During its annual VMworld conference held between August 30 and September 3 in San Fransicso VMware made several announcements. During the keynote on Monday several data center related announcements and on Tuesday announcements related to the topic End User Computing were made. This posts summarizes the announcements, providing links to more information where applicable.
The datacenter related announcements are:
VMware EVO SDDC
VMware EVO SDDC is the new name for what was initially EVO:RAIL or EVO:RACK announced in August last year by VMware. EVO SDDC is VMware’s converged infrastructure solution combining compute, network connectivity and storage in a box which competes with other converged solutions from Nutanix and SimpliVity among others. VMware EVO SDDC which can be purchased at VMware (for software only) and with OEM and system integration partners (Dell, QCT and VCE), contains vSphere vCenter Server, Virtual SAN, NSX, vRealize Operations Advanced, vRealize Log Insight. vRealize Automation Advanced and Horizon Enterprise as a VDI solution can be licensed optionally. The solution is managed by an automation engine called EVO SDDC Manager.
VMware Virtual SAN 6.1
Virtual SAN is VMware’s software-defined storage offering. It enables pooling of storage capabilities within existing servers. Version 6.1 which was quietly released a while ago already and provides the following new options:
- Stretched cluster
- Management Pack for vRealize Operations
- vCenter Health Check Plug-in for performance monitoring, root cause analysis and capacity planning
- Support for Docker containers
- New hardware options
VMware vSphere Integrated Containers and VMware Photon Platform
VMware vSphere Integrated Containers, released in a technical preview represents a complementary set of technologies featuring Project Bonneville, Project Photon OS (formerly Project Photon), and VMware’s Instant Clone technology (a feature of VMware vSphere 6) that will bring together the best of VMware vSphere with containers.
Bonneville, introduced in June this year is a Docker daemon with custom VMware graph, execution and network drivers that delivers a fully-compatible API to vanilla Docker clients.
Project Photon OS which was announced by VMware in April this year) is a Linux Operating System which is optimized to run as an ESX Microvisor based on ESXi capable of running what VMware calls Cloud-Native Apps. The footprint will be approximately 300 MB, support for container formats like Docker, rkt and Warden (developed by Pivotal). Photon features the Photon Controller (including project Lightwave) and Photon Machine.
Project Lightwave is available now as an open source project on GitHub. Project Photon OS is available now as an open source project on GitHub. VMware Photon Controller is expected to be made available as a private beta in Q4 2015.
vCloud Air is VMware’s owned and public Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) service, and the vCloud Air Network is an ecosystem of service providers offering VMware based cloud services. For vCloud Air VMware announced Site Recovery Manager (SRM) Air, providing Site Recovery as a Service integrated with vCloud Air Disaster Recovery. Early access programs are available in Q4 2015.
Also vCloud Air SQL database-as-a-service and vCloud Air Object Storagewas announced, a Google service with Google Cloud Storage on vCloud Air. Integration with the Google Cloud Platform was announced in Februari this year. vCloud Air Object Storage hosted by Google is GA the vCloud Air Object storage powered by EMC is expected to be available in an early access program in Q3 2015. vCloud Air SQL is available now as part of an early access program.
Also several new versions of existing products were announced :
- VMware NSX 6.2
- Support for cross vMotion over VXLAN with routing and security
- Open vSwitch Database support
- Traceflow a packet tracing solution
- NSX Central CLI as a performance troubleshooting tool
- VMware vRealize Operations 6.1
- Intelligent Workload Balancing
- Integrated OS & App Monitoring
- vRealize Log Insight 3
- Scale and performance improvement to 15,000 messages per second
- Improvements in fault tolerance around clustering
- Analytics and Big Data style query execution improvements,
- Improved integration with vRealize Operations
- VMware integrated OpenStack 2
- Based on OpenStack Kilo
- Load balancing as a service
- Ceilometer and Heat Auto Scaling
- VMware Site Recovery Manager 6.1
- Integration with NSX 6.2
- Support for stretched cluster solutions
- VMware vSphere APIs for IO Filtering
- Enables partners to offer third party software-based data services such as replication and caching
- Project Skyscraper (technology preview)
- Live workload migration through Cross-Cloud vMotion
- Content Sync across a private cloud and vCloud Air to seamlessly synchronize VM templates, vApps, ISOs, and scripts
VMware NSX 6.2 is generally available and VMware Integrated OpenStack 2, Virtual SAN 6.1, vRealize Operations 6.1, vRealize Log Insight 3, Site Recovery Manager 6.1 and VMware vSphere APIs for IO Filtering are all expected to be generally available in Q3 2015.
The End User Computing related announcements are:
Project A2
Project A2 provides a combination of the AirWatch enterprise mobile management (EMM) solution combined with VMware App Volums application delivery technology for Microsoft Windows 10. Project A2 is provided as a technology preview
VMware Identity Manager Advanced Edition
VMware Identity Manager Advanced Edition offers a new solution for identity and access management which is now available standalone, while it was already available within Horizon and Airwatch. It provides a Single Sign On (SSO) experience for Windows, SaaS and mobile applications.
VMware Horizon 6.2 and VMware Horizon 6.2 for Linux
- Support for Microsoft Skype for Business
- Support for NVIDIA GRID vGPU
- View Composer with Linked Clones
- New Virtual SAN storage optimizations
- Support for biometric fingerprint authentication
- Federal government readiness including FIPS 140-2 compliance
More information about Horizon 6.2, Project Enzo, Project Meteor and Project Fargo (instant cloning) can be found in this blogpost, by Shankar Iyer, VP of Product Management EUC at VMware. VMware Identity Manager Advanced Edition, VMware Horizon 6.2 and VMware Horizon 6.2 for Linux will be available in Q3 2015.