At the recent VMworld user conference, VMware announced a series of initiatives aimed at accelerating data center virtualization.
The vendor announced new virtualization, cloud management and integrated OpenStack solutions that are part of a product portfolio designed for implementing software-defined data centers. The innovations support open frameworks, as well as hybrid cloud environments based on VMware and non-VMware technologies.
"IT leaders need to have confidence that they can be brave and act with conviction in response to market opportunities," said Pat Gelsinger, chief executive officer for VMware. "Empowered by software-defined technologies, businesses are now able to move with dramatic speed. This ability to drive real impact has made the software-defined data center mainstream among leading businesses. VMware continues to innovate making the software-defined data center more open, secure and agile."
VMware Integrated OpenStack Delivers Developer-Friendly OpenStack APIs
VMware also announced VMware Integrated OpenStack, a solution that will enable IT organizations to deliver developer-friendly OpenStack APIs and tools on top of existing VMware infrastructure. The VMware Integrated OpenStack distribution will leverage VMware's technologies for compute, network, storage and management. With the VMware Integrated OpenStack distribution, customers can stand up a complete OpenStack cloud to provide API-driven infrastructure for internal developers, and to repatriate workloads from unmanageable and insecure public clouds.
VMware also introduced VMware EVO: RAIL, an infrastructure appliance that is intended to help customers streamline the deployment and scale-out of software-defined IT infrastructure at the speed of business. VMware EVO: RAIL is the first solution in a family of hyper-converged infrastructure offerings from VMware.
VMware EVO: RAIL will be offered by partners as a single SKU covering hardware, software, and support and services costs, with partners offering single
point-of-contact support. The hyper-converged infrastructure appliance will feature a pre-tested, pre-integrated 100 percent VMware software stack optimized for a 2U/4-node hardware platform. The VMware EVO: RAIL software will include VMware vSphere, VMware Virtual SAN, VMware vCenter Log Insight, and the new EVO: RAIL engine.
A single appliance will support approximately 100 general-purpose virtual machines or 250 virtual desktop virtual machines and will feature a VMware Virtual SAN datastore with a capacity of ~13 TB1.
VMware Joint Initiatives with Docker, Google, and Pivotal
Also at VMworld, the vendor announced joint initiatives with Docker, Google and Pivotal to help enterprises run and manage container-based applications on a common platform at scale in private, public and hybrid clouds. The collaboration will enable enterprises to leverage their existing VMware infrastructure as a unified, scalable and secure platform for running and managing enterprise applications whether in a container or a virtual machine or a container within a virtual machine in a platform as a service.
In cooperation with Docker, Google, and Pivotal, VMware will enable enterprises to run and manage their containerized applications on their VMware infrastructure or on VMware vCloud Air hybrid service, while minimizing complexity by reducing the need to build out new and separate infrastructure silos for their container initiatives. By offering a common platform, developers will gain the speed and agility they need while providing IT teams with the control they require. "With Docker, Google and Pivotal, we will simplify the way enterprises develop, run and manage all application types on a common platform at scale," said Ben Fathi, chief technology officer, VMware. "In this way, Docker containers and virtual machines will provide an IT environment without compromise. Together, we will optimize containers for the enterprise -- enabling that they run effectively in software-defined data center environments."
VMware Expands Partnership with HP
In addition, VMware also announced the expansion of a long-standing relationship with HP to promote software-defined data centers and hybrid clouds. This announcement includes the general availability of both the standalone HP-VMware networking solution, as well as the solution delivered as part of HP Converged Systems.
The companies also announced HP Helion OpenStack will support enterprise-class VMware virtualization technologies. The HP-VMware networking solution is among the industry's first federated networking solution, designed to provide customers unified automation of, and visibility into, their physical and virtual data center networks. The solution federates the HP Virtual Application Networks SDN Controller.
For more details, visit www.vmware.com.