By Guest Blogger: Martin Casado It has been a very busy week at the OpenStack Summit. Unfortunately, I am not there but Quantum is. What is Quantum? Quantum is the networking-as-a-service capability and most talked about aspect to OpenStack’s Folsom release. Quantum has become a game-changer when it comes to enabling advanced networking in OpenStack environments, and the Nicira team at VMware has been leading the charge both in open source Quantum development and in deploying Quantum in production OpenStack environments.
Events
¡Viva Cloud Management!
VMworld Europe kicked off today in Barcelona with approximately 8,000 attendees. My keynote this morning focused on the software-defined datacenter and our updated cloud management portfolio . This management offering includes enhancements to the management products in the recently released VMware vCloud Suite , and stand alone tools, plus the newest member of our cloud management solution: vCloud Automation Center.
Heterogeneous Cloud Management at VMworld Europe
In a recent blog post , Steve Herrod outlined how VMware products are embracing support for heterogeneous environments. VMware’s Enterprise Management products are no exception. Heterogeneity is important because while many of our customers have chosen a VMware-first policy, the reality is that their environments may not be completely vSphere: there are pockets of physical servers that have yet to be virtualized, developers run around IT’s back and go straight to Amazon Web Services (AWS) to test their latest changes, or the company makes an acquisition whose datacenters don’t run vSphere. So any management solution must be able to support heterogeneous environments. This is exactly what we’ve designed our Enterprise Management products to do.
Application Management in a Software-Defined Datacenter
In a recent blog by my colleague Kit Colbert, he outlined a number of implications that a transition from traditional systems to a cloud environment have on management. Traditionally dedicated infrastructure tied to specific applications lead to tightly integrated vertical silos and significant complexity in management tooling. With the move to software-defined datacenters these silos are turned on their side, applications are “unlocked” from their dedicated infrastructure and an opportunity to reap significant operational benefits is created.
HPC Performance in the Cloud: Status and Future Prospects
I spoke last week at ISC Cloud 2012 in Mannheim, Germany about the performance of HPC applications in the cloud, citing results from several studies. I have summarized the talk below and my PDF slide deck is available here . For full details of ISC Cloud 2012, I recommend the coverage at HPC in the Cloud . I gave my talk to share some specific data about HPC performance in virtual environments, but I first described what new capabilities can be gained by virtualizing an HPC environment. I felt this was necessary because in HPC discussions it is often the case that...
Musings on our Post PC, Multi-Device World
Last year at VMworld 2011, we rolled out our vision for end user computing in the post PC era; a multi-device world where everyone is able to use the various devices of their choice to make them the most productive throughout the day for their business needs. IT is moving away from managing physical devices and towards managing and securing their user’s corporate identity, corporate applications and business data. Now, ‘post PC’ doesn’t mean ‘no PC’, but instead it means ’not only PC’ in that people use multiple devices including desktops and/or laptops throughout their day and that they need access to their “stuff” on all their devices in a synchronized manner. This means that business apps and data are available in the most...
VMware Horizon Mobile on iOS
There is a lot of news coming from VMware this week at VMworld 2012 in San Francisco, but one announcement I’m most excited to tell you about is that VMware is extending VMware Horizon Mobile to iOS. Steve Herrod will show this technology on-stage today in his keynote at VMworld. This development builds on our Android work that many customers are currently piloting, and I’d like to explain how we got to this point. When VMware talks to enterprises about mobility, three things typically come up in the conversations: BYOD/Usability: The release of the first iPhone in 2007 ushered in two fundamental changes that will not likely change any time soon. The first is usability – clean beautiful small apps...
The Software-Defined Datacenter meets VMworld
It’s my favorite time of year, again – VMworld! VMware is proud to host its annual conference in San Francisco this week where we get the opportunity to share the company’s vision, strategy and product portfolio with the industry, while interacting with tens of thousands of our best customers and partners. I have the pleasure of keynoting Day 1 and Day 2 of VMworld along with Paul Maritz and Pat Gelsinger. My talk today on Day 1 focused on the software-defined datacenter (SDDC) . A software-defined datacenter is where all infrastructure is virtualized and delivered as a service, and the control of this datacenter is entirely automated by software.
Managing the Software-Defined Datacenter
As we kick off VMworld , there’s a lot of excitement about the software-defined datacenter and all the benefits that it brings. But the benefits of the software-defined datacenter can only be realized if you can manage it. Management here covers a broad range of disciplines, including knowing if there is a performance problem, having insight into your datacenter’s compliance status, understanding your costs, and enabling self-service provisioning for users while maintaining control. Management is critical to operating the software-defined datacenter, yet management of the software-defined datacenter is much different than in traditional systems. Moving From Traditional Management to Software-Defined Datacenter Management Traditional systems consist of dedicated infrastructure tied to specific applications, leading to tightly integrated vertical silos. Each of...
Unveiling Software-Defined Networking and Security at VMworld 2012
As VMworld 2012 kicks off in San Francisco I couldn’t be more excited. The sheer breadth and depth of VMware and partner solutions being showcased and launched as part of the software-defined datacenter (SDDC) is staggering, with a ton of activity happening around two key pillars of the SDDC – software-defined networking (SDN) and security. In previous posts , I wrote about the need for a new networking and security architecture , and its role in the SDDC . As we spent time working through the product release, and integrating with several partners, we began to see certain patterns emerge in realizing the software-defined networking and security architecture. The following picture is a fairly succinct view of the stack...
