Today at VMworld 2018 in Las Vegas, VMware Inc. is announcing major updates to its core offerings. This includes a new version of vSphere, 6.7 Update 1, along with a platinum version of vSphere. vRealize updates including Automation 7.5 and Operations 7.0. And vSAN including a private beta, version 6.7 Update 1, and native EBS Volumes on VMware Cloud on AWS.
Today at VMworld 2018 in Las Vegas, VMware Inc. is announcing major updates to its core offerings. This includes a new version of vSphere, 6.7 Update 1, along with a platinum version of vSphere. vRealize updates including Automation 7.5 and Operations 7.0. And vSAN including a private beta, version 6.7 Update 1, and native EBS Volumes on VMware Cloud on AWS.
Companies all over are undergoing a digital transformation in order to become digital companies. VMware believes that for these new digital companies to be successful they will need strong digital foundations. This digital foundation consists of consistent infrastructure, consistent operations, and intrinsic security. VMware sees itself as a digital infrastructure provider, providing the software-defined data center, the hybrid cloud, as well as the tools on the edge in end-user computing.
The first step in becoming this digital foundation it through the company cloud computing virtualization platform vSphere. Back in April VMware announced vSphere 6.7. Today they are announcing the first update on vSphere, Update 1 or U1, not 6.8. Along with that is a new ultra secure platinum version. The new update and platinum version offer the enhanced security from secure data, secure infrastructure, and secure access resulting in secure applications. Admins will have better protection with no agents to manage and they will be able to detect issues faster and response with higher accuracy. vSphere 6.7 U1 comes with new features and benefits including:
- Fully-featured HMTL5-based vSphere Client
- New vMotion and Snapshot Capabilities for NVIDIA vGPUs
- vCenter Server Converge Tool
- vSphere Platinum Edition
- Intrinsic Security to Protect Apps, Infrastructure, Data and Access
- Advanced Application Security Integrated into the Hypervisor
- Secure Apps by Focusing on their ‘Known Good’ State
The next step on the digital foundation is cloud management. VMware has expanded the reach of its Cloud on AWS and has announced several enhancements to its Cloud Operations Services. The company is also announcing updates to its cloud management platform, vRealize, specifically updating vRealize Automation to 7.5 and vRealize Operations to 7.0. VMware states that vRealize Automation 7.5 will be easy to operate, built for developers, and cross the clouds. Benefits include:
- Modernized vRA/vRO UI
- Closed Loop Optimization with vRealize Operations
- Enterprise-ready ServiceNow Plugin
- NSX-T On-prem support
- Configuration Management with Ansible Tower
- Kubernetes Cluster Management with Pivotal Container Services
- Re-certified for VMC on AWS
- Support for
- Azure Managed Disk
- Azure Gov Cloud, and
- Azure Germany region
The latest version of vRealize Operations is all about optimization: performance, capacity, and troubleshooting. The latest version comes with a slew of new benefits in order to hit these goals including:
- Fully automated workload balancing across clusters based on intent
- vRealize Automation integration for continuous workload placement throughout a VM’s lifecycle
- Host Based Placement to automate DRS
- Workload Rightsizing
- Complete visibility into outcomes
- Real-time, predictive capacity & cost optimization
- Enhanced capacity analytics with exponential decay and calendar awareness
- Densify and reclaim workflows
- Multiple what-if scenarios: add new workloads, model hardware purchases and AWS and VMC migration planning
- Predict, prevent and troubleshoot across SDDC, VMC & AWS
- Quick & Easy Dashboard Creation and Sharing
- Assess Performance & Capacity of Stretched vSAN Clusters
- Updated mgmt. packs: AWS, Storage, Kubernetes, Federation
- Updated Wavefront integration
The final step on the digital foundation is storage in the form of VMware's HCI product, vSAN. vSAN was only released 5 years ago and has taken the lead in the HCI space. Today the company is announcing a new private beta program, elastic cloud storage for VMware Cloud on AWS, and vSAN 6.7 U1. The private beta gives users a chance to both try out the software and help shape it as the company moves forward. Elastic storage will allow for storage that scales independent of compute, cost savings on storage intensive workloads, and an enhanced security through native encryption. 6.7 U1 adds two new features: Guided cluster creation and capacity reclamation to reduce costs and increase usable capacity.
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