Today at VMworld 2019, VMware introduced new and expanded cloud offerings to enable a hybrid cloud platform. The new VMware Hybrid Cloud Platform brings everything VMware has to offer, software and cloud services, and makes them available on premises or in the cloud, through VMware and partners. VMware states that it can deliver consistent cloud infrastructure and operations while allowing customers to migrate and modernize applications across clouds, data centers, and edge locations all the while being able to simplify cloud planning, deployment, costs and ongoing operations.
Today at VMworld 2019, VMware introduced new and expanded cloud offerings to enable a hybrid cloud platform. The new VMware Hybrid Cloud Platform brings everything VMware has to offer, software and cloud services, and makes them available on premises or in the cloud, through VMware and partners. VMware states that it can deliver consistent cloud infrastructure and operations while allowing customers to migrate and modernize applications across clouds, data centers, and edge locations all the while being able to simplify cloud planning, deployment, costs and ongoing operations.
The hybrid cloud has really taken off in the last few years. It really offers companies the best of both world approaches. Companies that need to run applications on-prem for performance or regulatory reasons are able to do so. If an organization wants to take advantage of the economics of the cloud or the ability to pull in brand new technology, again the hybrid cloud makes it a good fit. The hybrid cloud not only allows users to run workloads where they need to be ran, users can migrate the workloads to different locations as needed, whether it is to tap into more resources or because it needs less. In order for the above to come to fruition, IT needs consistent infrastructure including compute, storage, and networking and consistent operations. VMware says it can deliver to help IT and customers unlock the potential of the hybrid cloud by deliver it as a Platform.
VMware has broken down its updates into two main categories: VMware Hybrid Cloud Operations and VMware Hybrid Cloud infrastructure. VMware Hybrid Cloud Operations focus on letting customers manage their systems and applications in a simpler manner. This is done through automation, cost management, compliance, resource governance, security and visibility. New advancements in VMware Hybrid Cloud Operations include:
- VMware vRealize Operations 8.0 – Includes new and enhanced capabilities for self-driving hybrid cloud and hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) operations as well as multi-cloud monitoring. The latest release delivers Intent-Driven continuous performance optimization, more efficient capacity management, intelligent remediation and integrated compliance and configuration. These capabilities enable customers to continuously optimize application performance based on business and operational intent, run infrastructure like a public cloud with optimal consolidation, proactive planning and procurement; better predict, prevent and troubleshoot across hybrid and multiple clouds; and reduce risk and enforce IT and regulatory standards.
- VMware vRealize Automation 8.0 – Introduces a container-based microservices architecture which is easier and simpler to install, with improved performance and high availability. Enhances operational agility and developer productivity through a series of new capabilities that improve ease of use. Increases user experience and multi-cloud readiness with broad extensibility to across VMware Cloud on AWS all major public clouds and enhanced ServiceNow, Terraform and Git integrations.
- VMware vRealize Suite 2019 – Fully integrates vRealize Automation 8.0 and vRealize Operations 8.0 to deliver advanced closed loop optimization capabilities that enable continuous performance optimization, simplify IT operations, and lower IT costs. VMware vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager 8.0 will further simplify ongoing administration and support of the Hybrid Cloud Management Platform. The addition of VMware vCloud Suite 2019 Platinum in vRealize Suite 2019 will enable IT Operations teams to gain visibility into application context and behavior to accurately identify and eliminate legitimate threats in real time, while continuously hardening and protecting workloads.
- CloudHealth Hybrid – New service will extend the same rich cost optimization, migration assessment governance and security functionality that CloudHealth delivers to public cloud environments to VMware hybrid cloud environments. Customers will be able to eliminate wasted cloud spend and provide users with reports on actual cloud spend (showback) through visibility into all cloud costs with cost/usage/performance data. CloudHealth Hybrid will enable organizations to accelerate migrations and optimize cloud infrastructure for each workload based on cost/performance. With the ability to create policies for proper hybrid cloud resource usage, and trigger notifications when policies are violated, customers will gain flexibility with guardrails to prevent unauthorized services and security vulnerabilities.
- Wavefront by VMware – With enterprise-wide dashboard UX, Wavefront helps engineering teams – Operations, SREs, Kubernetes Operators, Developers, DevOps – with simple yet powerful, dashboard creation and customization to create visualizations they need to watch over their services. This empowers them to dramatically simplify troubleshooting and reduce incident remediation times across the multi-cloud enterprise multicloud. With enterprise-wide usage reporting, Wavefront users get visibility to watch over their usage of the observability service to ensure accountability to monitor what matters in an economical way across a shared service. Wavefront is also launching automated full-stack Kubernetes observability combined with applications observability powered by metrics, traces, trace logs and histograms. It provides instant insights into the health and performance of Kubernetes, containerized applications and microservices at scale.
- VMware Cloud Marketplace –VMware Cloud Marketplace enables customers to discover and deploy validated, third-party solutions for VMware platforms, across public, private and hybrid cloud environments. The marketplace is now available for VMware Cloud on AWS and VMware Cloud Provider Partners. From the entire catalog – which also includes hundreds of open-source solutions packaged by Bitnami – customers can browse, filter and select the specialized tools that are right for them. For vendors, it offers a way to easily publish solutions for VMware customers globally, and for multiple VMware platforms. Currently, VMware Cloud Marketplace meets a variety of common use-case requirements such as back-up and security, through third-party ISV solutions and popular open-source options.
- VMware and Dell EMC Partner on DR as a Service and Data Protection – VMware is partnering with Dell EMC across multiple areas to bring customers greater choice in Disaster Recovery as a Service and Data Protection solutions. Initially the companies will collaborate on a new DRaaS solution using AWS S3 for VMware Cloud on AWS. With this offering, customers will gain improved cost and storage efficiency using AWS S3. VMware and Dell EMC will also collaborate to enable Dell EMC to offer best in class data protection solutions for VMware workloads running at the edge, core and cloud.
- VMware Skyline – Adds new proactive support enhancements including automated software compatibility checks, automated log bundle upload for Horizon 7.10 and above via Log Assist, and integration with Dell EMC SupportAssist, enabling a richer proactive support experience for customers running VMware and Dell. VMware Skyline is included with customer’s Production and Premier Support subscriptions. Premier Support customers will have access to advanced reporting features and remediation support from dedicated support representatives.
With VMware Hybrid Cloud infrastructure, the company helps to deliver consistent infrastructure across the data center, cloud, and edge. What’s notable here is that the new VMware Hybrid Cloud empowers workers to the do the above on the infrastructure out their choice. Powered by VMware Cloud Foundation, it also spans all the major publics clouds including AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, and IBM Cloud while also supporting over 60 VMware Cloud Verified partners worldwide. Today, VMware is focusing on three aspects of its infrastructure: VMware Cloud on Dell EMC, VMware Cloud on AWS, and VMware Cloud Solutions.
VMware Cloud on Dell EMC
Initially announced at Dell Technologies world in April, VMware Cloud on Dell EMC combines vSphere, vSAN and NSX with Dell EMC’s server platforms, specifically its Dell EMC VxRail hyperconverged infrastructure. Today the two companies are announcing that the infrastructure is now available. Th entire thing is delivered as a service and fully managed by VMware. The companies state that with VMware Cloud on Dell EMC users will see a combination of public cloud simplicity, agility and economics with the security, control and performance of on-premises infrastructure.
VMware Cloud on AWS
VMware is releasing a new VMware Cloud on AWS. The latest release focuses on customers’ ability to migrate and modernize their workloads. The migration is stated to be ultra-fast leveraging VMware HCX and vMotion combined with consistent hybrid cloud infrastructure and operations. These technologies promise push-bottom migrations and interconnectivity between VMware Cloud on AWS SDDCs running in different AWS Regions. Once migrated, applications capabilities can be extended through integrations of native AWS services such as Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS), and Amazon SageMaker. For better storage scaling, the new release support Elastic vSAN.
In just one year, VMware Cloud on AWS is now in 16 AWS Regions globally, up from 4 a year ago. They have also seen a 400% increase in customers, over 800% increase in VMs, over 250% increase in partners achieving Solutions Competency, over 260% increasing in available ISV solutions, and a 96% customer satisfaction rating. To help punctuate this growth, VMware commissioned a study on costs savings and ROI for those moving to VMware Cloud on AWS. Key findings include:
- Avoided application redesign, totaling savings of $2.7M
- Reduced labor hours for operations, saving $1.2M
- Reduction in data center operating costs, totaling $1.4M
- Software and hardware savings of $3.2M
Looking forward, VMware will continue to integrate new technology into VMware Cloud on AWS such as Bitfusion and partnerships with industry leaders such as NVIDIA, customers will be able to enrich existing applications and power new modern enterprise applications, including AI, machine learning, and data analytics workflows, through best-in-class GPU acceleration services.
VMware Cloud Solutions
These new solutions are designed to streamline and simplify cloud adoption. The solutions can deliver prescriptive workflows to achieve specific use cases, including Cloud Migration, Desktop As-a-Service, Disaster Recovery as-a-Service, Self Service Applications, and Managed Kubernetes. Currently the Cloud Migration is available on VMware Cloud on AWS we talked about above. Other workflows will be available in the future.
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