VMware Cloud champions developer innovation
VMware says it wants to put developers first.
The firm known as the cloud infrastructure enabler that any reasonable person might expect to rank network engineers, sysadmins, operations specialists and data architects as its primary audience has made a direct developer play – and it is not the first (or last) time in fact.
VMware says the next evolution of VMware Cloud will empower developers to do more. It comes with new editions and capabilities that will help modernize, optimize and protect their organisation’s IT stacks.
VMware Cloud combines VMware Cloud Foundation Software and VMware Cloud Services.
Cloud Foundation combines technology from VMware’s on-premises and public cloud software offerings into a unified stack to deliver a consistent environment across any on-premises, hyperscaler cloud, or partner cloud environment.
Developers in this space can take advantage of VMware Cloud services to run enterprise workloads more securely at scale with advanced data protection, cloud-based disaster and ransomware recovery and multi-cloud networking and security.
Advanced developer services
The company says that advanced developer services, built-in Kubernetes and optimised access to hundreds of native cloud services across hyperscalers, deliver a pragmatic approach to app modernisation.
VMware Cloud is available in five prescriptive VMware Cloud editions (Essentials, Standard, Pro, Advanced, Enterprise) to modernise infrastructure and management.
“VMware Cloud is setting a new benchmark for helping customers modernise, optimise and protect their businesses,” said Krish Prasad, senior vice president and general manager, cloud infrastructure business group, VMware. “Our latest VMware Cloud advancements further modernize cloud infrastructure and deliver a single cloud operating model that improves developer productivity and advances security.”
Users can deploy and manage VMware Cloud environments in three ways:
Customer Managed – VMware Cloud editions can be deployed by customers in their own datacentres or their choice of colocation partners with full control of the infrastructure environment.
VMware Managed – VMware Cloud on AWS is a VMware-managed cloud service with fully integrated hardware and software. VMware Cloud on Equinix Metal will be a distributed cloud service that enables customers to purchase software and hardware as a service separately for flexibility.
ProviderManaged – new VMware Cross-Cloud managed services based on VMware Cloud editions from partners such as IBM Cloud enable users to lower total cost of ownership (TCO) for on-premises environments, simplify operations and reduce risk with observability,and performance optimisation – it also works to accelerate cloud migrations.
Developer selection
VMware is also introducing NSX+ virtual private clouds (VPCs). NSX+ VPCs provide isolation of networking, security and services to multiple tenants on a shared VMware Cloud infrastructure managed by a single global NSX interface.
Developers and application teams can select clouds that are optimal for their applications, while benefiting from the self-service and agility of NSX+ VPCs across clouds.
Infrastructure teams can maintain supervisory control, set operational guardrails on a per-VPC basis, and help ensure changes made within VPC environments have no impact on other tenants. NSX+ VPCs also improve IT productivity, as the infrastructure team can use a consistent operating model across clouds.
ESXi lifecycle management
As part of this wave of key innovations being delivered by VMware Cloud, VMware is announcing the early availability of a new cloud-based ESXi lifecycle management service in VMware vSphere+.
IT admins will be able to centrally manage upgrades across their entire ESXi fleet in distributed multi-vCenter environments, overcoming silos and completing in just a few operations what may have previously required hundreds or even thousands of operations, especially in larger environments.
“This will result in significant time savings and simpler upgrade planning and deployments, making it easier for customers to get on to the latest versions and enjoy the benefits of powerful new capabilities of VMware Cloud,” notes VMware, in a technical product statement.
Additional updates to vSphere in the upcoming release will also include doubling GPU capacity per VM to support more complex AI/ML workloads, enabling smarter load balancing to maximize performance from GPU investments and enhanced self-service tools to make building and running modern apps even easier for DevOps engineers and developers.
