VMware Updates vRealize Cloud Manager, vSAN Storage Suite

VMware is well known for its vSphere hypervisor, Horizon virtual desktops, AirWatch mobile management and plenty of other items. However, vRealize, the company’s automated cloud management platform, and vSAN, its virtual storage area network suite, have never been accused of being high-profile products.

The company now is starting to put some muscle into its messaging for these products. The Palo Alto, Calif.-based virtualization software maker on Feb. 10 released v7 of vRealize and v6.2 of the vSAN platform, insisting that even though the latter is a point release, it still a major development for the company.

VMware also announced the launch of an entirely new product, Workspace ONE, which brings self-service access to cloud, mobile, Windows apps and poses a direct challenge to similar products from Google and Microsoft.

Most vRealize Components Have Been Updated

vRealize Suite 7 now includes fresh releases of key innards, including vRealize Operations and Log Insight, Automation 7 and Business for Cloud 7.

vRealize is VMware’s idea of a Swiss Army knife to fix all that ails cloud management operations within an enterprise system. The suite ostensibly is able to handle computing, storage, network and application services across hybrid cloud environments in addition to initiatives involving intelligent operations, infrastructure modernization and DevOps.  Thus, VMware says it can handle test/dev and production at the same time. This is no easy task — for any hybrid, private or public cloud deployment.

The company described three common use cases for vRealize, based on “thousands of customer engagements”:

—Intelligent Operations Management: Enables IT teams to proactively address health, performance and capacity management of IT services across heterogeneous and hybrid cloud environments in order to improve IT service performance and availability.

—Automated IT to Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS): Enables IT teams to automate the delivery and ongoing management of IT infrastructure in order to reduce the time it takes to respond to requests for IT resources by providing self-service access to those resources by IT and business users.

—DevOps-ready IT: Enables IT teams to build a cloud for development teams that can deliver a complete application stack; support developer choice in the form of both API and GUI access to resources; and provision resources across a hybrid cloud. IT can further extend the solution scope by addressing continuous delivery with VMware vRealize Code Stream to further speed up application delivery.

Of the new capabilities, vRealize Automation 7 may be the most important because it offers unified service blueprint capabilities that make automatic the complicated delivery of integrated multi-tier applications with application-centric networking and security across clouds.

vRealize Suite now comes in a new Standard edition, in addition to its existing Advanced and Enterprise editions. vRealize Standard includes all the capabilities necessary to address intelligent operations management for infrastructure. It delivers management analytics that address health, performance, and capacity management across all infrastructure domains of a heterogeneous, hybrid cloud.

All VMware vRealize Suite editions are designed for hybrid cloud systems.

vSAN Goes Hyper-Converged

VMware’s vSAN 6.2, designed specifically for all-NAND flash storage deployments, joins the company’s lineup of hyper-converged products. Let’s be sure to get the branding correct here: “Hyper-converged” differs from “converged” in that all — not just a few — of a system’s functions are included in one node.

For example, a hyper-converged computing system will have not only computing, storage and networking controls in one unit — as a converged system would — but it will also include additional functions, such as  deduplication, compression and tiering in the storage portion, encryption and/or high-level authentication in security, and hypervisor in the computing node.

The numbering in the vSAN product line is confusing; this actually is the fourth generation, despite the 6.2 moniker. The new release is aimed at bringing advanced data-efficiency to all-flash and hybrid flash and HDD storage, in addition to new Quality of Service (QoS) and performance and capacity monitoring capabilities, VMware said.

vSAN highest-value benefit is the simplification of storage and storage management while at the same time delivering more speed of processing. VSAN gives administrators high visibility into the storage layer through the virtual layer,  enabling both compute and storage to be delivered to virtual machines through the common virtualized platform.

Workspace ONE to Launch Soon

VMware’s Workspace ONE is the company’s mobile, any-device, any-app management answer to Google and Microsoft’s business productivity cloud suites. It comes out later this quarter.

Key capabilities include:

—Consumer-grade self-service access to cloud, mobile, Windows apps: Offers simple onboarding of new applications and employees. Employees will get one-touch mobile Single-Sign On access leveraging patent-pending Secure App Token Systems (SATS) that establishes trust between the user, device, enterprise and cloud. Once authenticated, employees will gain instant access to a personalized enterprise application store where they can subscribe to virtually any mobile, cloud or Windows application.

—Flexible choice of device — BYOD or corporate owned: Self-service device provisioning through the new unified management platform will use mobile operating system (iOS, Android and Windows 10) management interfaces to self-configure laptops, smartphones and tablets for immediate enterprise use. Employees will be put in control of their BYO devices with the capability to choose the level of services and IT restrictions they are comfortable to use, increasing adoption of BYO programs, productivity, and reducing the risk of data loss.

—Secure applications include mail, calendar, content, and chat: Employees want to use corporate mobile applications that work like consumer apps. VMware Workspace ONE includes email, calendar, contacts, content and chat applications that are consumer simple while invisible security measures protect the organization from data leakage. Workspace ONE will also build-in swipe and touch integrations with Web applications such as Evernote, Gmail and Yahoo! Mail, among others, and third-party SaaS applications such as Atlassian Jira, GitHub and Jenkins for developer operations teams.

—Data security and endpoint compliance with conditional access: To protect sensitive information, Workspace ONE combines identity and device management with industry-first ComplianceCheck Conditional Access to enforce access decisions across any application or device.

—Real-time app delivery and automation: Because the industry is seeing convergence between desktops, laptops and tablets, operating systems such as Windows 10 are also converging to use mobile-style, application management. Workspace ONE simplifies application packaging, delivery and ongoing management. Administrators can automate application delivery and provide updates on the fly, and users can gain access to Windows applications on all devices.

VMware Workspace ONE is expected to be generally available this quarter, the company said. It will be offered in standard, advanced and enterprise editions, with prices starting at $8 per user per month for cloud subscriptions and $150 per user for on-premises perpetual licenses.

Originally published on eWeek.