStack – Historically, organizations had “racked and stacked” hardware, and then installed and configured software and applications for their IT needs. With advent of cloud computing, IT organizations could start taking advantage of virtualization to enable the on-demand provisioning of compute, network, and storage resources. By using the CLI or GUI, users have been able to manually …
  • Exciting Updates to Project Hatchway for KubeCon 2017 – Unveiled at this year’s VMworld, Project Hatchway is VMware’s persistent storage and availability platform for cloud-native applications. It enables static and dynamic provisioning of persistent storage for cloud-native applications in Kubernetes and Docker swarm environments deployed on vSphere. By tightly integrating with the software
  • Everything You Need to Know About vSphere 6.5, from the Experts – Get the latest on VMware vSphere 6.5 in the next VMware Community Roundtable live podcast with moderator Eric Nielsen on December 13th. Nielsen, VMware’s senior director of social media and communities, will host featured guests Martin Yip and Himanshu Singh, who have a combined 10 years of experience at VMware and cowrote the Next-Gen Virtualization
  • The new @VMwarevSphere beta just got refreshed. Join Now! -The new @VMwarevSphere beta just got refreshed. Take the opportunity to join now! The best part (besides all of the great features…)? #VMTN is the platform where you can tell us what you really think… https://t.co/v9WOSaouSw
  • WIN this – at the #CloudCred #VMUG Virtual December Event – NOW at https://t.co/XyOWBlKcUk Merry December, Players! –
Eye on VMware Update, VMware News

Eye on VMware 12/04/2017

vmware

This past week I was out at AWS re:Invent. It was an interesting and exciting event. If you miss my post about the AWS Announcements at re:Invent, make sure you take a look. I also mentioned the VMware Cloud on AWS announcements at re:Invent as well on my last issue of Eye on VMware. One key validation I gathered is that more and more the Development, DevOps teams are defining the infrastructure. Serverless, Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence is starting to gain popularity. This will change how our partners and customers design/deploy their infrastructure.

Q3 Earnings
Last week VMware also reported its Q3 earnings and beats by $0.07. Update with guidance: Q4 guidance has revenue at $2.26B (consensus: $2.23B) and EPS at $1.62, which matches consensus. FY19 revenue expected to grow 10% on the year to $8.66B compared to the $8.39B consensus.  License revenue, $785M (+14% Y/Y); Services revenue, $1.19B (+10%); unearned revenue, $5.6B; operating cash flows, $970M; FCF, $911M; cash and equivalents, $11.6B. You can find here the call transcript and slides. NSX grew 100% YoY, vSAN grew 150% YoY, EUC grew over 40%, Compute bookings were up 11%, Cloud Management bookings were flat.

vSAN #1 in HCI Spending
tweetIDC Data Shows HCI Solutions Powered by VMware vSAN Represented the Largest Share of Total 1H2017 HCI Spending. The total value of hyperconverged solutions running VMware vSAN accounted for 33.3% of 1H2017 HCI market revenue, making HCI systems powered by vSAN the largest portion of the hyperconverged systems market. That 33.3% market share of HCI systems included VMware vSAN sold on servers through the vSAN ReadyNode™ program, a program with 14 different server ecosystem partners, and as fully integrated HCI appliances, like the Dell EMC VxRail appliances.

Serverless Functions and Functions as a Service (FaaS) running on VMware vSphere – Introducing the AWS Greengrass on vSphere Preview
awsgreengrassServerless was one of the most popular topics at AWS re:invent. VMware is now announcing AWS Greengrass on vSphere to allow customers to integrate using Lambda functions with other applications and services already running on vSphere. This gives customers another integration point between AWS and VMware. “By running Greengrass on-premises on vSphere, organizations will be able to closely integrate Greengrass, using Lambda functions, with other applications and services already running on vSphere infrastructure at the edge. Placing cloud services in the same locations where devices reside and data is generated will give organizations even greater capabilities to innovate and build intelligent systems that surpass what’s possible in the cloud, data center, or edge alone. AWS Greengrass 1.3 can share common local resources with other VMs (such as a GPU or serial bus), and organizations are able to manage the Greengrass VM Appliance using familiar tools and platforms such as vCenter, VMware vRealize Operations, VMware vRealize Automation, and VMware NSX.”
https://blogs.vmware.com/vsphere/2017/11/aws-greengrass-on-vsphere.html
AWS re:invent 2017: Getting Started with Serverless Computing Using AWS Lambda (ENT332)

Below is from Linda Hummel, our Partner Enablement Manager:

December Dates To Remember

Partner Enablement

Tips/Tidbits

VMUG Virtual User Conference 2017 – December 13th, 2017, 9AM-5PM
download (15)

VMware Customer Webcasts

Upcoming VMUG Meetings

Now for a Summary of VMware News Update from this past week.

Sales News:

  • Benefits of HCI Powered by vSAN download– In this light-board video, Systems Engineer Simon Todd discusses the benefits of HCI powered by vSAN and why it matters in the data center. Learn how HCI can lower infrastructure costs, improve efficiency & performance and scale to accommodate your future needs.
  • VMware and AWS Say Move Your DR Data Center to the Cloud – VMware and Amazon Web Services are beefing up capabilities of their joint attack on the enterprise hybrid cloud market – called VMware Cloud on AWS — including a new disaster recovery-as-a-service offering for enterprises with on-premises data centers and a new availability region.
  • VMware Hybrid Cloud Extension for VMware Cloud on AWS download (2)– VMware announced a preview of VMware Hybrid Cloud Extension service (previously known as HCX Technologies) as an add-on service to VMware Cloud on AWS. VMware announced the initial availability of Hybrid Cloud Extension at VMworld 2017 Europe, with VMware’s Cloud Provider partners IBM and OVH. .
  • AWS Jumps On Managed Kubernetes Train with EKS – Amazon Web Services (AWS) today rolled out its own managed Kubernetes service called Amazon Elastic Container Service for Kubernetes (EKS). AWS has been setting the stage for its Kubernetes move for several months. Reports surfaced over the summer that AWS was “feeling threatened” by Kubernetes’ popularity “and they don’t own it.” Then in August, AWS joined CNCF as a platinum member, linking the move to the growing use of CNCF projects running on AWS.

Technical News:

  • Deployment models for vSphere Content Library download (3)– When talking to customers about vSphere Content Library deployments, one question I normally get is how best deploy Content Library for optimal workload deployment, especially in scenarios where remote or branch offices are involved? There are two main deployment models for vSphere Content Library as the title has alluded to. The main difference between the two
  • NetFlow on Physical switches with vRealize Network Insight – With the release of vRealize Network Insight 3.6, the flow analyzer inside vRNI now supports external sources for NetFlow. This article will get you started..
  • Micro-segmentation For Dummies, 2nd Edition – Data center threats are more sophisticated than ever. Do you have the security solution it takes to protect vulnerable information? Download the updated version of “Micro-segmentation for Dummies” to learn more
  • OpenStack and Kubernetes Better Together – Virtual machines and containers are two of my favorite technologies. In today’s DevOps driven environment, deliver applications as microservices allows an organization to provide features faster. Splitting a monolithic application into multiple portable fragments based on containers are often top of most organization’s digital transformation strategies. Virtual Machines, delivered as IaaS, has been around
  • eBook: VMware vSphere 6.5 Host Resources Deep Dive download (1)– The VMware vSphere 6.5 Host Resources Deep Dive is a guide to building consistent high-performing ESXi hosts. Written for administrators, architects, consultants, aspiring VCDX-es and people eager to learn more about the elements that control the behavior of CPU, memory, storage and network resources.
  • IT transformation Serverless Life Beyond DevOps with New York Times CTO Nick Rockwell Podcast – StorageIOblog – Podcast discussion with New York Times CTO Nick Rockwell discussing Business, IT and Digital Transformation, software development, metrics, serverless, DevOps.
  • Get smart with these 35+ free self-paced eLearning courses from VMware – VMware currently offers free self-paced eLearning courses in the below languages, with more releasing soon.

 

Eye on VMware Update, VMware News

Eye on VMware 12/04/2017

vmware

This past week I was out at AWS re:Invent. It was an interesting and exciting event. If you miss my post about the AWS Announcements at re:Invent, make sure you take a look. I also mentioned the VMware Cloud on AWS announcements at re:Invent as well on my last issue of Eye on VMware. One key validation I gathered is that more and more the Development, DevOps teams are defining the infrastructure. Serverless, Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence is starting to gain popularity. This will change how our partners and customers design/deploy their infrastructure.

Q3 Earnings
Last week VMware also reported its Q3 earnings and beats by $0.07. Update with guidance: Q4 guidance has revenue at $2.26B (consensus: $2.23B) and EPS at $1.62, which matches consensus. FY19 revenue expected to grow 10% on the year to $8.66B compared to the $8.39B consensus.  License revenue, $785M (+14% Y/Y); Services revenue, $1.19B (+10%); unearned revenue, $5.6B; operating cash flows, $970M; FCF, $911M; cash and equivalents, $11.6B. You can find here the call transcript and slides. NSX grew 100% YoY, vSAN grew 150% YoY, EUC grew over 40%, Compute bookings were up 11%, Cloud Management bookings were flat.

vSAN #1 in HCI Spending
tweetIDC Data Shows HCI Solutions Powered by VMware vSAN Represented the Largest Share of Total 1H2017 HCI Spending. The total value of hyperconverged solutions running VMware vSAN accounted for 33.3% of 1H2017 HCI market revenue, making HCI systems powered by vSAN the largest portion of the hyperconverged systems market. That 33.3% market share of HCI systems included VMware vSAN sold on servers through the vSAN ReadyNode™ program, a program with 14 different server ecosystem partners, and as fully integrated HCI appliances, like the Dell EMC VxRail appliances.

Serverless Functions and Functions as a Service (FaaS) running on VMware vSphere – Introducing the AWS Greengrass on vSphere Preview
awsgreengrassServerless was one of the most popular topics at AWS re:invent. VMware is now announcing AWS Greengrass on vSphere to allow customers to integrate using Lambda functions with other applications and services already running on vSphere. This gives customers another integration point between AWS and VMware. “By running Greengrass on-premises on vSphere, organizations will be able to closely integrate Greengrass, using Lambda functions, with other applications and services already running on vSphere infrastructure at the edge. Placing cloud services in the same locations where devices reside and data is generated will give organizations even greater capabilities to innovate and build intelligent systems that surpass what’s possible in the cloud, data center, or edge alone. AWS Greengrass 1.3 can share common local resources with other VMs (such as a GPU or serial bus), and organizations are able to manage the Greengrass VM Appliance using familiar tools and platforms such as vCenter, VMware vRealize Operations, VMware vRealize Automation, and VMware NSX.”
https://blogs.vmware.com/vsphere/2017/11/aws-greengrass-on-vsphere.html
AWS re:invent 2017: Getting Started with Serverless Computing Using AWS Lambda (ENT332)

Below is from Linda Hummel, our Partner Enablement Manager:

December Dates To Remember

Partner Enablement

Tips/Tidbits

VMUG Virtual User Conference 2017 – December 13th, 2017, 9AM-5PM
download (15)

VMware Customer Webcasts

Upcoming VMUG Meetings

Now for a Summary of VMware News Update from this past week.

Sales News:

  • Benefits of HCI Powered by vSAN download– In this light-board video, Systems Engineer Simon Todd discusses the benefits of HCI powered by vSAN and why it matters in the data center. Learn how HCI can lower infrastructure costs, improve efficiency & performance and scale to accommodate your future needs.
  • VMware and AWS Say Move Your DR Data Center to the Cloud – VMware and Amazon Web Services are beefing up capabilities of their joint attack on the enterprise hybrid cloud market – called VMware Cloud on AWS — including a new disaster recovery-as-a-service offering for enterprises with on-premises data centers and a new availability region.
  • VMware Hybrid Cloud Extension for VMware Cloud on AWS download (2)– VMware announced a preview of VMware Hybrid Cloud Extension service (previously known as HCX Technologies) as an add-on service to VMware Cloud on AWS. VMware announced the initial availability of Hybrid Cloud Extension at VMworld 2017 Europe, with VMware’s Cloud Provider partners IBM and OVH. .
  • AWS Jumps On Managed Kubernetes Train with EKS – Amazon Web Services (AWS) today rolled out its own managed Kubernetes service called Amazon Elastic Container Service for Kubernetes (EKS). AWS has been setting the stage for its Kubernetes move for several months. Reports surfaced over the summer that AWS was “feeling threatened” by Kubernetes’ popularity “and they don’t own it.” Then in August, AWS joined CNCF as a platinum member, linking the move to the growing use of CNCF projects running on AWS.

Technical News:

  • Deployment models for vSphere Content Library download (3)– When talking to customers about vSphere Content Library deployments, one question I normally get is how best deploy Content Library for optimal workload deployment, especially in scenarios where remote or branch offices are involved? There are two main deployment models for vSphere Content Library as the title has alluded to. The main difference between the two
  • NetFlow on Physical switches with vRealize Network Insight – With the release of vRealize Network Insight 3.6, the flow analyzer inside vRNI now supports external sources for NetFlow. This article will get you started..
  • Micro-segmentation For Dummies, 2nd Edition – Data center threats are more sophisticated than ever. Do you have the security solution it takes to protect vulnerable information? Download the updated version of “Micro-segmentation for Dummies” to learn more
  • OpenStack and Kubernetes Better Together – Virtual machines and containers are two of my favorite technologies. In today’s DevOps driven environment, deliver applications as microservices allows an organization to provide features faster. Splitting a monolithic application into multiple portable fragments based on containers are often top of most organization’s digital transformation strategies. Virtual Machines, delivered as IaaS, has been around
  • eBook: VMware vSphere 6.5 Host Resources Deep Dive download (1)– The VMware vSphere 6.5 Host Resources Deep Dive is a guide to building consistent high-performing ESXi hosts. Written for administrators, architects, consultants, aspiring VCDX-es and people eager to learn more about the elements that control the behavior of CPU, memory, storage and network resources.
  • IT transformation Serverless Life Beyond DevOps with New York Times CTO Nick Rockwell Podcast – StorageIOblog – Podcast discussion with New York Times CTO Nick Rockwell discussing Business, IT and Digital Transformation, software development, metrics, serverless, DevOps.
  • Get smart with these 35+ free self-paced eLearning courses from VMware – VMware currently offers free self-paced eLearning courses in the below languages, with more releasing soon.

 

Eye on VMware Update, VMware News

Eye on VMware 11/28/2017

vmware

image_uploaded_from_ios

Greetings live from Vegas this week as I’m out at AWS re:invent conference. re:invent kicked off with Shaq DJ’in with an evening event. One of the members on our NSX team sat next to him on the flight over to Vegas.

Day 1 of re:invent, I spent the day at the Partner Bootcamp. It was a bit too high-level for me and I was surprised that there aren’t many people that were AWS certified. Amazon now has 90-100 or so services available and are growing. AWS added 2238 features in 3 years, 62 proactive price reductions since 2006, 14 Availability Zones across 16 Regions, 92 Edge Locations. AWS has increased 10,000+ new APN Partners in 2017 and now has cutting-edge solutions for Serverless, Blockchain, Machine Learning and Artifical Intelligence.

VMware just Capturemade announcements today adding features to our VMware Cloud on AWS offering; VMware and AWS Expand Capabilities and Availability of VMware Cloud on AWS.

Expanding availability from the U.S. West (Oregon) region to also include the AWS U.S. East (N. Virginia) region

Faster Application Migration with Seamless Portability:

Application Availability and Business Continuity for Mission-Critical Workloads:

Scale, Security, and Visibility for Mission-Critical Applications:

  • Multiple SDDCs per customer
  • Up to 10 clusters / SDDC
  • Improved Hybrid Operations including expanded single logical view and content management with native VM templates
  • Adding support for Wavefront® by VMware, a VMware Cloud Service that provides an open API platform supporting more than 80 integrations to collect time-series data from application metrics collectors such as for Java, Ruby, Python, and Go, to service metrics collectors for MySQL, Pivotal, Kubernetes, AWS, and more

Greater Partner Ecosystem for VMware Cloud on AWS – 

Pricing and Availability

  • Now offering 1-year and 3-year subscription options for VMware Cloud on AWS, in addition to the existing hourly on-demand pricing. Help customers lower their TCO by up to 50 percent compared to on-demand pricing
  • VMware’s Hybrid Loyalty Program provides discounts on the core service subscriptions to customers with on-premises vSphere, VMware NSX®, and/or VMware vSAN® licenses, which can further reduce the TCO by an additional 25 percent
  • VMware Site Recovery is available today as a separate add-on and is priced per protected VM with hourly metering. VMware vMotion, L2 network stretch, AWS Direct Connect, multi-cluster support, VMware Hybrid Cloud Extension support and AWS Direct Connect private connectivity to VMware Cloud on AWS are expected to be available in VMware’s Q4 FY2018 which ends on February 3, 2018. All other capabilities are available today. To view the latest status of features for VMware Cloud on AWS, visit: https://cloud.vmware.com/vmc-aws/features

Reminders

VMUG Virtual User Conference 2017 – December 13th, 2017, 9AM-5PM
download (15)

VMware Customer Webcasts

Upcoming VMUG Meetings

Now for a Summary of VMware News Update from this past week.

Sales News:

Technical News:

  • Released: NSX-v 6.3.5 and New Features and Fixes – Last week VMware released NSX-v 6.3.5 (Build 7119875) that contains a few new features and addresses a number of bug fixes from previous releases. Going through the release notes there are a lot of known issues that should be known and there are more than a few that apply to service providers…specifically there are a lot around Logical and Edge Routing functions. The other interesting point to highlight about this release is that this is apparently the same build that runs on VMware on AWS…Read More
  • What I Wish I Knew When I Was Learning VMware – Learning a new technology can seem daunting at first. This year marks 10 years of me working with VMware technologies, which blows my mind. When I was first learning VMware, I was just like anyone
  • What is VMware Workspace ONE, really? – VMware Workspace ONE is a modern platform that can manage everything from Windows, replacing SCCM, to Mac, Android, and iOS, connecting them to identity, storage, and application services on-premises or in the cloud.
  • Network Insight 3.6 Technical Overview download (22)– vRealize Network Insight 3.6 (vRNI) and Network Insight Service include a number of powerful new features designed to provide enhanced visibility for physical network switches. Network Insight also allows you to leverage your physical switch NetFlow data for micro-segmentation planning. Additionally we have added a flow analytics capability, a new AWS security group and firewall
  • vSphere 6.5 Update 1 is the Update You’ve Been Looking For! download (23)– With this update release, VMware builds upon the already robust industry-leading virtualization platform and further improves the IT experience for its customers. vSphere 6.5 has now been running in production environments for over 8 months and many of the discovered issues have been fixed in patches and subsequently rolled into this release.
Eye on VMware Update, VMware News

Eye on VMware 11/06/2017

vmware

What a crazy week we had! First, the New York City terror on the West Side. I had many friends that went to Stuyvesant and I know the area well. That trail is usually very crowded with lots of pedestrians. Then, we had the church incident last night near San Antonio, Texas. What is this world coming to? We have way too many crazies running around! For those of you still looking to get your hands on an iPhone X before the 3-4 weeks delivery time, you may want to check your local Apple store from time to time. They are stocking them on a daily basis. I’m looking to purchase one for my cousin in Taiwan. You can monitor the availability on this website.

Last week I attended a VMware Cloud on AWS Partner Enablement workshop for some Early Access Partners. It was a joint session with Amazon. I got to meet some of my AWS peers whom I will be working with closer to help our partners on-board with this new offering. We shared many of our roadmap for our next release and beyond. This is just the beginning. There is so much great features coming out to tackle business requirements coming soon!

VeloCloud Acquisition
In the world of VMware, we made a huge acquisition of VeloCloud. CaptureWith the addition of VeloCloud’s industry-leading SD-WAN technology, we will be able to extend the VMware NSX approach of automated, secure, and infrastructure-independent networking to the WAN.” We already see companies like Brooks Brothers trading in MPLS for SD-WAN in 278 Stores. There are two things that SD-WAN solves:

  1. Reduce Costs – Eliminate Branch router, dedicated circuit and maintenance costs, remote install
  2. WAN Efficiency – SaaS and internet traffic gets directed at the branch level instead of traversing to the data center

Are your customers ready to save some money and drive efficiency? Absolutely!

Below from Linda Hummel, APO Partner Enablement:

November Dates To Remember

November vmLIVE Event Calendar

Program Updates

Customer Promotions

Partner Enablement

AirWatch Training Course Schedules

Tips/Tidbits

Solution Enablement Toolkits Partner Cheat Sheet ; Follow on Twitter @VMware_SETs

VMUG Virtual User Conference 2017 – December 13th, 2017, 9AM-5PM
download (15)

VMware Customer Webcasts

Upcoming VMUG Meetings

Now for a Summary of VMware News Update from this past week.

Sales News:

Technical News:

  • 10 Things To Know Before Starting with NSX-T download (13)– NSX-T 2.0 is available for 2 months now and I thought I could share a few tips and information you should know before starting with NSX-T.
  • What Every vSphere Admin Must Know About VMware Tools – The latest technical resources to help vSphere Administrators manage the lifecycle of VMware Tools
  • Oracle RAC on VMware Cloud on Amazon AWS download (11)-With the recent launch of the VMware Cloud on AWS Software Defined Data Center (SDDC) from VMware, many Business Critical Application (BCA) workloads that were previously difficult to deploy in the cloud no longer require significant platform modifications. This joint demo between VMware and AWS presented at VMworld 2017 uses an Oracle RAC Database for high-availability zero-downtime client connection failover, supporting a Django-Python application running in a Native AWS Elastic Beanstalk environment.
  • Network Ports in Horizon 7 download (12)– The VMware Horizon 7 Network Ports document lists port requirements for connectivity between the various components and servers in a Horizon 7 deployment. Included are detailed Horizon 7 Network Ports diagrams. Links from the thumbnail diagrams take you to larger PDF layouts of the diagrams that are high resolution and ready for printing as posters. Each subset of the main diagram focuses on a particular connection type and display protocol use.
  • Review: The best Linux distros for Docker and containers -Alpine Linux, CoreOS Container Linux, RancherOS, Red Hat Project Atomic, and VMware Photon OS compared
  • Announcing Version 2.0 of Project Photon OS – download (10)By Steve Hoenisch, Technical and Marketing Communications, VMware We’re pleased to announce version 2.0 of Project Photon OS. Photon OS is an open source Linux operating system optimized for containers, cloud-native applications, public cloud platforms and VMware infrastructure. The operating system helps you securely build, test, run and manage containerized applications. Here are some highlights

 

 

 

Eye on VMware Update, VMware News

Eye on VMware 10/30/2017

vmware

This past week was full of sleep deprivation for many of us. How many of you stayed up until midnight to pre-order an iPhone X? Hope you were one of the lucky ones. I switched over to a Samsung Galaxy S8 several months ago. I was just getting bored of the same old iPhone for many years. Not many new innovation until this iPhone X. Very interested to see how people like the facial recognition unlock. I use it sometimes on the Samsung but still prefer the fingerprint reader most of the time.

What about the World Series? Wow. I’m a Dodgers fan, so it was a tough loss last night. The Astros just are unstoppable on offense. I was surprised the Dodgers were able to come back in the 9th. I can tell the pitching staff on both sides are worn out.

This past week at VMware, we announced the VMware vSphere BETA Program. Folks who want to participate in the program can now indicate their interest by filling out this simple form. The vSphere team will grant access to the program to selected candidates in stages.

download (8).pngChina Global Television Network did an interview with Pat Gelsinger while he was there for the vForum China in Beijing this past Friday. China Global Television Network rarely ever interview a foreign executive, so this was pretty interesting.

This past Thursday I did a Top Gun Tech Thursdays session on Wavefront. Here are the slides if you are interested. Wavefront is a Metrics Analytics Platform. The most common question asked is how does this compare to vRealize Operations (vROps) and Blue Medora? The biggest differentiator is this is a SaaS based offering. One of the few services of the broader VMware Cloud Services. Unlike vROps/Blue Medora, which is on-prem. Secondly, it’s primarily for different audiences. Wavefront is for Service Reliability Engineers (SREs), DevOps and Developers. While vROps/Blue Medora is mostly for Infrastructure admins.

Here’s the deck I presented: https://goo.gl/bWSroo
There’s a 30-day trial on wavefront’s website: https://www.wavefront.com/sign-up/
VMware Hands on Lab: HOL-1802-01-CMP: http://labs.hol.vmware.com/
Pricing is based on PPS (Packets per second), GA 8/10/17

VMUG Virtual User Conference 2017 – December 13th, 2017, 9AM-5PM
download (15)

VMware Customer Webcasts

Upcoming VMUG Meetings

Now for a Summary of VMware News Update from this past week.

Sales News:

Technical News:

  • In the Lab: Migrating Workloads to VMware vSAN | StorageReview.com download (12)– Storage Reviews – For as much work as we’ve done around VMware vSAN in terms of site content and reviews, it may come as a surprise to some that we hadn’t been using any vSAN in production.
  • VMware NSX/Kubernetes and F5 – A Cloud Native App Integration download (11).png– The solution leveraging VMware NSX and F5 addresses many of the requirements of these emerging application architectures. The integration between these solutions provides customers many benefits, such as the ability to leverage and re-use existing investment in their load balancing resources, provides a solution to address the microsegmentation of microservices and container based applications, all while reducing the deployment time of applications and simplifying operations for application layer, security, and network availability services.
  • NSX Small and Medium Business Data Center Design Guide – View here on #VMTN! – This design guide is an initial draft status, feedback is welcome for the next updated version release. The goal of this guide is to outline options and possibilities in designing NSX in Small data centers/environments.
  • Kubernetes Introduction for VMware Users – Part 1: The Theory download (14)– By Hany Michaels, Senior Staff Solutions Architect NSBU, VMware This is the second part of my “Kubernetes in the Enterprise” blog series. As I mentioned in my last article, it is important to get everyone to the same level of understanding about Kubernetes (K8s) before we can proceed to the design and implementation guides.
  • VMware Cloud Services – VMware Cloud on AWS download (13)– thecloudxpert – Just a short one for this post. Read all about my views on VMware Cloud on AWS (VMConAWS) in this new article here. TL:DR Version VMConAWS is an #awesome joint proposition from VMware and AWS but like with most Public Cloud Platforms/Services, it isn’t without its barriers to adoption. However, we have to remember that the service…Read More
  • Overview of Horizon Cloud and Microsoft Azure Prerequisites download (16)– The first video in a series of four is an overview of how Horizon Cloud works on Microsoft Azure, and the prerequisites for deploying a Horizon Cloud Node.
  • Learn Networking With a FREE CCNA Lab Guide – One of the things I talk about at length in my book IT Architect Series: The Journey (A Practical Guidebook for Anyone Interested in IT Architecture) is gaining theoretical and practical knowledge …Read More
  • VMware Licensing Organization Tips download (9)– I bet there are lots of folks out there that just love managing licensing both on their systems and in the VMware portal. For those of you t…Read More
Eye on VMware Update, VMware News

Eye on VMware 10/23/2017

vmware

Another week of Post-Season baseball. Dodgers and Astros in the World Series starting tomorrow. I was a bit disappointed Yankees didn’t make it. That would have been a dream matchup for me.

This past week I was out in New York City and Boston. We did a few SDDC Assessments workshop with partners. Screenshot_20171023-105400I was also able to listen in on Emad Younis explaining all the different scenarios of upgrading vCenter/vSphere. Later in the week, I participated in the Boston VMUG UserCon. I presented on “Transforming Networking and Security with NSX, App Defense and vRealize Network Insight“. Here are the slides if you are interested.

This week I will be presenting on Wavefront on our Partners’ Top Gun Tech Thursdays.

October Dates To Remember

  • Top Gun Tuesday (for Partner Sales):
    • Oct 24: Why should our customers update to vSphere 6.5?
    • Oct 24: The Myths of HCI
  • Top Gun Tech Thursday (for Partner Technical Teams):
    • Oct 26: Wavefront

[Webcast] Solve your Citrix Problems with VMware Technologies – 10/25

VMware Customer Webcasts

Upcoming VMUG Meetings

Now for a Summary of VMware News Update from this past week.

Sales News:

Technical News: