Archive for the ‘VMware news’ Category
VMworld Bacelona 2014: Limits lifted, cool technology at your fingertips.
And we’re back at VMworld Barcelona! Overlooking the ever-crowded Hands-on labs I’m writing this piece. Crowded even on partner day. That can only be called a success and VMworld is still waking up! If you’re at VMworld Barcelona, be sure to stop by the HoL and play with all the new cool toys!
It will be interesting to see what VMware and partners have in store for us this time round. With EVO-RAIL getting a lot of attention, all hyperconverged startups better get ready to go above and beyond what I think will quickly become the “defacto standard” if they fail to hop on to the next level. Staying ahead is key if not vital to them, and I cannot wait what the various startups have come up with to secure their success for time to come.
Next to hyper-converged there is immense focus on cloud. The VMware Cloud solution is more and more becoming a complete solution to customers cloud needs. Add the EMC and Pivotal solutions into the mix, and we are finally getting where we have been promising to go: A digestible yet versatile well-run hybrid cloud. The journey to the cloud is still relevant, and the Software Defined DataCenter is the way to get there. With this complete solution (just look for EMC Hybrid Cloud or EHC) you can build scary things in extreme short amounts of time. I was involved in a Prove Of Concept for a large bank in the Netherlands where we constructed a fully functional and actually working EHC solution literally from scratch in just TWO WEEKS! Integrated with EMC storage, EMC Avamar backup and several third party vendors. All in two weeks. That should actually say it all…!
Finally I see a lot of focus on VDI and end-user computing. Awesome stuff, the VMware solutions around end-user computing have always been a strong proposal and they don’t seem to be slowing down. With the biggest issue in VDI still being (storage) performance, I encourage you to look at EMC’s XtremIO. XtremIO is not just any full-flash storage array, but it is designed very cleanly. Most important, where others stop at performance and maybe some cool storage services like dedupe, compression etc XtremIO is primed to go all the way into the SDDC. Don’t let your “super fast all-flash array” become the next silo in your datacenter! Ow by the way did I mention that the VMware Hands-on Labs are running on top of XtremIO again this year? The rate on which they spit out new VMs to support all of the sessions here… Just amazing.
We live in IT (Interesting Times).
EVO:Rail – VMware enters the hyperconverged space
A very exciting announcement was made at VMworld today: EVO:Rail. I’ve known for a while about this under the codename “Marvin” (and EMC’s appliance related to this codenamed “Mystic”), now it is out there with it’s official naming. But what is it? Disclaimer: I work for EMC, but what I write here are my own opinions.
First things first: A quick intro to hyper-converged
First we had converged infrastructure. Converged infrastructure operates by grouping multiple components together into a single, optimized computing package. Components of a converged infrastructure may include servers, data-storage devices, networking equipment and software for IT infrastructure management, automation and orchestration. VCE’s Vblock is a prime example of converged infrastructure. Below that we have reference architectures like EMC’s VSPEX and NetApp’s Flexpod.
So on to even higher integration and automation: “hyper-converged”. Hyper-converged architectures consolidate and manage compute, Read the rest of this entry »
VMware® vRealize™…. Really??
Oh no. VMware just announced a huge change in names. I know “vCAC” wasn’t the best as in many languages CAC means… well you look it up. But vRealize… Really???
The new names convention: Everything vRealize™
Someone at VMware probably thought this was pretty neat. “Let’s change everything to vRealize™, yeah!!”. I’m not a fan. Well, let’s look at Read the rest of this entry »
Cool Tech Preview: VMware’s distributed storage
Looking through VMware’s newly announced things at VMworld 2012, the one thing that stood out for me was vSAN or (vCloud) Distributed Storage technology. From what I’ve seen at VMworld sessions, the vSAN technology creates a “distributed storage layer” across ESX nodes in a cluster – yes, up to 32 of them. Disclaimer: Even though I work for EMC, I have NO further insite into this development, nor do I blog for EMC. These are my own thoughts and ideas.
Just a VSA on steroids or way more?
So what is this distributed storage technology? At the first glance, it would appear to be something much like the VSA, but its implementation would be more comparable to Read the rest of this entry »
vSphere 5.1: Get it while it’s hot
Today VMware released its newest version of vSphere that was launched at VMworld 2012: vSphere version 5.1. You can download this new version as of NOW from the VMware download site.
Latest and greatest
For those owning a registered version of vSphere, as of today you can download vSphere 5.1 and the entire vCloud suite! Direct links:
Download the VMware vCloud Suite 5.1
Wondering whta’s new in vSphere 5.1? Check out the vSphere 5.1 Whats new PDF!
Get it while it’s hot!
Enhanced vMotion: Killer feature or just a tick in the box?
At VMworld 2012 vSphere 5.1 was introduced. One of the features is “Enhanced vMotion”. Using Enhanced vMotion you can migrate between “shared nothing” hosts. Yes, you can now migrate live between local storage and shared storage as VMware has combined the storage vMotion and vMotion all-in-one. Cool new feature that can’t be missed, or just another tick in the box to keep up with Hyper-V in the announced Microsoft 2012 server?
Enhancements on vMotion called “Enhanced vMotion”
What a catchy name! 😉 So what does it do? Well, for one it allows you to Read the rest of this entry »
VMworld 2012 Storage Nerdvana: vVols, vSAN and vFlash
Announced this year at VMworld 2012 (Watch the Monday general session from 51:26) were several cool technologies coming from VMware in the near future that focus on storage, or rather vStorage: Virtual Volumes (vVols), Virtual SAN (vSAN) and Virtual Flash (vFlash?). So what is this all about, and where is it going?
Virtual Volumes or vVols
How SAN and NAS systems work today, is something that they have been doing for years: Take a bunch of disks, stripe data across Read the rest of this entry »
VMworld 2012: Public voting for sessions started!
Another year of cool VMware stuff. Another year of cool VMworld sessions. Public voting has started!
This year I put in a session as well: session number 1659: “The importance of sizing storage correctly for VDI projects: Big impact, big results”
In this session I will be dealing with the load that VDI solutions generate. Then I will focus on how you can optimize storage Read the rest of this entry »
Made it into the vExpert realms for the 2nd year
The official word is out: The vExperts of 2012 are being announced. Having been a vExpert for 2011, I know what great people make up the vExpert group. When I found my name on the vExpert 2012 list, I felt honored to be part of this group once again! I will continue to evangelize VMware like I have been doing the past years.
Since I became a vSpecialist working for EMC I have had less time and less access to cool hardware to perform the technical deep dives I love to do so much. I will work hard to put up more of these in the near future! I think I should raid Chad’s garage or basement to see if I can dig up some cool hardware to use this year. For example, the “Performance impact when using VMware snapshots” is something way overdue for a revisit under vSphere 5.0 or 5.1 .

Thanks all for your support!
Dutch VMUGgers: Get your free shirt @VMWorld Copenhagen!
For the past few weeks EMC, VMware and the Dutch VMUG have been planning this: Free T-shirts for all dutch visitors of VMworld!
We printed 200 shirts, I think they came out very nice! I have the honor to show the first sneak-preview of the shirts:
