vmworld

Announcements made at VMworld 2018 Europe

In Augustus I did a blog post (link) about the announcements made at VMworld 2018 US. This week it’s time for VMworld Europe in Barcelona with 12000 attendees. The vision of VMware is still the same as the last years: any cloud, any application, any device.

 

In this blog post an overview of new announcements made from VMworld Europe 2018:

  • vCloud Suite Platinum announced. vCloud Suite platinum is a bundle with vRealize Suite and vSphere Enterprise Plus that includes now VMware AppDefense. VMware AppDefense is a security product that learn the application behavior, with this knowledge secure the application. More information can be found here, link.
  • VMware Cloud Foundation  3.5 announced. VMware Cloud Foundation is an integrated software stack with compute, storage, networking with cloud management and monitoring software to built a SDDC. VCF 3.5 has greater deployment options and support for example vSphere 6.7 U1 and Kubernetes. More information can be found here, link.
  • IBM and VMware establish an industry-first, fully-managed, high-availability cloud to minimize outages. More information can be found here, link.

 

 

  • VMware and AWS Accelerate Global Roll Out of VMware Cloud on AWS. VMware announced the expansion of VMware Cloud on AWS in Europe and the United States, with expected additional new regions forthcoming in AWS EU (Ireland), AWS West (N. California) and AWS East (Ohio) in Q4 2018.

  • VMware Cloud on AWS added disaster recovery options for the hybrid cloud. This enables hybrid cloud disaster recovery options with Site Recovery Manager that eliminates costs because there no need for pre-provisioning the entire cloud. It’s called a elastic cloud model for disaster recovery.
  • Announcing Project Dimension Beta. Project Dimension delivers edge and data center infrastructure as-a-service, combining VMware’s compute, storage, networking solutions with hyper converged hardware, managed by VMware. More information can be found here, link.
  • Pivotal Container Service (PKS) will be available as cloud service.
  • Expanding the VMware PKS portfolio with a new acquired partner called Heptio. Heptio helps organizations to deploy and operationalize Kubernetes. More information can be found here: link
  • VMware blockchain beta program. More information can be found here, link.
  • VMware ESXi on a Raspberry PI as prototype. How cool is this for the IoT edge space! I’m interested in the use cases for ESXi on Arm.

  • Workspace One. With the following new enhancements:
    • Workspace ONE Intelligence Automation Connector
    • Workspace ONE Sensors for macOS.
    • Dell Provisioning for VMware Workspace ONE

More information can be found here, link.

  • Horizon 7 on VMware Cloud on AWS:
    • General availability of Horizon 7 (VDI and RDSH, Full Clones and Instant Clones) and App Volumes on VMware Cloud on AWS with the upcoming releases of Horizon 7.7 and App Volumes 2.15.
    • Second, we are enhancing Horizon 7 on-premises and on VMware Cloud on AWS by integrating with the Horizon Cloud Service and taking the first step to extend Horizon 7 with cloud-based management service. This will help consolidate and simplify management of global hybrid and multi-cloud deployments. With this announcement, we will be releasing unified visibility, health monitoring, and helpdesk services delivered from the Horizon Cloud Service for Horizon 7 deployments for both on-premises and on VMware Cloud on AWS. And specifically, for Horizon 7 on VMware Cloud on AWS, we will be previewing the automated installation of the Horizon 7 infrastructure.

More information can be found here, link.

Streams  and breakout sessions overview

  • VMworld 2018 Europe Day 1 General Session, Link

 

What’s announced at VMworld 2018

This blog post will be updated with the latest and greatest VMworld 2018 US announcements. At VMworld, VMware is celebrating there 20th anniversary! Congrats for this awesome journey! VMworld 2018 US (Las Vegas) is the biggest (over 21000 attendees) event of the year for VMware. In November there is a VMworld in Barcelona (Europe). But for now we focuses on the announcements made at VMworld 2018 US.

Besides announcements, links to the general and breakout sessions are listed below and some vendor updates.

Day 1, August 27, 2018

  • vSphere Platinum. vSphere Platinum is a new offering that includes VMware vSphere Enterprise plus and VMware AppDefense. VMware AppDefense is a data center endpoint security product that protects applications running in virtualized environments. This bundle comes with a own AppDefense vCenter plugin that is built for the Platinum version. More information can be found here link.

  • vSphere 6.7 Update 1. With this update it is possible to upgrade from vSphere 6.5 U2 to vSphere 6.7 U1. The General Availability is planned later this year! So what are they enhancements:
    • vMotion for NVIDIA Quadro vDWS and Intel FPGA Support. NVIDIA demonstrated this last year at VMworld. In vSphere 6.7 the suspend and resume options were introduced.With vSphere 6.7U1 it is possible to perform maintenance operations on the underlying GPU accelerated VDI or VMs with a vMotion. So no downtime is involved. I have a lot NVIDIA GPU customers who will be very happy with this. More information can be found here, link.
    • Fully Featured HTML5-based vSphere Client. The Sphere Client (HTML5) will include all administrative functions!  No more switching between the vSphere Web Client and vSphere Client. One fast client that does the job. Hooray!
    • vCenter Server Converge Tool. Allows you to migrate from an external Platform Services Controller (PSC) to an embedded PSC architecture.
    • Enhancements for HCI and vSAN. Includes workflow based configuration wizard called “Cluster Quickstart”. With “Cluster Quickstart” it’s possible to create a fully functional vSAN cluster in minutes. Another improvement is that vSphere Update Manager (VUM) can perform I/O controller firmware updates. This version will be called vSAN 6.7U1.
    • Enhanced Content Library. Importing of OVA templates from a HTTPS endpoint and local storage, as well as syncing content from OVA templates to other vCenter Servers.

More information can be found here link.

  • vSAN Private Beta. You can subscribe to the vSAN Private Beta by signing a NDA.  This beta will include Data Protection by using snapshots, file services and persistent storage for containers. Subscribe here link.
  • ESXi  on 64-bit Arm. Bring the power of ESXi  virtualization to 64-bit Arm devices. For example run ESXi on a Raspberry Pi (don’t know if VMware is supporting the PI). Great for IoT devices. ESXi on 64-bit ARM will be available as Tech Preview.

  • vRealize Operations (vROps) 7.0. More information can be found here link.
  • vRealize Automation 7.5. More information can be found here link.
  • VMware vCloud Director 9.5. More information can be found here link.
  • VMware Cloud on AWS (VMWonAWS). Today it’s the 1 year anniversary of the VMware Cloud on AWS  with the following enhancements:
    • New Regional Expansion.  With Australia and New Zealand. Below is an overview of available regions:

  • 50% lower entry-level price. A 3-host SDDC minimum is now possible as starting point (instead of the original 4-host). VMware is currently offering the 3-Host SDDC environment for the cost of a two-host configuration. In addition, for a limited time period, customer could take advantage of a new promotion that offers three hosts at the price of two. For the start, duration and terms and conditions of the promotion. More information about the costs can be found here link.
  • Custom CPU core counts: Customers can now configure their environments with the number of physical cores per host they want to be enable in a cluster. This is useful for applications that are licensed per physical core (for example Oracle).
  • VMware NSX with AWS Direct Connect integration. This integration eliminates the need for using separate VPN tunnels when using applications that needs to be migrate or operate in a hybrid manner.
  • VMware NSX Hybrid Connect.  Migrate VMs live without downtime using vMotion and vSphere replication technology. It’s now possible to perform bulk VM migrations.
  • Real-time log management.

More information can be found here link.

  • Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) on VMware. Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) on VMware makes it easy for you to set up, operate, and scale databases in on-premises and hybrid environments, and to migrate them to AWS. Supported database are for example Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle, PostgreSQL and MySQL.Are there coming more awesome AWS services available on-premises? RDS on VMware will be available as Tech Preview.
    • More information can be found here link.
    • For a Tech Preview register here link.
  • Project Magna. This Tech Preview is about the self-driving Data Center using machine learning.  Products that are used in Project Magna are for example: Wavefront, AppDefense and Workspace ONE Intelligence. Project Magna will make managing the data center infrastructure much easier.
  • Project Dimension. Project Dimension will extend VMware Cloud to deliver SDDC infrastructure and hardware as-a-service to on-premises locations. Because this is will be a service, it means that VMware can take care of managing the infrastructure, troubleshooting issues, and performing patching and maintenance. This in turn means customers can focus on differentiating their business building innovative applications rather than spending time on day-to-day infrastructure management.  So Project Dimension delivers VMware Cloud simplicity (such as VMware Cloud on AWS) to the data center and edge with:
    • VMware-Operated End-to-End
    • Hybrid Cloud Control Plane
    • VMware Cloud Foundation in a Hyper-Converged Appliance (DellEMC and Lenovo)

More information can be found here link.

  • Three new cloud services are announced:
    • Cloud Assembly. This is a multi cloud provisioning service. More information can be found here link.
    • Service Broker. Aggregate native content from multiple clouds and platforms into a single catalog with role-based policies. More information can be found here link.
    • Code Stream. Speed software delivery and streamline troubleshooting with release pipelines and analytics. More information can be found here link.
  • Intent to Acquire CloudHealth Technologies to provide Multi-Cloud Operations at Global Scale. More information can be found here link.

Day 2, August 28, 2018

  • Pulse IoT Center 2.0 announced.  Pulse IoT center offers infrastructure management for the device Edge. More information can be found here link.
  • VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 3.0. VMware Cloud Foundation brings together the different virtualization technologies – compute, storage, networking and management – to enable customers to build and operate a private or hybrid cloud as a single entity in an automated fashion. More information can be found here link.

  • WorkSpace ONE:
    • WorkSpace ONE Unified Endpoint Management (UEM) enhancements. More information can be found here link.
    • Workspace ONE Intelligent Hub. More information can be found here link.
  • Horizon announcements. The innovations are at the VDI management and cloud delivery level. More information can be found here link.

Streams  and breakout sessions overview

  • VMworld General Session “Technology Superpowers” day 1 replay, link.
  • VMworld General Session “Pioneers of the Possible” day 2 replay, link.
  • VMware VMworld YouTube videos, link.
  • Lamw VMworld 2018 breakout sessions Github, link.
  • vBrownBag Techtalks stream link.
  • VMworld 2018 US (breakout) session videos, link.
  • VMware Code Power sessions, link.
  • theCUBE VMworld 2018 Las Vegas talks, link.

Vendor updates

  • NAKIVO Backup & Replication version 8.  Today version 8 of NAKIVO Backup & Replication is Generally Available (GA). This version includes the Business Continuity and Site Recovery Orchestration Solution.  With v8 can automate and orchestrate the entire site recovery process. Perform scheduled non-disruptive disaster recovery testing, planned failover, emergency failover, failback, and datacenter migration.  More information can be found here link.
  • RuneCast Analyzer 2.0. I will dedicate a blog about version 2.0 soon. More information can be found here link.
  • Veeam Hyper-Availability Platform on Cisco HyperFlex. More information can be found here link.

 

VMworld Europe here I come!

In less then 54 days I’m attending VMworld Europe in Barcelona again. My first VMworld visit was in Cannes (France) in 2009. This year I visit VMworld with two other Ictivity (Dutch VMware partner) colleagues.

Here are a couple of reasons why I’m so excited to visit VMworld Europe:

1. General sessions

In the general sessions the vision, future directions and key announcements will be presented.

Key focus areas for the general sessions are:

  • Transform your data center into real private clouds
  • Extend into public clouds for more freedom and control
  • Enable a new digital workforce to with technology
  • Transform your security architecture

2. Breakout sessions

Each day I Pick a couple of sessions with a maximum of 3. The session choice is based on content and the presenter. Each session is recorded so you can watch it anytime after VMworld.  The session builder can be found here, link.

3. Solution Exchange

The Solution Exchange is packed (over 130) with vendors who support VMware.  Learn more about the latest solutions and technologies from these vendors.

4. Hands-on Labs

During VMworld I visit the hands-on labs a couple of times. With the hands-on labs you’re able to discover  one or more product(s) in short time. I really like the quality of the hands-on labs. After VMworld the new labs will be available (link).

5. Catch up with people

VMworld is a great place to meet friends, share knowledge and network with other people. Share and extend you’re knowledge!

6. Barcelona

Barcelona guarantees great weather, food and culture. Make some spare time to explore Barcelona.

7. Parties

Each day one or more vendor parties are organized. Pick some and have a great time. Here is overview of some parties (when more information is available the list will be updated):

Event Date Registration Description
vRockStar Sunday 10 September  Link
Partner Exchange reception Monday 11 September
vExpert Party Tuesday 12 September Invite only
VMware BeNeLux Tuesday 12 September
Veeam Party Tuesday 12 September
VMworld Customer Appreciation Party Wednesday 13 September Included in a full conference pass. The headlinder this year is the Kaiser Chiefs! Last year the band Empire of the sun was the main act.

This year the headline of the VMworld Europe party will be the Kaiser Chiefs! A complete list of VMworld Europe gatherings can be found here, link.

VMworld is an awesome experience!  More information can be found here:

  • When: September 11 – 14  2017
  • Where: BARCELONA , FIRA GRAN VIA
  • Registration: link

Special thanks to the vExpert team for providing me a bloggers pass! See you at VMworld Barcelona!