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VMware Advances Software to Help Customers Modernize Data Centers

Date : August 28, 2017

LAS VEGAS, NV -- (Marketwired) -- 08/28/17 -- At VMworld® 2017, VMware, Inc. (NYSE: VMW) today announced new releases of VMware® Integrated OpenStack and VMware vRealize® Network Insight™ to help customers modernize their data centers to increase business and developer agility while introducing increased networking and security capabilities. Additionally, VMware is unveiling a new VMware vSAN™ offering to accelerate the adoption of distributed IT by reducing the cost and complexity of expanding enterprise IT features beyond the data center.

Today's announcements include:

  • VMware Integrated OpenStack 4 will be based on OpenStack Ocata and boost support for containerized applications
  • VMware vRealize Network Insight 3.5 to deliver increased monitoring and compliance capabilities for NSX
  • New HCI Acceleration Kit to enable distributed IT with cost-effective hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) systems powered by VMware vSAN
  • VMware to embrace Big Data and High-Performance Computing (HPC) workloads with new vSphere Scale-Out edition

Business and IT leaders are aligning on a core set of business outcomes as they experience the benefits of digital transformation. VMware is helping customers achieve those outcomes with a portfolio spanning cloud, digital workspace, and security. The company's strategy is to enable customers to run, manage, connect, and secure any application on any cloud to any device.

"Companies are focused on digital transformation to deliver new customer experiences through applications and services," said Rajiv Ramaswami, chief operating officer, Products and Cloud Services, VMware. "VMware is helping its customers to modernize IT infrastructure and application services with the speed, security, and agility that enable them to drive transformation from the data center to the edge. These new product releases and solutions will help support customer business innovation and growth while optimizing their total cost of ownership."

VMware Integrated OpenStack 4 to Deliver Enhanced Performance and Scale Capabilities

VMware Integrated OpenStack is an OpenStack distribution from VMware that complies with the OpenStack Foundation's 2017.01 interoperability guidelines. It provides customers with the fastest and most efficient solution to deploy and operate OpenStack clouds on VMware's software-defined data center (SDDC) infrastructure -- typically without the need for professional services. VMware Integrated OpenStack 4 will support the latest OpenStack release -- Ocata -- enabling customers to take advantage of new performance and scalability enhancements to core compute and networking services as well as increased support for containers.

VMware Integrated OpenStack 4 will introduce several new capabilities and integrations beyond those made available by the community. Additional new functionality will include:

  • Enhancements that enable enterprises to run containerized applications alongside traditional applications in production on OpenStack
  • vRealize Automation™ integration to enable OpenStack users to use vRealize Automation-based policies and to consume OpenStack components within vRealize Automation blueprints
  • Increased scale and isolation for OpenStack clouds enabled through new multi-VMware vCenter® support

VMware is also announcing new pricing and packaging for VMware Integrated OpenStack, which was previously available at no cost to qualified customers. See additional details in the Pricing and Availability section.

vRealize Network Insight 3.5 to Deliver Enhanced Visibility for Networking and Security

VMware vRealize Network Insight delivers intelligent operations for software-defined networking and security across virtual, physical, and multiple-clouds with micro-segmentation planning that can be scaled to thousands of VMs at a time with 360-degree visibility and VMware NSX® operations. VMware vRealize Network Insight 3.5 will provide deeper visibility into the networking and security infrastructure enabling customers to easily monitor NSX deployments and help meet PCI (Payment Card Industry) compliance. Key new capabilities will include:

  • The NSX Edge Health Dashboard and NSX Internet Protocol Flow Information Export (IPFIX) integration to enable NSX customers to safeguard health and access analytics for SDDC flows impacted by NSX firewall rules
  • Support for Brocade MLX, Check Point Firewall and HPE OneView to provide customers with holistic visibility across their virtual and physical networking and security infrastructure
  • The PCI compliance dashboard for NSX Distributed Firewall (DFW) will help customers in verticals such as financial, healthcare and government to build compliance for their NSX infrastructure

This latest release will build on significant capabilities delivered in vRealize Network Insight 3.4, which introduced support for micro-segmentation planning, troubleshooting, and application modeling using native Amazon Web Services (AWS) components.

New VMware vSAN Offering Accelerates the Adoption of Distributed IT

Digitally-driven customers are increasingly in need of enterprise-class infrastructure at remote and branch sites to accelerate decision-making and deliver a level of IT independence to these important extensions of their business or operations. The distributed nature of vertical applications ranging from retail locations to oil rigs to tactical military installations is driving a need for flexible, cost-sensitive infrastructure that can be managed by IT generalists.

The new VMware HCI Acceleration Kit brings affordable enterprise infrastructure with familiar, common management from the data center to distributed environments. Powered by the award-winning VMware vSAN software, the new offering delivers server economics to enterprise storage environments with a unique VMware vSphere®-native architecture that can be deployed on a broad choice of hardware platforms certified by VMware vSAN ReadyLabs™.

The solution includes VMware vSphere and VMware vSAN standard licenses. The software licenses support single-socket vSAN ReadyNodes, which are available from Dell, Fujitsu, Lenovo, NEC, and Supermicro today. The VMware HCI Acceleration Kit pricing starts at $7,852 per 3-node cluster and the software licenses allow unlimited virtual machines.

These new HCI systems based on vSAN will help power edge analytics and enable on-prem deployments of the new VMware Pulse™ IoT Center™ for Internet of Things (IoT) use cases.

Read what partners have to say about the new VMware HCI Acceleration Kit.

VMware Introduces New vSphere Scale-Out Edition for Big Data and HPC Workloads

At VMworld 2017, VMware is also introducing VMware vSphere Scale-Out™ edition, a new solution in the vSphere product line aimed at Big Data and HPC workloads. VMware vSphere Scale-Out edition includes the features and functions most useful to Big Data and HPC workloads such as those provided by the core vSphere hypervisor and the vSphere Distributed Switch™. This new solution also enables the ability to rapidly change and provision compute nodes. The solution will be offered at an attractive price point, optimized for Big Data and HPC environments.

By virtualizing these workloads with vSphere Scale-Out, customers can benefit from:

  • Dramatic Resource Optimization -- Memory and CPU utilization optimization in a virtualized environment can increase performance significantly over a physical system. VMware tests of Big Data workloads have shown that virtualized Spark cluster performance can exceed physical cluster performance by up to 10 percent. (1)
  • Simplified Compute Node Creation -- Adding more capacity to a Big Data cluster can be done by cloning VMs and giving them an identity. Clusters can be scaled up and down as needed.
  • Network Flexibility -- Widely distributed systems, like most Big Data clusters, require the management of many nodes using a common central point of control across the network, which vSphere delivers through the Distributed Switch.

The new vSphere edition follows on the heels of the release of vSphere 6.5 Update 1 in July 2017. The update featured an enhanced HTML 5-based vSphere Client that now supports 90 percent of general workflows administrators rely on. It also introduced a more scalable vCenter Server Foundation that now supports four hosts (up from three). Additionally, VMware extended general support for vSphere 6.5 to five years through to November 15, 2021.

VMware Validated Designs 4.1 Help Customers Implement Latest Software Releases

VMware Validated Designs 4.1 features a new, optional consolidated data center architecture for small footprint deployments in a single region. This latest version also delivers an updated software bill of materials (BOM) with support for vSphere 6.5 U1, vSAN 6.6.1, NSX 6.3.3 on both the standard and new consolidated architecture to enable customers to implement the latest VMware software releases with fully-validated interoperability. VMware Validated Designs are comprehensive and extensively-tested blueprints to build and operate an SDDC. The designs are engineered to help customers deploy VMware SDDC components to achieve a wide variety of use cases such as private cloud, micro-segmentation, IT automation, and virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) with predictable results -- according to best practices.

Supporting Quotes

Lawrence Hollister, senior director, Cubic Missile Solutions

"When it comes to building IT solutions for our customers -- firefighters, medical first responders, military -- for use in the field, smaller is better. DTECH Labs of Cubic welcomes the release of VMware HCI Acceleration Kit and the increased opportunity to serve our customers. This solution helps us deliver the software customers need to power small form factor servers with low power and cooling requirements, and to meet the demands for agility and simplicity of management at distributed and remote deployment scenarios."

Brandon Lovelace, network administrator, Santa Barbara City College

"Most community colleges are challenged to provide stronger information security on a limited budget and with a small IT team. The combination of VMware NSX and vRealize Network Insight works very well for us. It makes our environment more secure, and it's saving us time every week. I look forward to the new NSX Edge Health Dashboard and third-party device integrations in vRealize Network Insight 3.5 to help drastically reduce the amount of effort and time required to plan, deploy, and scale SDDC networking and security infrastructure."

Eric Sheppard, research director, IDC

"IT has embraced hyperconverged solutions in the data center to run business-critical applications, but there is also demand for hyperconverged outside of the data center. With its new HCI Acceleration Kit, VMware will help to extend hyperconverged infrastructure beyond the data center by delivering a solution that can be managed by IT generalists and is targeted at healthcare, financial services and retail vertical markets at compelling price points."

Tom Cahill, vice president of product and partner management, CDW

"HCI is an excellent opportunity for CDW and we are excited that this new offering opens up the market for Hyperconverged Infrastructure in cost-sensitive application environments from healthcare to education to government."

Ravi Pendekanti, senior vice president, Product Management and Marketing, Server Solutions Division, Dell EMC

"In today's data intensive economy, customers require affordable and efficient approaches to store, process and effectively use the data they generate. Dell EMC and VMware are focused on democratizing technology solutions at distributed IT sites for our customers. Running VMware vSAN, Dell EMC PowerEdge servers will replace highly-proprietary infrastructure at remote locations with innovative and open compute solutions. VMware HCI Acceleration Kit integrated into PowerEdge servers, will bring the power of compute to where needed, helping customers thrive in a data-driven digital universe."

Kenichi Sakai, corporate executive officer, senior vice president, Head of Data Center Platform Business Unit, Fujitsu Limited

"Fujitsu welcomes the release of VMware HCI Acceleration Kit. As a leading server vendor and ICT provider, we have been working closely with VMware to provide Fujitsu customers with FUJITSU Integrated System PRIMEFLEX and many best-in-class solutions. We see that VMware HCI Acceleration Kit will deliver cost-effective and easily-provisioned systems for customers trying to process the burgeoning data on VMware HCI."

Shinji Ueno, general manager, IT Platform Division, NEC Corporation

"As a way to improve self-competitiveness, enterprises have been required to be digitalized by utilizing IoT and real-time analytics. In order to allow our customers to easily realize the value which they desire under current IT and network environment, NEC delivers its next-generation appliance for distributed IT which combines with NEC Express Server and VMware HCI Acceleration Kit. We keep helping to create our customers' new social values as their strong partner with VMware and contributing to society."

Michael McNerney, vice president, Software Solutions and Infrastructure, Supermicro

"Supermicro is excited that our close collaboration with VMware is coming to fruition with the launch of VMware HCI Acceleration Kit solutions for Enterprise and SMB customers. With the deluge of data collected at distributed locations from so many devices, there is an increasing desire from our customers to sift the data remotely before transporting it further to the data centers. These VMware HCI Acceleration Kit solutions, jointly validated by Supermicro and VMware, provide the optimized compute and storage to perform these operations while providing the same ease of configurability, deploy-ability, and manageability of our other hyperconverged offerings."

Pricing and Availability

VMware® Integrated OpenStack 4 is expected to become available by November 3, 2017. VMware will introduce two new SKUs for purchase with the availability of VMware Integrated OpenStack 4. VMware Integrated OpenStack for Data Centers will be available for $995/CPU for net new customers. A second edition will be available as an add-on for existing vRealize Suite customers for $495/CPU.

VMware vRealize Network Insight 3.5 and the new VMware vSphere Scale-Out edition are both expected to become available by November 3, 2017. The new VMware vSphere Scale-Out edition will be sold directly by VMware and OEM partners.

VMware HCI Acceleration Kit starts at $7,852. Partner VMware vSAN ReadyNodes for the HCI Acceleration Kit are available today.

The VMware Validated Design for Software-Defined Data Center 4.1 is available now.

Additional Resources

About VMware
VMware, a global leader in cloud infrastructure and business mobility, helps customers realize possibilities by accelerating their digital transformation journeys. With VMware solutions, organizations are improving business agility by modernizing data centers and integrating public clouds, driving innovation with modern apps, creating exceptional experiences by empowering the digital workspace, and safeguarding customer trust by transforming security. With 2016 revenue of $7.09 billion, VMware is headquartered in Palo Alto, CA and has over 500,000 customers and 75,000 partners worldwide.

VMware, VMworld, vRealize, Network Insight, vSAN, vRealize Automation, vCenter, NSX, vSphere, ReadyLabs, ReadyNode, Pulse IoT Center, vSphere Scale-Out and vSphere Distributed Switch are registered trademarks or trademarks of VMware, Inc. in the United States and other jurisdictions.

  1. VMware, "Fast Virtualized Hadoop and Spark on All Flash Disks," August 2017
   Media Contacts Eloy OntiverosVMware Global Communications1.650.427.6145eontiveros@vmware.comVirginia StratfordHill+Knowlton Strategies for VMware1.415.856.5120virginia.stratford@hkstrategies.com

Source: VMware, Inc.