Close
  • Latest News
  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Video
  • Big Data and Analytics
  • Cloud
  • Networking
  • Cybersecurity
  • Applications
  • IT Management
  • Storage
  • Sponsored
  • Mobile
  • Small Business
  • Development
  • Database
  • Servers
  • Android
  • Apple
  • Innovation
  • Blogs
  • PC Hardware
  • Reviews
  • Search Engines
  • Virtualization
Read Down
Sign in
Close
Welcome!Log into your account
Forgot your password?
Read Down
Password recovery
Recover your password
Close
Search
Logo
Subscribe
Logo
  • Latest News
  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Video
  • Big Data and Analytics
  • Cloud
  • Networking
  • Cybersecurity
  • Applications
  • IT Management
  • Storage
  • Sponsored
  • Mobile
  • Small Business
  • Development
  • Database
  • Servers
  • Android
  • Apple
  • Innovation
  • Blogs
  • PC Hardware
  • Reviews
  • Search Engines
  • Virtualization
More
    Subscribe
    Home Cloud
    • Cloud
    • Storage
    • Virtualization

    VMware Pours Out New Products to a Virtualization-Hungry World

    Written by

    Chris Preimesberger
    Published August 25, 2014
    Share
    Facebook
    Twitter
    Linkedin

      eWEEK content and product recommendations are editorially independent. We may make money when you click on links to our partners. Learn More.

      SAN FRANCISCO–Despite all the talk, all the marketing hype and all the new cloud products and services coming into the marketplace in the last eight or so years, a whopping 92 percent of the world’s IT is still being handled on-premises.

      You thought the cloud was taking over the world? Maybe in the future, but certainly that’s not the case right now.

      Most IT thought leaders are generally in agreement on this: Over time–likely during the next three to five years as IT buying cycles set in–that 92 percent figure slowly will be lessened as more companies come to deploy hybrid and public clouds for their employees, business partners and customers. This, of course, requires agile software and easy, safe movement of data. And this, in turn requires more virtualization, high bandwidth and cloud services.

      Virtual data centers are at the center of this IT future. As it happens, VMware is quite happy to tell you about their latest products and services for those new-gen data centers. Each year at this time, the Palo Alto, Calif.-based company stages VMworld, the huge IT conference here at the Moscone Center that signals the end of the summer for a lot of people.

      A Bevy of New Products

      On Aug. 25, CEO Pat Gelsinger, President and COO Carl Eschenbach, and Senior Vice President of Hybrid Cloud Solutions Bill Fathers announced on Day 1 of the conference a phalanx of new and updated products for CIOs, IT managers, storage administrators, security specialists and the CFOs who love to pay for it all.

      In addition to the requisite new versions of software, VMware also announced a new joint initiative with newcomer Docker, Google and corporate cousin Pivotal to incorporate containers–a legacy software structure that isolates distributed applications in development to reduce complications–in VMware virtual machines. This will be good news to many IT managers with older systems because they won’t have to discard their container-based workflows any time soon if they plan to move to newer virtualized systems built by VMware. (For more detail, see Sean Michael Kerner’s story here.)

      There was a list of other items announced Aug. 25. They included:

      —VMware VCloud Air, a re-branding and augmentation of VMware Hybrid Cloud Service. This all-purpose hybrid cloud platform is a conglomeration of existing VMware products and several new ones added through recent acquisitions, including mobile deployment with AirWatch.

      —VMware EVO:RAIL: This is a new rack-built, commodity x86-server-based appliance with server and/or storage hardware to be supplied by Dell, EMC, Fujitsu, SuperMicro, Japan’s NetOne and China’s Inspur. It’s aimed at midrange-size enterprises. EVO:RAIL is designed for data center simplification with hyper-converged infrastructure appliances.

      “Take it out of the box, roll it up, plug it in–it’s ready in 15 minutes for a full VM operation,” CEO Pat Gelsinger said in the introduction.

      —vCloud Suite 5.8: vCloud Suite’s new release version jumps from 5.5 to 5.8. VMware didn’t say what happened to v5.6 and v5.7. vCloud was released a few years ago as a combination of products into one SKU and license code. In the latest version, VMware has added improvements in business continuity and disaster recovery with policy-based provisioning of disaster recovery data tiers and increased scalability of protection and recovery capabilities.
      vCloud Suite 5.8’s Big Data Extensions now support Hadoop 2 for big data workloads and features customizable provisioning of NSX firewall and routing services; proactive support is now provided by Support Assistant, a free vCenter plug-in that tries to identify issues before problems occur.

      Additional announcements Aug. 25 at VMworld included the announcement of a vSphere v6.0 beta, a VSAN 2.0 beta, a new VMware Integrated OpenStack, VMware NSX 6.1 and a new VMware vRealize Suite.

      More Detail on VMware VCloud Air

      One of the significant announcement here involves a new storage service, vCloud Air Object Storage. VMware vCloud Air has two block storage tiers, Standard and SSD-Accelerated, which look to a virtual machine like a block volume. Object Storage acts as low-speed, long-term storage for buckets of unstructured data and isn’t associated with any specific virtual machine.

      VMware vCloud Air Object Storage is a highly scalable, cost-effective, and dependable storage solution that can easily scale up to petabytes, and users pay only for the storage they use. Based on EMC’s ViPR storage, it offers the popular S3 API, including lifecycle management and versioning features to simplify and reduce management overhead. “Data durability is 11 nines per object, and data can be accessed via HTTP and HTTPS,” VMware’s Mathew Lodge wrote in a company blog post.

      “One of the differentiating features is support for very large objects up to 20TB in size, in line with the rapid growth in size for media files and other unstructured data. We have a number of other innovations in the pipeline, and will talk about those closer to release,” Lodge said.

      Object Storage will be available in beta by the end of September, Lodge said.

      New On-Demand Access to vCloud Air

      Another vCloud Air feature, Virtual Private Cloud OnDemand, will provide customers with on-demand access to vCloud Air with the swipe of a credit card. Billing is provided in arrears for services consumed. Initially offered as a qualified beta, customers now can apply for a vCloud Air Virtual Private Cloud OnDemand account here.

      VMware’s year-old hybrid cloud platform has grown fairly quickly to serve U.S., European and Asia-Pacific enterprises. Now with 11 data centers globally, VMware announced its hybrid cloud expansion in the Asia-Pacific region via joint venture with SoftBank Telecom Corp. and SoftBank Commerce & Service Corp. (SoftBank C&S) that brought vCloud Air to Japan. In addition, VMware has announced a strategic partnership with China Telecom to build a hybrid cloud service in Beijing.

      eWEEK will take closer looks at each of these products later in the week as VMworld continues, which it does through Aug. 28.

      Chris Preimesberger
      Chris Preimesberger
      https://www.eweek.com/author/cpreimesberger/
      Chris J. Preimesberger is Editor Emeritus of eWEEK. In his 16 years and more than 5,000 articles at eWEEK, he distinguished himself in reporting and analysis of the business use of new-gen IT in a variety of sectors, including cloud computing, data center systems, storage, edge systems, security and others. In February 2017 and September 2018, Chris was named among the 250 most influential business journalists in the world (https://richtopia.com/inspirational-people/top-250-business-journalists/) by Richtopia, a UK research firm that used analytics to compile the ranking. He has won several national and regional awards for his work, including a 2011 Folio Award for a profile (https://www.eweek.com/cloud/marc-benioff-trend-seer-and-business-socialist/) of Salesforce founder/CEO Marc Benioff--the only time he has entered the competition. Previously, Chris was a founding editor of both IT Manager's Journal and DevX.com and was managing editor of Software Development magazine. He has been a stringer for the Associated Press since 1983 and resides in Silicon Valley.
      Linkedin Twitter

      Get the Free Newsletter!

      Subscribe to Daily Tech Insider for top news, trends & analysis

      Get the Free Newsletter!

      Subscribe to Daily Tech Insider for top news, trends & analysis

      MOST POPULAR ARTICLES

      Artificial Intelligence

      9 Best AI 3D Generators You Need...

      Sam Rinko - June 25, 2024 0
      AI 3D Generators are powerful tools for many different industries. Discover the best AI 3D Generators, and learn which is best for your specific use case.
      Read more
      Cloud

      RingCentral Expands Its Collaboration Platform

      Zeus Kerravala - November 22, 2023 0
      RingCentral adds AI-enabled contact center and hybrid event products to its suite of collaboration services.
      Read more
      Artificial Intelligence

      8 Best AI Data Analytics Software &...

      Aminu Abdullahi - January 18, 2024 0
      Learn the top AI data analytics software to use. Compare AI data analytics solutions & features to make the best choice for your business.
      Read more
      Latest News

      Zeus Kerravala on Networking: Multicloud, 5G, and...

      James Maguire - December 16, 2022 0
      I spoke with Zeus Kerravala, industry analyst at ZK Research, about the rapid changes in enterprise networking, as tech advances and digital transformation prompt...
      Read more
      Video

      Datadog President Amit Agarwal on Trends in...

      James Maguire - November 11, 2022 0
      I spoke with Amit Agarwal, President of Datadog, about infrastructure observability, from current trends to key challenges to the future of this rapidly growing...
      Read more
      Logo

      eWeek has the latest technology news and analysis, buying guides, and product reviews for IT professionals and technology buyers. The site’s focus is on innovative solutions and covering in-depth technical content. eWeek stays on the cutting edge of technology news and IT trends through interviews and expert analysis. Gain insight from top innovators and thought leaders in the fields of IT, business, enterprise software, startups, and more.

      Facebook
      Linkedin
      RSS
      Twitter
      Youtube

      Advertisers

      Advertise with TechnologyAdvice on eWeek and our other IT-focused platforms.

      Advertise with Us

      Menu

      • About eWeek
      • Subscribe to our Newsletter
      • Latest News

      Our Brands

      • Privacy Policy
      • Terms
      • About
      • Contact
      • Advertise
      • Sitemap
      • California – Do Not Sell My Information

      Property of TechnologyAdvice.
      © 2024 TechnologyAdvice. All Rights Reserved

      Advertiser Disclosure: Some of the products that appear on this site are from companies from which TechnologyAdvice receives compensation. This compensation may impact how and where products appear on this site including, for example, the order in which they appear. TechnologyAdvice does not include all companies or all types of products available in the marketplace.