VMware advances Cross-Cloud architecture

These new releases advance VMware Cross-Cloud Architecture™, which enables customers to run, manage, connect, and secure their applications across clouds and devices in a common operating environment. As the world's most complete hybrid cloud architecture, the Cross-Cloud Architecture delivers consistent deployment models, security policies, visibility and governance for all applications, running on- and off-premises, regardless of the underlying cloud, hardware platform or hypervisor. VMware Cross-Cloud Architecture builds on its leading private and hybrid cloud capabilities by offering customers the freedom to innovate in multiple clouds, and is delivered through VMware Cloud Foundation™ as well as a new set of Cross-Cloud Services™. VMware Cloud Foundation delivers the next-generation hyper-converged infrastructure for building hybrid clouds. VMware Cloud Foundation integrates VMware's highly scalable hyper-converged software (VMware vSphere and VMware Virtual SAN) with the world's leading network virtualization platform, VMware NSX®, into a unified SDDC platform that is simple to deploy and operate thanks to the built-in lifecycle automation capabilities of VMware SDDC Manager.

"Enterprises count on their hybrid cloud environments to boost business agility and accelerate application deployment on the path to digital transformation," said Raghu Raghuram, executive vice president and general manager, Software-Defined Data Center Division, VMware. "These new releases will deliver significant new customer benefits including support for containerized applications in production and simplifying operations at scale with these new releases. They represent important building blocks of our Cross-Cloud Architecture to help customers scale out their hybrid clouds."

VMware vSphere 6.5: Next Gen Infrastructure for Modern Applications

VMware vSphere 6.5 will feature a simplified customer experience through increased automation and management capabilities, comprehensive built-in security, and support for new application types including containers. With these new capabilities, VMware vSphere 6.5 offers customers a universal application platform that supports traditional and modern applications -- spanning 3D graphics, Big Data, cloud-native, containerized machine learning and Software as a Service -- to run any application anywhere. The new release will feature:

• VMware vCenter Server® Appliance - will deliver a simplified building block for vSphere environments offering an easy to deploy and manage approach that reduces operational complexity by embedding key functionality into a single virtual appliance. The appliance will offer customers simplified patching, upgrading, backup and recovery, high availability and more, including a 2x increase in both scale and performance of their vCenter Server environments.
• REST APIs - will improve both the IT and developer experience by enabling greater control and automation of virtual infrastructure for modern applications via new REST-based APIs.
• VMware vSphere Client - based on HTML5, the new vSphere Client will simplify the administrative experience via a modern, native tool that meets the performance and usability needs and expectations of users for day-to-day operations.
• VM Encryption - new virtual machine-level encryption will protect against unauthorized data access safeguarding data at rest as well as virtual machines that are moved with VMware vMotion®.
• Secure Boot - new feature will prevent the tampering of images as well as the loading of unauthorized components into vSphere environments.
• VMware vSphere Integrated Containers™ - will allow IT operations teams to provide a Docker-compatible interface to their app teams enabling vSphere customers to transform their businesses with containers without re-architecting their existing infrastructure.

VMware Virtual SAN 6.5: Further Lowering TCO for Hyper-Converged Infrastructures

VMware continues to rapidly update its industry-leading hyper-converged solution with Virtual SAN 6.5 -- its fifth product release in less than three years. The new release will improve total cost of ownership (TCO) savings an additional 50 percent by adding support for containers and physical workloads, unveiling iSCSI support, eliminating networking hardware costs from two-node Remote Office/Branch Office (ROBO) configurations, and adding all-flash hardware support to Virtual SAN Standard Edition. VMware Virtual SAN 6.5 will deliver:

• iSCSI Support - will enable Virtual SAN storage to be presented as an iSCSI target for external physical workloads including clustered applications such as Microsoft SQL Server with Failover Clustering on a limited number of physical servers.
• Containers Support - Virtual SAN will provide persistent data layer for containerized applications via VMware vSphere Integrated Containers.
• Two-node Direct Connect - new functionality will eliminate the need for routers/switches between Virtual SAN systems in ROBO sites helping customers lower infrastructure costs by 15 to 20 percent per site.
• REST APIs and Expanded PowerCLI - will help customers accelerate responsiveness with enterprise-class automation that brings cloud-like flexibility and management to Virtual SAN environments.
• 512e Hard Disk Drives and Solid State Drives (SSDs) - support for 512-byte emulated disk drives enables high-capacity drives to be supported.

In Q4 2016, VMware will update the packaging for Virtual SAN Standard Edition to introduce support for basic all-flash configurations enabling customers to further lower TCO for their storage system.

VMware today is announcing a new VMware Ready for vSAN certification program to provide customers with the confidence that file services and data protection partner solutions will seamlessly deploy, run and interoperate with Virtual SAN. The program will accelerate customer time-to-value by helping them to quickly find a qualified solution partner. Dell EMC, NetApp and Nexenta are the initial file services partners. Commvault, Dell EMC, Veeam and Veritas are the initial data protection partners participating in this program. Over time, VMware expects to work with additional partners to further enhance the ecosystem.

In addition, VMware is also announcing vSphere Virtual Volumes™ 2.0, which will feature enhanced enterprise-readiness through capabilities like native support for array replication, as well as support for business-critical applications such as Oracle Database with Real Application Clusters.

VMware vRealize: Enhances Ease of Use with Out-of-the-Box Support for Azure and Containers

VMware today introduced a number of updates to its cloud management platform with significant enhancements to vRealize Automation and vRealize Log Insight™. To better address the needs of developers and IT teams, VMware vRealize Automation 7.2 will introduce out-of-the box support for Microsoft Azure as well as new container management capabilities. With this new release, the ability of IT and DevOps practitioners to use unified service blueprints to simplify the delivery of integrated multi-tier applications with application-centric networking and security will be extended to Microsoft Azure, as well as currently supported clouds including Amazon Web Services (AWS), VMware vCloud® Air™ and the vCloud Air Network™.

VMware vRealize Automation 7.2 support for containers will enable developers and application teams to accelerate application delivery. The latest release will feature Admiral™, a highly scalable and lightweight container management portal to deploy and manage containers to Docker hosts supporting operating systems that Docker supports. Currently VMware is testing Admiral to deploy containers to virtual container hosts on VMware vSphere Integrated Containers in a private beta. Beyond Admiral support, developers will be able to provision container hosts from the vRealize Automation 7.2 service catalog. They will have the choice of modeling containerized applications using unified service blueprints or Docker Compose. Application teams will have the ability to build hybrid deployments consisting of VMs and containers. Cloud administrators will be able to manage container hosts and apply governance to their usage including capacity quotas or approval workflows. vRealize Automation 7.2 is well suited to organizations required to support existing apps while modernizing them via the adoption of microservices and a cloud-native architecture. VMware's multi-technology approach across private and public clouds with support for containers and OpenStack affords customers the flexibility to manage their talent pools and technology stacks as needed today and over time.

VMware is also introducing vRealize Log Insight 4.0 and vRealize Operations 6.4. The latest release of VMware's log management and analysis solution will feature enhanced alert management functionality and a redesigned, easy to use interface. VMware vRealize Operations 6.4 will deliver improved alert management and metric grouping for faster troubleshooting and new dashboards customized to specific user personas that span infrastructure, application and cloud teams. Both vRealize Log Insight 4.0 and vRealize Operations 6.4 will also include integrations with the newly announced vSphere 6.5.

VMware Cloud Services: New Hybrid Cloud Solutions for the Enterprise

VMware continues to help customers extend their private workloads into the public cloud, using VMware vCloud Air Network and VMware vCloud Air. A common driver for cloud adoption is Disaster Recovery as a Service. VMware vCloud Air Network recently introduced VMware vCloud Availability™ for vCloud Director® to the ecosystem of over 4,000 service providers located in more than 100 countries offering VMware-based cloud services. As part of today's announcements, VMware is also introducing the beta of a new vCloud Air disaster recovery solution designed specifically for the enterprise. The new offering is designed to provide the security and isolation of a dedicated cloud environment combined with the simplicity of a replication solution that is directly integrated into vSphere and optimized with SD-WAN technologies. As part of today's announcement, VMware is also introducing the beta of VMware Cloud Foundation Service on vCloud Air which provides a fast and easy way to leverage the combined power of vSphere, Virtual SAN, NSX and SDDC Manager in a fully integrated service offering from VMware. When combined with VMware Cloud Foundation environments on-premises, customers gain cloud scale, agility, and flexibility with complete compatibility for a unified hybrid cloud experience.