VMware Launches vSphere 4, Its Operating System for the Cloud
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UPDATED: vSphere 4 is basically the ESX 3.5 server with "many more updates to it," one analyst declared. The updated platform facilitates the delivery of IT infrastructure as a service to enterprise users, so their IT departments can build their own private cloud systems to provide business services internally for the company and for its trusted partners, supply chain participants and other business associates.
VMware on April 21 launched vSphere 4, a major update to its ESX Server hypervisor, declaring it to be the first operating
system specifically engineered for cloud computing. It is the
first major upgrade to the product since 2006.
vSphere 4 amounts to a rebuild of VMware's core virtualization platform. Fundamentally, it combines virtual resources in the data center into one
centrally managed pool of computing power. It will be made available in the second quarter of 2009, the company said.
vSphere 4's second purpose is to facilitate delivery of IT infrastructure
as a service to enterprises, so IT departments can build their own
private cloud systems to provide business services internally for the
company and for trusted partners, supply chain participants and other
business associates.
In short, VMware wants to become the system of choice to run enterprise
data centers, and further, to enable these complex systems to reach out
and touch others in order to gain business advantages.
"Cloud computing has become known as the next big thing and is now sort
of a buzzword, but we believe that with vSphere 4, we can make cloud
computing a reality," Bogomil Balkansky, VMware's vice president
of product marketing for servers, told eWEEK.
"It's the first iteration of VMware's virtualization as an enabler for
cloud infrastructure. It scales higher, runs faster, offers more
automated management technologies."
A lot of the recent talk about this new computing services model,
Balkansky said, has been focused on public external clouds -- such as
Amazon EC2 and S3, GoogleApps, Salesforce.com and others.
"Those will all have a very interesting effect on the industry, but we
believe where the action is going to be in cloud computing, in the next
few years, is helping companies build and transform their internal
infrastructure into internal clouds, or internal cloud providers,"
Balkansky said.
"A company data center can act with efficiency [using this new
operating system] and with the reliability of an internal utility
provider, if they want."
vSphere 4 also provides the foundation for enterprise IT departments to
connect their own homemade private clouds behind a firewall with those
of partners -- or established public cloud services, such as those
noted earlier.
Why Call It an OS?
Why is VMware calling this an operating system, rather than a cloud
computing architecture? Operating systems, in the classical sense of
the IT term, refer to products such as Microsoft Windows, Apple's Mac
OS, Linux, Unix, and AIX.
"We're calling this an operating system because at a high level, an
operating system does two things: It manages the hardware looking
downward, and it provides interfaces or services with applications,
looking upward," Balkansky said.
"An operating system typically is the mediator between applications and
the hardware. Our technology is the first such software layer that installs
on the bare metal. It provides two classes of services: A set of
services to manage the hardware -- the servers, the storage and the
network -- and a set of application services to provide availability,
security and scalability to applications."
VMware designed vSphere 4 to be a non-disruptive force in the data
center, Balkansky said. It works
with virtually all other data center systems and is designed to
slip into its own layer without disrupting workflows.
Chris Preimesberger was named Editor-in-Chief of Features & Analysis at eWEEK in November 2011. Previously he served eWEEK as Senior Writer, covering a range of IT sectors that include data center systems, cloud computing, storage, virtualization, green IT, e-discovery and IT governance. His blog, Storage Station, is considered a go-to information source. Chris won a national Folio Award for magazine writing in November 2011 for a cover story on Salesforce.com and CEO-founder Marc Benioff, and he has served as a judge for the SIIA Codie Awards since 2005. In previous IT journalism, Chris was a founding editor of both IT Manager's Journal and DevX.com and was managing editor of Software Development magazine. His diverse resume also includes: sportswriter for the Los Angeles Daily News, covering NCAA and NBA basketball, television critic for the Palo Alto Times Tribune, and Sports Information Director at Stanford University. He has served as a correspondent for The Associated Press, covering Stanford and NCAA tournament basketball, since 1983. He has covered a number of major events, including the 1984 Democratic National Convention, a Presidential press conference at the White House in 1993, the Emmy Awards (three times), two Rose Bowls, the Fiesta Bowl, several NCAA men's and women's basketball tournaments, a Formula One Grand Prix auto race, a heavyweight boxing championship bout (Ali vs. Spinks, 1978), and the 1985 Super Bowl. A 1975 graduate of Pepperdine University in Malibu, Calif., Chris has won more than a dozen regional and national awards for his work. He and his wife, Rebecca, have four children and reside in Redwood City, Calif.Follow on Twitter: editingwhiz
