VMware today released version 5.6 of its web-based management platform for Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) clouds, working with virtual machines (VMs) and vApps. This version was designed exclusively for VMware vCloud Air Network service providers. These vCloud Air Network service providers VMware vCloud Air which is the new name of the vCloud Hybrid Service. VMware launced the vCloud Air network program in August this year, as an evolution of the VMware Service Provider Program.
Version 5.6. provides the following new features (as described in the release notes):
- VM Disk Level Storage Profiles
Allows a single virtual machine (VM) to access different tiers of storage such as storage area network (SAN), network-attached storage (NAS), and local storage to help balance storage cost versus storage performance also supporting VMware Virtual SAN.
- VMware NSX Support
- VM Monitoring Service
Provides visibility into current and historical VM performance metrics at an individual tenant level. Tenants can use this new capability to troubleshoot application performance issues, auto-scale their applications and perform capacity planning.
- Updated Software Development Kits (SDKs) to the vCloud API
New set of Java, PHP, and .NET SDKs with documentation and samples available.
- Independent Software Vendor (ISV) Ecosystem User Interface (UI)
Provides ISVs with a platform that allows them access to underlying vCloud Director capabilities through application programming interfaces (APIs). All new functionalities within vCloud Director 5.6 are only available through APIs.