Some saw this coming, others were surprised, but VMware did not announce any new vSphere, Horizon, vRealize, or NSX releases at VMworld 2016 in Las Vegas last week. The general sessions focused more on the direction of the company rather than specific product lines.
Many were expecting a new vSphere announcement but this was not announced at VMworld US. Perhaps an announcement may be made at VMworld Barcelona in October. However, there were a few things of note.
Cloud Foundation
VMware announced the launch of Cloud Foundation, which is a unified software defined data center (SDDC) platform that combines VMware vSphere, Virtual SAN (VSAN), and NSX together into a natively integrated stack in order to deliver an enterprise public and private cloud infrastructure.
The goal is to take a hyper-converged infrastructure to a higher level by including NSX for greater scalability and increased security. Leveraging VMware’s SDDC solutions together can deliver greater availability, management and performance. VMware Cloud Foundation can be run on-premises or as a service with IBM being the first vCloud Air Network (vCAN) partner offering it. For private cloud use, turnkey VxRack Systems can be procured from EMC. Lastly, Cloud Foundation does integrate with vRealize, Horizon, VMware Integrated Open Stack, and vSphere Integrated Containers.
Cross-Cloud Services
Additionally, VMware also announced a tech preview of Cross-Cloud Services. Cross-Cloud Services is a new software as a service (SaaS) offering that VMware is developing to allow deeper visibility into the use and cost of cloud, as well as ensuring consistent network and security policies. But the real benefit is the ability to automate the deployment, management, and the migration of data and applications from vSphere to non-vSphere private and public clouds. The demo from VMworld can be found here.
Integrated OpenStack 3
VMware also introduced VMware Integrated OpenStack 3, the newest release of VMware’s distribution of OpenStack based on the OpenStack Mitaka release. VMware Integrated OpenStack 3 has reduced the infrastructure and other related costs required for running a production ready OpenStack cloud. Having a more compact management control plane allows administrators to quickly deploy OpenStack. The newest release includes the ability for customers to import existing VMware vSphere virtual machines into OpenStack.
Admiral and Harbor
Lastly, VMware enhanced vSphere Integrated Containers with the introduction of both Admiral and Harbor. This provides customers with important registry and management functionality, which increases support for production, containerized applications. Admiral is VMware vSphere Integrated Container’s built-in management portal to be used by developers and application teams for accelerating application delivery. Harbor is a built-in container registry that is based on Docker Distribution. However, VMware added a few features like user management and access-control, policy based image replication, ability to audit logs, RESTful APIs, and more.
Though there were no major product suite announcements at VMworld US, there is still plenty to be excited about. The general session keynote speeches provided customers and partners with VMware’s vision and future direction. Keep an eye on future announcements coming in October from VMworld Europe to see a handful of product update announcements! Hope to see you in Barcelona!
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