VMware has announced a host of new products and updates as it looks to position itself as a hybrid cloud platform company. The announcements included the update of vSphere to version 6, VMware Integrated OpenStack, and VMware vCloud Air, a new offering that bridges the gap between public and private cloud hosting.
“As our customers accelerate growth, their IT organizations are expected to drive transformation, enhance efficiency, and bring more value to the business than ever before,” said Ben Fathi, CTO of VMware.
Version 6 of vSphere increases the levels to which virtual machines can be scaled. The ceiling now extends to 128 virtual CPUs and 4TB of virtual RAM. Hosts will support up to 480 CPUs and 12TB of RAM, 2,048 virtual machines per host, and 64 nodes per cluster. This new level of support for higher horsepower virtual machines is supplemented with support from NVIDIA for their GPUs in virtualized machines.
Other updates for vSphere 6 include the new foundation for Instant Clone—which allows VMs to be duplicated much faster than in previous releases—and networking updates like multicast snooping.
vSphere 6 is coupled with VMware Virtual SAN 6 and vSphere Virtual Volumes, which allow users to set up storage arrays that are accessible to virtual machines. The release also increases cluster size to 64 nodes and adds flash-aware storage allocation from the system. Storage arrays that include stacks of Flash media will be prioritized by VMware Virtual SAN 6, forming a primary layer of fast-response data storage.
vCloud Air, previously known as VMware vCloud Hybrid Service, encompasses VMware’s public cloud hosting platform. This hosted cloud run by VMware can be used by corporations to supplement on-site compute power.
VMware NSX networking virtualization forms the basis for the hybrid cloud capabilities of vCloud Air. Users can spin up major enterprise applications in-house, then use vCloud Air to scale their applications on-demand. VMware NSX allows applications to be clustered together across data centers and vCloud Air, forming the hybrid platform about which much of VMware’s news revolved. vCloud Air hybrid cloud support will arrive sometime in the first half of this year.
But perhaps the most interesting announcement made by VMware was that the company would be distributing what it considers to be an enterprise-grade version of OpenStack, known as VMware Integrated OpenStack. This product will include open-source code from OpenStack that has undergone additional testing, according to VMware.
The goal is to provide a way for users to easily spin up OpenStack inside VMware clouds. To that end, this distribution is integrated with the vSphere ecosystem, allowing management systems to be aware of the OpenStack environment.
Additionally, VMware is now offering business consulting services thanks to its acquisition of MomentumSI last year. These services are aimed at helping enterprises adopt OpenStack into their businesses.
