VMware vCloud Hybrid Service roadmap

In September 2013 VMware launched vCloud Hybrid Service (vCHS). It is a VMware owned and operated public Infrastructure as a Service offering. It offers customers a lot of control over virtual machines and networking. Features available on-premises like snapshots and custom sized virtual machines are available in vCHS as well. Simply said VCHS  = vSphere + vCloud Networking & Security as a service.

During VMworld US and Europe VMware had a lot of breakout sessions about vCHS. In the near future I will make some postings with technical details on this new service. This post will discuss the features which will be added in the near future to vCHS.

First lets have a look at the roadmap of vCHS. The information in this post is based on the various sessions I attended at VMworld and is made public by VMware.

At VMworld Europe, VMware announced the first European based vCHS datacenter is now active in the UK. Currently vCHS in the UK is running in a beta with limited number of customers. This datacenter is located in Slough, West of London.  A second UK based datacenter is planned as well. Also VMware will be building datacenters in other European countries.

The UK datacenter is owned and operated by VMware UK. This is done to prevent the NSA from having easy access, according to VMware. The data in the UK datacenter is protected by UK en EU law. What the value of that is remains to be seen. VMware UK is part of VMware US and such needs to handover data if US authorities request that. We also know the UK intelligence agency is close friends with the NSA.

Also announced at VMworld Europe was the availability of the new vCloud Hybrid Service Online Marketplace, providing a platform where customers can discover, download, test-drive and buy solutions for vCloud Hybrid Service with access to 3,800 pre-qualified applications and rich online resources.

vCHS is currently based on a subscription model. This means customers buy a certain amount of processing, storage and memory and pay for that. Even if you do not consume all of your resources, you will have to pay upfront.

VMware will introduce a pay as you go model in 2014. Pay as you go is the common standard for cloud computing. It has advantages but also a risk that costs are hard to control. Many financial people will remember their huge bills of cloud providers. Some admin created a couple of virtual machines to try out something in cloud, but forgot to delete the VMs.

Disaster Recovery as a Service will be general available in Q1 2014. Currently in a beta. It will allow to replicate virtual machines from on-premise to vCHS for disaster recovery purposes. It will use vSphere Replication as the technology.

vCHS will also offer backup to its customers. An admin can easily protect a VM by right clicking it. Data Protection is currently in beta as well. GA expected in Q1 2014.

VMware acquired Desktone in October and was announced at VMworld Europe. This probably means virtual desktops/published apps will run in the same datacenter as vCHS offering low latency connections between clients and servers.  #fixvdA

Management of vCHS virtual machine will be possible soon using the vSphere Web Client plug in. This plug in is currently under development but could be seen at the VMworld Europe booth. Release of the plug-in is expected December 2013.

Virtual machines and other resources in vCHS can be monitored using vCenter Operations Manager running on-premises soon.  VMware is working on making the API’s available. Release expected in Q1 2014.

The Cloud Foundry developers platform will be available in vCHS Q4 2013.