VMware has made a myriad of announcements at VMware Explore 2022, all in the wake of yesterday’s multicloud announcement with NetApp. The multicloud services company aims to facilitate digital innovation, transformation and enterprise control across all apps. Given the breadth of today’s announcements, it is clear they do mean “all apps.”
So, without further ado, let us outline the latest announcements from VMware—including the important points engineers need to know.
Cloud and Edge Infrastructure Innovations
VMware vSphere 8 and VMware vSAN8 are introduced today, representing new compute and storage solutions for customers running various workloads in different environments. The former brings data processing units (DPUs) into the computational mix with CPUs and GPUs. The aim is to help improve workload performance while reducing total cost of ownership (TCO). This DPU endeavor included the help of AMD, Intel, NVIDIA, Dell Technologies, HPE and Lenovo.
Some numbers for context: VMware benchmarks have saved up to 20 percent of CPU cores while reaching similar or better performance. They have also achieved 36 percent higher transaction rate and 27 percent lower latency by leveraging the freed cores. For those interested in AI and machine learning, vSphere 8 will double the virtual GPU devices per virtual machine (VM) which aims to reach the computational needs of those applications.
As for VMware vSAN 8, it offers storage platform optimizations for modern hardware and hyperconverged infrastructure. Much of this is due to the new vSAN Express Storage Architecture which is created from the ground up to improve performance, storage, efficiency, data protection and management.
“In highly distributed environments, customers need cloud and edge infrastructure that enables them to scale their operations with consistency, availability and security—wherever their workloads are running—and at the lowest possible TCO,” said Mark Lohmeyer, senior vice president and general manager, Cloud Infrastructure Business Group, VMware. “With our multi-cloud and edge portfolio, VMware serves as the trusted foundation for customers seeking flexibility and choice to run their workloads where they’re best suited to run.”
VMware Aria Multicloud Management
A new multicloud management portfolio, called VMware Aria, aims to offer an end-to-end solution to manage the cost, performance, configuration and infrastructure of cloud native applications. The tool is powered by graph-based data storage technology that is designed to capture the complexity of an organization’s multicloud environment and offer a single source of truth in near-real time.
“With multi-cloud realities taking hold, managing overall cloud spend, resource utilization and application performance, security and compliance across different clouds can be increasingly difficult, and consequently can lead to overspending, inefficiencies and increased risk. Developers need cost, performance, security and configuration data—often sitting in disparate tools—to understand the complete characteristics of the application that they are building,” said Purnima Padmanabhan, senior vice president and general manager, Cloud Management, VMware.
“VMware Aria's API-first approach enables developers, SREs and Platform Engineering teams to pull relevant, correlated data from any source for quicker application analysis and debugging, while providing complete visibility into the cost, performance and configuration of applications and workloads across cloud environments for Platform Ops, IT Ops and Cloud Ops teams.”
VMware Tanzu for Building, Running and Managing Cloud-native Apps
Additions to the VMware Tanzu portfolio include Tanzu Application Platform and Tanzu for Kubernetes Operations. These tools offer end-to-end security from build to production as well as scalable and secure multicloud operations.
“Companies face pressure to optimize their application development and delivery efforts for speed, resilience and security as they move to become a true digital enterprise. Platform teams must focus on delivering a great developer experience and path to production to speed velocity, while also providing a solution for deploying and running apps more securely, reliably, and at scale on any and many clouds,” said Ajay Patel, senior vice president and general manager, Modern Apps & Management Business Group, VMware.
“Whether our customers are starting from the data center with existing apps or new apps built in the cloud, VMware Tanzu meets them where they are so they can get their apps to production faster. For those just starting their Kubernetes journey, vSphere with Tanzu Kubernetes Grid helps you get a developer-ready platform. For those who have already started with Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS) or any Kubernetes distribution, they can use Tanzu for Kubernetes Operations and Tanzu Application Platform for scaling your operator and developer experience.”
New Multicloud Innovations
VMware has also announced four “innovations” (as they call them) to improve the networking and security of the multicloud. These include:
- Project Northstar, an advancement of the NSX platform that aims to offer networking, security and end-to-end visibility of the multicloud.
- Carbon Black Cloud (the endpoint protection platform) expansions for network detection and visibility for extended detection and response.
- Project Trinidad, which uses sensors on Kubernetes clusters and machine learning to boost VMware’s API security and analytics.
- Project Watch, which utilizes app-to-app policy controls for multicloud networking and security.
“Enterprises are facing an unprecedented level of threat and complexity as they operate in today’s multicloud world,” said Tom Gillis, senior vice president and general manager of VMware’s Networking and Advanced Security business group. “VMware is radically transforming how our customers consume networking and security—allowing them to realize the agility and efficiencies of the cloud operating model through a cloud-smart approach. With a privileged position in the infrastructure and a scale out distributed software architecture, we’re able to leverage the intrinsic attributes of our platforms and deliver these unique solutions in a consumption-oriented manner.”
Automations of the Hybrid Work Model
In the wake of COVID-19, organizations have realized that they may not need all the brick-and-mortar offices they once had. As a result, hybrid work models have popped up throughout the workforce and the engineering world is no different. The challenge is that from an IT standpoint, hybrid work models inject complications to the ordered chaos of workspaces within the confines of an office.
VMware Anywhere Workspace is announced to combat this trend. It aims to automate the IT infrastructure for the hybrid model from a VDI, DaaS, employee experience, security and unified endpoint management perspective.
“The reality of hybrid work is each employee, and each device, is a front door into the organization and its resources. IT must not only make that front door secure, but also welcoming as employees access apps from anywhere. The only way IT teams will be able to support hybrid work is by implementing simplified, unified and automated processes,” said Shankar Iyer, senior vice president and general manager, End-User Computing, VMware. “Autonomous Workspaces represent the next evolution of managing digital workspaces, and VMware is once again pioneering the path forward for organizations.”
New Collaborations with Microsoft, IBM and AWS
VMware did not focus only on its own news today. It also expressed how it is collaborating with various partners to improve the cloud experience for all.
For instance, extended collaborations with Microsoft were announced to simplify the ability to run workloads in Azure. As a result, customers will be able to purchase the Azure VMware Solution through the Vmware Cloud Universal program.
“Digital transformation holds the promise of enabling new business models, improving customer experiences, and delivering better outcomes for organizations,” said Kathleen Mitford, corporate vice president, Azure Marketing, Microsoft Corp. “This promise is often held back by business and technical realities, talent shortages or financial constraints. Azure VMware Solution offers a unique path to help enterprise customers overcome these challenges and sets itself apart to help these organizations modernize and better secure their vSphere workloads with a combined set of unique features and compelling economic benefits only Microsoft can deliver.”
As for IBM, VMware will be partnering with them to combine consulting expertise for the development of jointly engineered cloud solutions. The organizations will also help each other deliver and market these tools.
“In today’s market, organizations want to modernize and transform operations quickly. But modernization and innovation cannot come at the cost of security and trust built with clients,” said Howard Boville, Head of IBM Cloud Platform. “Together, IBM and VMware are supporting our mutual clients in regulated industries by offering something no two other companies are delivering—to more easily leverage hybrid cloud services securely—wherever and however they wish to run them.”
Meanwhile, AWS and VMware outlined the value the two companies offer customers though jointly engineered services. For instance, AWS claimed that with VMware Cloud it can achieve 46 percent faster cloud migration and a 57 percent reduction in TCO.
“Customers want to accelerate cloud migrations with operational consistency and flexibility, reduce costs while scaling to meet global business demand, and modernize workloads and increase innovation with cloud-native services,” said Matt Garman, senior vice president, AWS sales and marketing at AWS. “Together with VMware, we are giving customers the fastest path to cloud migration and modernization for their enterprise vSphere workloads. We allow them to speed application innovation, simplify cloud operations, and further improve security by running on the AWS global infrastructure.”