VMware advances software to help customers modernize data centers

BENGALURU: At VMworld 2017, NYSE-listed VMware Inc. has released VMware Integrated OpenStack and VMware vRealize Network Insight to help customers modernize their data centers to increase business and developer agility while introducing increased networking and security capabilities.

Additionally, VMware is unveiling a new VMware vSAN offering to accelerate the adoption of distributed IT by reducing the cost and complexity of expanding enterprise IT features beyond the data center.

Business and IT leaders are aligning on a core set of business outcomes as they experience the benefits of digital transformation. VMware is helping customers achieve those outcomes with a portfolio spanning cloud, digital workspace, and security. The company’s strategy is to enable customers to run, manage, connect, and secure any application on any cloud to any device.

“Companies are focused on digital transformation to deliver new customer experiences through applications and services," said Rajiv Ramaswami, chief operating officer, Products and Cloud Services, VMware. "VMware is helping its customers to modernize IT infrastructure and application services with the speed, security, and agility that enable them to drive transformation from the data center to the edge. These new product releases and solutions will help support customer business innovation and growth while optimizing their total cost of ownership.”

VMware Integrated OpenStack 4 to Deliver Enhanced Performance and Scale Capabilities

VMware Integrated OpenStack is an OpenStack distribution from VMware that complies with the OpenStack Foundation’s 2017.01 interoperability guidelines. It provides customers with the fastest and most efficient solution to deploy and operate OpenStack clouds on VMware’s software-defined data center (SDDC) infrastructure – typically without the need for professional services. VMware Integrated OpenStack 4 will support the latest OpenStack release – Ocata – enabling customers to take advantage of new performance and scalability enhancements to core compute and networking services as well as increased support for containers.

VMware Integrated OpenStack 4 will introduce several new capabilities and integrations beyond those made available by the community.

VMware is also announcing new pricing and packaging for VMware Integrated OpenStack, which was previously available at no cost to qualified customers. See additional details in the Pricing and Availability section.

vRealize Network Insight 3.5 to Deliver Enhanced Visibility for Networking and Security

VMware vRealize Network Insight delivers intelligent operations for software-defined networking and security across virtual, physical, and multiple-clouds with micro-segmentation planning that can be scaled to thousands of VMs at a time with 360-degree visibility and VMware NSX operations. VMware vRealize Network Insight 3.5 will provide deeper visibility into the networking and security infrastructure enabling customers to easily monitor NSX deployments and help meet PCI (Payment Card Industry) compliance.

This latest release will build on significant capabilities delivered in vRealize Network Insight 3.4, which introduced support for micro-segmentation planning, troubleshooting, and application modeling using native Amazon Web Services (AWS) components.

New VMware vSAN Offering Accelerates the Adoption of Distributed IT

Digitally-driven customers are increasingly in need of enterprise-class infrastructure at remote and branch sites to accelerate decision-making and deliver a level of IT independence to these important extensions of their business or operations. The distributed nature of vertical applications ranging from retail locations to oil rigs to tactical military installations is driving a need for flexible, cost-sensitive infrastructure that can be managed by IT generalists.

The new VMware HCI Acceleration Kit brings affordable enterprise infrastructure with familiar, common management from the data center to distributed environments. Powered by the award-winning VMware vSAN software, the new offering delivers server economics to enterprise storage environments with a unique VMware vSphere-native architecture that can be deployed on a broad choice of hardware platforms certified by VMware vSAN ReadyLabs.

The solution includes VMware vSphere and VMware vSAN standard licenses. The software licenses support single-socket vSAN ReadyNodes, which are available from Dell, Fujitsu, Lenovo, NEC, and Supermicro today. The VMware HCI Acceleration Kit pricing starts at $7,852 per 3-node cluster and the software licenses allow unlimited virtual machines.

These new HCI systems based on vSAN will help power edge analytics and enable on-prem deployments of the newVMware Pulse IoT Center for Internet of Things (IoT) use cases.

At VMworld 2017, VMware is also introducing VMware vSphere Scale-Out edition, a new solution in the vSphere product line aimed at Big Data and HPC workloads. VMware vSphere Scale-Out edition includes the features and functions most useful to Big Data and HPC workloads such as those provided by the core vSphere hypervisor and the vSphere Distributed Switch. This new solution also enables the ability to rapidly change and provision compute nodes. The solution will be offered at an attractive price point, optimized for Big Data and HPC environments.

VMware Integrated OpenStack 4 is expected to become available by November 3, 2017. VMware will introduce two new SKUs for purchase with the availability of VMware Integrated OpenStack 4. VMware Integrated OpenStack for Data Centers will be available for $995/CPU for net new customers. A second edition will be available as an add-on for existing vRealize Suite customers for $495/CPU.

VMware vRealize Network Insight 3.5 and the new VMware vSphere Scale-Out edition are both expected to become available by November 3, 2017. The new VMware vSphere Scale-Out edition will be sold directly by VMware and OEM partners.

VMware HCI Acceleration Kit starts at $7,852. Partner VMware vSAN ReadyNodes for the HCI Acceleration Kit are available today. The VMware Validated Design for Software-Defined Data Center 4.1 is available now.