Broadcom Expands VMware Cloud Foundation Capabilities for AI, Cybersecurity, and Sovereign Cloud

VMware Explore 2024 Barcelona introduced new features for VCF, Tanzu, Live Recovery, Avi Load Balancer, and more.

At VMware Explore 2024 Barcelona, Broadcom revealed new innovations in VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) that support accelerated AI, enhanced cybersecurity, and sovereign cloud adoption for private cloud environments. Through advanced services and strategic partnerships, these enhancements reinforce VCF’s role as a robust private cloud platform, offering flexibility, data security, and reduced costs for enterprise clients.

Introducing VMware Tanzu Platform 10

Broadcom has announced that Tanzy Platform 10 will be available for general release on November 27, 2024. This marks the first version of the Tanzu Platform designed for self-managed, air-gapped environments, specifically optimized for private clouds built on VMware Cloud Foundation. Additionally, it is also compatible with deployments in public cloud environments. The new features include:

Built-in brokering and platform-level governance for models and tokens used by GenAI apps
New application visibility across multiple foundations, zones, and regions with integrated runbooks to improve application resiliency
An up to 70% reduction in infrastructure footprint for new Cloud Foundry foundations
Plug-and-play Federal Information Processing Standards (FIPS) libraries in VMware Tanzu Spring for real-time security and enterprise-class data sharing (CDS) for a 30% faster launch time
Validated, high-performance, high-availability configurations for native data services
Helm-based, COTS application support with advanced cluster management for containers on VMware Tanzu Kubernetes Grid Integrated
New Cloud Foundry-like developer experience on Kubernetes for custom applications

Tanzu Platform 10 introduces a new layer of abstraction for Cloud Foundry deployments, providing a common control plane and user interface. The control plane’s functionality will continue to evolve, to include management of larger, more complex application deployments. This advancement aims to reduce the reliance on platform engineers to manually bridge foundations or use fragile tools. This initial self-managed release includes the following features:

Built-in service broker and governance for GenAI apps: VMware Tanzu AI Solutions, now part of Tanzu Platform 10, allows developers to easily build, deploy, and scale AI-powered applications using the new GenAI tile. This offers essential tools for innovation while maintaining security and enabling platform operations teams to manage access to vetted models. Additionally, the integration with the VMware Private AI Foundation, powered by NVIDIA, hosts models on GPU infrastructure to enhance privacy. This solution accelerates time-to-market, optimizes performance, boosts scalability, and empowers teams to effectively leverage AI capabilities.
Up to 70% reduction in infrastructure footprint to support new Cloud Foundry foundations: Tanzu Platform 10 reduces the initial virtual machine count for a new foundation from 13 to 4, enabling quick setup with a minimal footprint and scalable capacity for distributed applications. It also utilizes OpenTelemetry (OTel) infrastructure, reducing space and processing for logs and metrics, resulting in an additional 15% infrastructure savings and allowing for larger foundations.
Plug and Play FIPS libraries in VMware Tanzu Spring for real-time security: The Enterprise Spring Boot Governance Starter library helps Spring developers comply with regulations and generate governance reports using the FIPS-approved BouncyCastle security provider and automated setups like FIPS-140-3 and NIST 800-53. It includes actuator endpoints for real-time enforcement of compliance.
Enterprise-grade Class Data Sharing (CDS) support for a 30% reduction in Spring application startup time: The integration of Spring Boot 3.3 with Tanzu Platform 10 streamlines the use of Continuous Delivery Services (CDS) by pre-processing runtime components. This also reduces memory consumption by 15% after startup, allowing subsequent application launches to skip certain initialization steps and significantly cut startup times.
New multi-foundation visibility: Organizations have deployed multiple Cloud Foundry foundations to support applications across various data centers. With new multi-foundation visibility, they can view all foundations and applications in one interface, along with health, utilization, and capacity data, enabling quicker triage and better capacity planning. Application teams can also troubleshoot issues more efficiently using real-time application logs from the Tanzu Platform.
New multi-foundation visibility – Many enterprises have deployed fleets of Cloud Foundry foundations to support applications across data centers and geographic regions. With the new multi-foundation visibility, these organizations can now see all foundations and deployed applications in one consolidated view, along with health, utilization, and capacity information, enabling faster application triage and more efficient capacity planning. Additionally, application teams can troubleshoot issues by utilizing real-time application logs now available as part of Tanzu Platform.
Integrated runbooks to improve resilience: Cloud Foundry experts have created various knowledge-base articles to ensure the health and performance of Cloud Foundry foundations. The integrated runbooks now incorporate this information into the Tanzu Platform, providing relevant alerts and remediation recommendations to improve uptime and reduce recovery times.

VMware Tanzu Data Services for VCF

Broadcom announced the integration of VMware Tanzu Data Services into VMware Cloud Foundation, an important enhancement designed to streamline data management for private cloud environments. Tanzu Data Services supports databases and messaging tools like PostgreSQL, MySQL, RabbitMQ, and Valkey, each optimized for automated lifecycle management, including deployment, backup, clustering, and security patching. This feature aims to simplify data operations, delivering secure, self-service access to data engines. By automating data service lifecycles, Tanzu Data Services allows private cloud administrators to manage complex data needs without requiring specialized expertise, making it easier for enterprises to maintain consistency and compliance across their private clouds.

Benefits of Tanzu Data Services for VCF include:

Simplified lifecycle management: Administrators can simplify the management of the underlying infrastructure and data services, from initial deployment to decommissioning. Automated updates and upgrades ensure that databases are always running the latest, most secure versions. This practice reduces the risk of vulnerabilities and enhances overall system stability.
Enhanced security and compliance: The solution provides advanced security features, including encryption, access controls, and audit logging, to help customers safeguard sensitive data. It simplifies compliance with industry standards and regulations, such as FIPS, HIPAA, and PCI DSS, through automated enforcement of security policies and regular audits.
Experts on-call: Tanzu Data Services offers enterprise support from Broadcom, featuring hundreds of experienced engineers available to troubleshoot and address complex questions from your operations teams and app developers regarding these open-source data engines.
Built-in configurations for high availability, multi-data center replication, and backup: Free private cloud admins from manual building and orchestrating complex, mission-critical scenarios around data availability, replication, and backups.

Developers reap the benefits of Tanzu Data Services. They can now easily provision, clone, and restore Tanzu Data Services within their development workflows, speeding the time to market. The self-service features and automation offered by Tanzu Data Services enhance collaboration between application and operations teams, thanks to API integration for better observability.

Teams using Tanzu Data Services have access to various approved and tested data service versions. This alleviates the burden on developers and provides IT organizations with confidence that the data services in use align with their policies and governance standards.

VMware Live Recovery

Broadcom’s new updates to VMware Live Recovery add GCVE (Google Cloud VMware Engine) as an isolated recovery environment for disaster and cyber recovery in VCF workloads. This expanded support enables customers to protect VMware workloads both on-premises and in the cloud, offering seamless, secure, and cost-effective recovery options. Broadcom’s collaboration with Google Cloud provides organizations with flexibility in disaster recovery, allowing them to implement secure, isolated environments while preserving operational continuity.

Additionally, VMware vDefend has received GenAI-driven Intelligent Assist capabilities to boost cyber resilience. This feature leverages generative AI for intelligent threat detection and remediation, enabling IT teams to prioritize high-risk alerts and reduce false positives. Intelligent Assist provides explainable threat data in plain language, making it easier for teams to understand and act swiftly on critical threats. With support for custom IDS/IPS signatures and comprehensive malware analysis, VMware vDefend empowers security operations with advanced threat management across private cloud environments.

Broadcom has introduced new capabilities to the VMware vDefend portfolio, aimed at providing comprehensive visibility, segmentation, and threat defense through a multi-layered approach. Key innovations that enhance vDefend updates at VMware Explore in Las Vegas include:

IDS/IPS Custom Signature Support: Customers can now import custom IDS/IPS signatures for tailored defenses against industry-specific attacks, including those sourced from third-party threat feeds, within distributed and hypervisor-integrated IDS/IPS offerings.
Malware Analysis Test Drive: This feature enables customers to upload files or URLs for thorough analysis, offering essential insights into highly evasive malware and zero-day threats.

VMware Avi Load Balancer: Optimizing Performance and Securing Kubernetes Environments

Broadcom has introduced new VMware Avi Load Balancer features to enhance load balancing in both VCF and Kubernetes environments. These improvements emphasize automation, resilience, and ensuring operations remain future-proof, with key updates including:

Large-Scale Deployments Support: Increased scale by about 2X to support enterprise workloads and over 3X to improve secure sockets layer (SSL) performance.
Improved application resiliency: Avi Load Balancer provides improved failure handling with support for multi-availability zones (AZ) in both VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) and VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF) deployments.
Enhanced Gateway API Support for Kubernetes: Avi Load Balancer is now fully integrated with the Tanzu Platform for Kubernetes. This integration utilizes the next-generation Ingress Gateway API, offers enhanced observability and analytics, and incorporates Avi GSLB for support across multiple clusters and sites.
Accelerated migration: The Avi Load Balancer Conversion Tool is now available to all customers.
Intelligent upgrades with Dry Run Capabilities: The dry run feature of Avi Controllers enables enterprises to test upgrades in a risk-free and isolated environment, ensuring everything functions smoothly before going live.

Azure AI Video Indexer Integration

Broadcom has integrated Microsoft’s Azure AI Video Indexer into VMware Cloud Foundation as part of its Private AI initiative, enabling organizations to perform audio and video analysis via generative AI. Azure AI Video Indexer is designed to run in data centers or edge devices, allowing businesses to leverage AI for real-time advanced multimedia analysis. This integration supports rapid AI innovation while giving enterprises complete control over data handling, privacy, and compliance in their private clouds. Broadcom’s Private AI solution emphasizes ease of use, automation, and security, allowing customers to scale AI projects swiftly across various environments.

VMware Programs

Broadcom has announced new benefits for members of the VMware User Group (VMUG), offering a 50% discount on VMware Certified Professional (VCP) and VMware Certified Advanced Professional (VCAP) exams. VMUG members who complete certification in VMware Cloud Foundation can receive a free VCF license for personal use, valid for up to three years. Additionally, Broadcom introduced the VMware Certified Professional – VCF Architect certification to recognize individuals proficient in designing VCF solutions that meet technical and business needs.

Broadcom continues to invest in private cloud modernization through its Private Cloud Modernization Program. This program provides expert training, resources, and tools to help customers accelerate their transition to private cloud environments. Broadcom’s Private Cloud Maturity and Optimization Tool, newly available to partners, provides an assessment framework and prescriptive guidance for optimizing private cloud infrastructure, helping organizations navigate their cloud transformation journey with tailored support.

Digital Sovereignty

Broadcom has expanded its VMware Cloud Service Provider (VCSP) network to address growing demands for digital sovereignty, with 50 partners globally and 30 within the EMEA region, offering sovereign cloud services based on VCF. These VCSP partners adhere to regional data sovereignty requirements, including local data residency, reversibility, and privacy-enhancing computation through Confidential Computing and vSAN Encryption. This network provides enterprises with sovereign cloud infrastructure that meets strict compliance and data protection standards. This enables organizations to maintain control over their data and ensure continuity in compliance with local regulations.

AI-Driven Networking with VeloRAIN and VeloCloud Enhancements

Broadcom has unveiled significant advancements in AI-powered networking and edge computing with its VeloRAIN architecture, two new VeloCloud Edge appliances, and a revamped partner program designed to support Managed Service Providers (MSPs). These innovations, highlighted in Broadcom’s latest “State of the Edge” report, are designed to optimize AI-driven enterprise networks’ performance, resiliency, and scalability.

VeloRAIN Architecture for Enhanced AI Workloads

Broadcom’s VeloRAIN architecture introduces innovative features to the VeloCloud product portfolio, enhancing AI-driven networking through improved application prioritization, traffic management, and overall efficiency. By leveraging machine learning, VeloRAIN allows for the intelligent detection of encrypted traffic, which has been challenging to optimize. This improvement makes it easier to prioritize AI applications at the network edge.

Additionally, enhanced channel estimation capabilities support 5G and satellite connections, providing fiber-like quality even in fluctuating network conditions. VeloRAIN’s Dynamic Application-Based Slicing (DABS) prioritizes traffic based on application type and user identity, ensuring that critical applications receive the best possible quality of service without requiring manual adjustments. Collectively, these advancements enable enterprises to streamline network management and deliver exceptional experiences to end users.

New VeloCloud Edge Appliances for Scalable Performance

Broadcom has launched the VeloCloud Edge 4100 and 5100 appliances for high-demand environments like data centers and large branch offices. The Edge 4100 offers up to 30 Gbps throughput and supports 12,000 connections, while the Edge 5100 delivers up to 100 Gbps with 20,000 connections. These appliances simplify network architecture by reducing device counts and providing ultra-low latency for efficient workload management.

To help Managed Service Providers (MSPs) expand, Broadcom initiated the Titan program, which offers innovative technology, performance rewards, and flexible licensing. This program includes a white-label solution that enables partners to enhance their VeloCloud reach through regional and specialized channels, improving network support and distribution.

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