Kathy Gibson reports from VMworld 2014 in Barcelona – In the same way that IT professionals embraced virtualisation, they are also driving the software-defined data centre.
Raghu Raghuram, executive vice-president: SDDC at VMware, points out that SDDC technology is gathering momentum
For instance, virtual SAN has already got 300 customers, and the net beta is already in the pipeline.
Networking virtualisation has been embraced by telcos, banks and channel enterprise to transform their network and security infrastructure in the data centre.
“Last but not least, is the management. We are the number one cloud management player in the world – and the suite has become more powerful than ever,” says Raghuram.
He says the reason for the technology’s success is simple. “It is the only architecture that has the power of ‘and’.
“This means IT can support existing applications as well as new applications; the traditional IT as well as the new IT; it allows for elasticity while preserving governance; and it is a simple architecture that works both on-premise and off-premise.”
He says the introduction of the hyper-converged infrastructure vastly simplifies the data centre.
Ben Fathi, chief technology officer for VMware, unpacked the EVO architecture that enables hyper-convergence.
The new EVO:Rail can support up to 100 server virtual machines (VMs) and 250 desktop VMs, and can be set up in just 15 minutes.
Making the deployment of EVO:Rail simple is the user interface, where IT administrators can literally just enter information and click “go”. The rest of the process is automated: it initiates the hardware, builds the VMs and configures the environment, including virtual SAN.
Thereafter, users are presented with a simple interface that allows them to deploy VMs from the user interface.
VMware has also announced the technology preview of EVO:Rack, which includes vCloud Suite, Virtual SAN and NSX. “You can go from zero to provisioning applications inside two hours – and it scales to the needs of the largest data centres.”
Evo:Rack also includes lifecycle management.
“Our customers want choice, and this is a great way of delivering hardware choice,” says Fathi.
Importantly, VMware has also addressed the issue of choice on the software side by integrating with OpenStack.
Raghuram points out that VMware is one of the leading contributors to OpenStack, and OpenStack is now able to run efficiently on VMware.
In addition, vRealize can also support OpenStack together with the VMware platforms.
Legacy applications cannot be forgotten as technology moves to new technologies and apps.
VMware is making tools available to embrace legacy applications. These include fault-tolerance for scale-up applications that protect legacy applications from hardware failure.
Raghuram also explains that application mobility is an ongoing innovation at VMware, with vMotion having evolved over the last 10 years and now including cross vCenter instance which allows for data centre reconfiguration. In addition, long-distance vMotion eliminates boundaries by allowing applications to be moved from one data centre to another. And, with NSX, this is simplified even further.
Fathi adds that new applications also need to be integrated into the data centre infrastructure. Because these apps are usually developed in a distributed manner and in containers, these are easy to write and deploy.
VMware has now embraced containers, adding them into VMs to offer management, policy, governance and health. The result is an increase in performance without compromising on efficient management, security, persistence and automation.
Fathi explains that VMware now supports VMware, OpenStack, CloudFoundry and Container APIs, so a wide range of new apps can be included in the environment.
In addition, the vRealize Code Stream lets developers automate all the steps required in development, testing, user acceptance and production of new apps. This lets IT stay in control of governance and compliance, while giving developers an environment conducive to app development – all on one coherent platform.
Management is what brings all the technology together, Raghuram says. The vRealize suite is the most comprehensive cloud management suite on the market today, he adds.
“It allows for cloud automation, cloud operations and cloud business,” he says. “This works if you are managing an environment that is physical, virtual or with an application on someone else’s infrastructure.”
vRealize, which is also available as a managed service, offers policy-based management.
The virtual network is the final piece of the SDDC puzzle, with NSX allowing for network management and automation, as well as helping IT to manage security.
vRealize not only helps with deploying VMs and applications, but offers tools for the day-to-day running of the IT infrastructure.
