VMware Talks Public & Hybrid Cloud Enhancements for vCloud Air

With VMware’s software defined data center architecture, you can be certain that your workloads will perform well both in the cloud and inside your onsite data center.

During a press Q&A at the event, Bill Fathers, executive vice-president and general manager of cloud services at VMware, said the firm has taken steps to adjust the wording of its contracts in the wake of the Safe Harbour ruling on 6 October 2015. Google Cloud DNS will offer organizations access to a globally distributed, low-latency DNS service with high availability and scalability as well as ease of manageability.

VMware vRealize Automation 7 blueprints will span the hybrid cloud featuring out-of-the box support for VMware vCloud Air and Amazon Web Services (AWS), including new support for VMware vCloud Government Service and AWS GovCloud, OpenStack Kilo, and VMware vSphere 6 Update 1. It will allow control of DNS services hosted by Google via a REST API, through the Developer’s Console or from the command line. Now available, VMware vCloud Director enables service providers with tools to include self-service cloud orchestration capabilities to their end customers.

“Rather than be a single, homogenous USA entity that tries to provide that service across a region such as Europe, we think having hundreds of thousands of services providers who can provide absolute assurances [to customers about where their data resides] makes sense”.

Enhanced Identity Access Management will enable customers of VMware vCloud Air with a single identity, single sign-on, unified authorization, governance and role management.

A new tool, Monitoring Insight, offers service providers a number of analytics tools to maximise use of cloud infrastructure while tracking the whether customers are getting the necessary level of performance.

Containerized applications are also coming to vCloud Air, as VMware is adding support for vSphere Integrated Containers, whic can be controlled by orchestration tools from several VMware partners. The VMware Ready for NFV accreditation programme will allow partners to certify their VNFs to ensure compatibility with VMware NFV infrastructure.

Also unveiled is vCloud Director 8, which enables service providers in the VMware vCloud Air Network to build services for customers that are more hybrid-aware. It will support VM migration and network and policy extension with low downtime through Hybrid Cloud Manager. Expanded support for vSphere Integrated Containers on VMware vCloud Air is expected to be available next year.

Organizations are moving to a hybrid IT environment using VMware’s public cloud, vCloud Air, as well as VMware vCloud Air Network, an ecosystem of over 4,000 service providers located in more than 100 countries offering VMware-based cloud services.

The cloud management platform now includes VMware vRealize Automation 7, introducing unified service blueprint capabilities that will enable IT and DevOps teams to simplify and accelerate the delivery of integrated multi-tier applications with application-centric networking and security across clouds.

VMware vCloud NFV brings together the core virtualization and management components required to accelerate NFV deployment. The vendor claims it supports 40 virtual network functions from 30 virtualized network functions (VNF) vendors, which will help telco staff to use their existing VMware skills and operational experience. “VMware’s unified hybrid cloud platform helps businesses remain competitive through this transformative IT period”. The support will be delivered by VMWare and its partners. “Modern cloud native applications are being deployed and updated with increasing frequency and driving up computing demands on backend conventional systems”.

To this end, VMware’s cloud management platform combines the capabilities of its cloud automation, cloud operations and cloud business management solutions into a single integrated solution.

Also making the cross-cloud vMotion possible is vRealize Automation 7, an updated version of the firm’s cloud automation suite.