VMware expands hybrid cloud portfolio

“While our customers’ needs and priorities stretch far and wide, we’re focused on driving innovations that will provide them with a digital foundation to meet their future IT needs while creating critical linkage that will help them get the most out of their existing IT investments,” said Rajiv Ramaswami, chief operating officer, Products and Cloud Services, VMware. “We continue to invest in infrastructure software for compute, networking, storage, and management that customers can count on to more securely and efficiently support the apps, data, people, and processes that will impact and power their businesses for decades.”

vSphere Platinum to Deliver Integrated Application Security

As both security threats and regulatory pressure to control risks increase, organizations are moving from point security tools to embedded infrastructure solutions. To help businesses address these threats, VMware will introduce vSphere Platinum Edition to deliver comprehensive, intrinsic security to protect applications, infrastructure, data and access across customers’ digital foundations. This new edition will combine vSphere’s native security capabilities with VMware AppDefense – resulting in the delivery of advanced application security features fully integrated into the hypervisor. Using machine learning and behavioral analytics, the new solution will enable vSphere administrators to deliver more secure applications and infrastructure by enabling virtual machines (VMs) to run in a “known good” state. It will offer direct visibility into VM intent and application behavior as well as fast and more accurate threat detection and response capabilities. This will enable vSphere admins and security teams to better collaborate to protect the business. To provide a fast path for on-premises vSphere customers to get started with VMware Cloud on Amazon Web Services (AWS), customers that purchase a minimum of five vSphere Platinum Edition licenses will also be eligible to receive credits that can be applied against the service.

VMware will also unveil vSphere 6.7 Update 1 which will deliver new features and enhancements, most notably the fully-featured HTML5-based vSphere Client to help admins manage their virtual infrastructure. Additionally, vSphere 6.7 Update 1 will increase support for intelligent workloads by introducing vMotion and snapshot capabilities for NVIDIA Quadro vDWS powered VMs. This will enable admins to migrate vGPU-powered VMs to other compatible hosts while performing maintenance operations to completely eliminate any disruption to end-users and their applications.

VMware Eases HCI Adoption with New vSAN 6.7 Update 1

VMware will launch vSAN 6.7 Update 1 to make it easier for customers to adopt HCI through simplified operations, efficient infrastructure and rapid support resolution. The new release will reduce maintenance operations time with built-in intelligence capabilities. It will also enable admins to spin up new HCI clusters faster than ever by introducing a “Quickstart” guided cluster creation and extension wizard that guides the user through the deployment process for both vSAN and non-vSAN clusters. The new release will deliver improved efficiency due to automated capacity reclamation and will help admins anticipate data needs with new predictive tools. vSAN 6.7 Update 1 will also decrease time-to-resolution with granular diagnostic tools and historical data to better support HCI environments. Additionally, VMware continues to invest in new areas of HCI innovation by unveiling a new private beta program for vSAN to gather feedback on potential ways to further simplify the data center through native data protection, file services, and cloud-native storage capabilities.

vRealize to Deliver Self-Driving Operations and Developer-Friendly Infrastructure

VMware will unveil new releases across its comprehensive vRealize Cloud Management Platform to help customers automate and standardize how their digital foundation is operated across hybrid cloud environments and consumed by developers for VM- and container-based application development. The platform helps customers address three key use cases: self-driving operations, programmable provisioning, and application operations.

vRealize Operations 7.0 will augment self-driving capabilities by introducing automated host-based placement driven by business intent. This feature will help customers control workload placement both within and across clusters to save costs and capacity or to assure performance.

Additional new and enhanced capabilities for fully automated performance optimization, right-sizing workflows, capacity planning, enhancements to UI and dashboard creation in vRealize Operations 7.0 will further enable customers to adopt a ‘self-driving’ approach to monitor and manage their data centers and cloud environments. This release will also provide full integration between vRealize Operations 7.0 and the new vRealize Automation 7.5 for initial and ongoing placement of workloads across clusters based on operational and business intent (e.g., utilization, compliance, license cost).

vRealize Automation 7.5 will help customers adopt a programmable provisioning and application operations approach to deliver developer-friendly infrastructure. With a new UI, vRealize Automation 7.5 will enhance configuration management use cases with Ansible Tower integration and offer Kubernetes cluster management via VMware Pivotal Container Service (PKS) integration. vRealize Automation 7.5 will also feature enhanced AWS and Azure support, enabling IT to better serve broader developer team skill sets and application types.

VMware will also announce vRealize Suite 2018 to provide enterprises with enhanced agility, efficiency, and control across both traditional and cloud-native applications on- and off-prem. The suite’s vRealize Lifecycle Manager 2.0 will enable a DevOps approach for managing the CMP across its lifecycle, making private cloud easier to operate and consume. Additional new features will include certificate management, content support for vRealize Operations including dashboards, monitors, reports and alerts, and simultaneous release of content across the full vRealize Suite.

VMware NSX and Virtual Cloud Networking Connect and Protect Apps, Data, and Users

A digital business demands a new type of network – a Virtual Cloud Network – that connects and protects applications, data, and users wherever they are located, independent of the underlying cloud or physical infrastructure. The VMware NSX networking and security portfolio delivers consistent, pervasive connectivity and security for apps and data across software-defined data center, branch, cloud, and telco environments, and empowers customers to build a Virtual Cloud Network today through a software-based digital business fabric that is open, programmable, and inherently more secure.

VMware has now extended NSX multi-cloud networking and security to more clouds and environments, with support for workloads running in AWS, Azure, VMware Cloud on AWS, and on-premises software-defined data centers, and both Linux-based and containerized workloads running on bare-metal servers without a hypervisor. With new support for NSX-T Data Center in vRealize Network Insight 3.9, customers can accelerate micro-segmentation planning and deployment, plan application migration, and gain operational views to manage scale and compliance for VMware NSX deployments across clouds. This solution is available as both on-premises software and as a SaaS offering, with full feature parity across both versions.