VMware Introduces New Innovations For Unified Hybrid Cloud Platform

Today at VMworld 2015, VMware Inc. announced new innovations for its unified hybrid cloud platform. The new innovations include new public cloud services and software-defined solutions aimed at enabling customers to build applications faster, improve IT security, rapidly recover from disasters, and drive meaningful business value.

Based on VMware vSphere, the unified hybrid cloud platform allows customer to create one consistent environment across the private and public clouds. Customers will be able to securely build, run, and deliver applications both traditional and cloud-native. Built on a software-defined data center architecture, the unified hybrid cloud platform gives customers the choice of how to manage and build their applications and cloud environments based on their needs.

The key component of the unified hybrid cloud platform is VMware’s public cloud, vCloud Air, which allows the cloud and data center to remain connected. This streamlines the process by having all resources are accessible and shared across the hybrid cloud.

New or expanded vCloud Air services include:

VMware vCloud Air Disaster Recovery Services – VMware offers a unique approach to cloud disaster recovery, which includes a single cloud-based orchestration console and cloud services that deliver unified protection of all resources on-premises and off-premises. Key new enhancements to be delivered include:
Disaster Recovery OnDemand: VMware will add a pay-for-what-you-consume pricing option to VMware vCloud Air Disaster Recovery. Customers will pay a flat fee for each VM protected and the amount of storage consumed by the VMs. When a DR test is run or a DR event occurs, customers will only pay for the compute consumed when VMs are running.
Site Recovery Manager Air: Site Recovery Manager Air is a software as a service offering that will provide VMware vCloud Air Disaster Recovery customers with a comprehensive management solution for designing, testing, executing and orchestrating centralized business continuity and disaster recovery plans. VMware Site Recovery Manager Air will enable fast, reliable and orchestrated recovery of multi-VM applications and data centers protected in VMware vCloud Air.
VMware vCloud Air Object Storage – VMware vCloud Air Object Storage is a portfolio of highly scalable, reliable and cost effective storage services for unstructured data. VMware vCloud Air Object Storage powered by Google Cloud Platform is based on Google Cloud Storage and integrated into vCloud Air OnDemand. VMware vCloud Air Object Storage powered by EMC is based on EMC ViPR, offered by EMC Cloud Services and integrated into vCloud Air OnDemand. VMware vCloud Air Object Storage will be easy to setup and exceptionally durable and available, and will reduce the need for data protection with built-in redundancy. It will support global access use cases with easy access from any device, anywhere, anytime.
VMware vCloud Air SQL – VMware vCloud Air SQL is a new database as a service offering that will provide easy access to scalable, cloud-hosted relational databases. Delivered in a cost-efficient pay-as-you-go model, and built on the trusted foundation of vSphere, vCloud Air SQL will support hybrid data solutions that seamlessly and securely extend on-premises databases to the cloud. VMware vCloud Air SQL will support Microsoft SQL Server, with a variety of memory, compute and storage options, and plans to support other relational databases in the future.

The other main component of the unified hybrid cloud platform is the software-defined data center. VMware announced new product releases for the software-defined data center that include:

VMware NSX 6.2 – VMware NSX 6.2 enables organizations to achieve application continuity through disaster recovery and metro-pooling for more efficient use of resources throughout a single data center and across data centers. With VMware NSX, customers can reduce recovery time objectives by as much as 80 percent1. VMware NSX 6.2 also adds better integration with physical infrastructure, enabling simplified and consistent operations for the entire data center network and the extension of micro-segmentation to physical servers. Finally, new capabilities such as Traceflow and Central CLI further simplify operations and visibility. Read this blog to learn more about VMware NSX 6.2.
VMware vRealize Operations 6.1 – VMware vRealize Operations 6.1 will deliver a consistent management framework as organizations evolve from the private cloud and adopt technologies for the hybrid cloud. With the new Intelligent Workload Placement capability, VMware vRealize Operations will match the workload to a customer's specific IT and business needs, and recommend the best placement location. Proactive Rebalancing enables customers to continually meet those needs. Operating system and application monitoring will be available natively in VMware vRealize Operations and predictive analytics help IT proactively identify and avoid potential issues across infrastructure and application stacks from a unified self-learning management solution. For more information, read VMworld 2015: Intelligent Workload Management with vRealize Operations 6.1.
vRealize Log Insight 3 – New features in vRealize Log Insight 3 will include double the scale and performance to 15,000 messages per second, improvements in fault tolerance around clustering, analytics improvements with new charting options and query snapshots, improved integration with vRealize Operations, and improvements in Big Data style query execution.
VMware Integrated OpenStack 2 – VMware Integrated OpenStack 2 will be based on OpenStack Kilo, making it current with upstream OpenStack code, and will include an industry-first seamless upgrade capability that will address one of the largest deployment and operational challenges for OpenStack clouds. VMware Integrated OpenStack will also include enhancements such as load-balancing as a service, Ceilometer and Heat Auto Scaling to make VMware-based OpenStack clouds more scalable, performant and resilient. VMware also announced VMware Integrated OpenStack will be available to service providers through the VMware vCloud Air Network program. Read this blog to learn more about VMware Integrated OpenStack 2.
VMware Site Recovery Manager 6.1 – VMware Site Recovery Manager 6.1 will integrate with VMware NSX 6.2, enabling IT to use network virtualization to simplify disaster recovery management and accelerate recovery in the software-defined data center. VMware Site Recovery Manager will orchestrate the live migration of VMs at scale between sites by automating cross-vCenter vMotion operations, enabling zero downtime disaster avoidance and data center migrations. VMware Site Recovery Manager will interoperate with VMware vSphere Storage Policy-Based Management to enable automatic, policy-based disaster protection for VMs. VMware Site Recovery Manager will now add support for stretched cluster solutions including EMC VPLEX, Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform and IBM San Volume Controller. Read this blog to learn more about Site Recovery Manager 6.1.
VMware vSphere APIs for IO Filtering – VMware vSphere APIs for IO Filtering will enable ecosystem partners including Asigra, EMC, Infinio, PrimaryIO, Samsung, SanDisk and StorageCraft to offer third party software-based data services such as replication and caching. These data services will be fully integrated in vSphere and managed through vSphere Storage Policy-Based Management, which is the same framework used to manage all the software-defined storage services in vSphere. Hear what our partners are saying about vSphere APIs for IO Filtering.

Availability and pricing

VMware vCloud Air Object Storage powered by Google Cloud Platform is generally available.
VMware vCloud Air SQL is available now as part of an early access program.
VMware vCloud Air Object Storage powered by EMC is expected to be available as part of an early access program in Q3 2015.
VMware vCloud Air Disaster Recovery OnDemand and Site Recovery Manager Air are expected to be available as part of early access programs in Q4 2015.
VMware NSX 6.2 is generally available and can be purchased with either a perpetual or term license. List pricing for a perpetual license starts at USD $4,995 per CPU and list price for a term license starts at USD $34 per VM per month, with volume discounts available.
VMware Integrated OpenStack 2, Virtual SAN 6.1, vRealize Operations 6.1, vRealize Log Insight 3, Site Recovery Manager 6.1 and VMware vSphere APIs for IO Filtering are all expected to be generally available in Q3 2015

VMware unified hybrid cloud platform

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VMworld 2015 News and Announcements