Kathy Gibson reports from VMworld 2014 in Barcelona – Partnering with other players in IT is becoming an important issue as vendors strive to help customers take advantage of the new world of the software defined data centre.
“As customer look to take advantage of the SDDC, they are looking to ways of expediting the journey,” says VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger. “There is a range of ways to get there and one is to build your own.
“Today we are announcing hyper-converged infrastructure to enable a dramatically simpler and lighter efficient converged infrastructure.”
VMware EVO is the fastest way to build and deploy an SDDC to enable the data centre of the future, Gelsinger says.
“With EVO we are taking the power of the SDDC, working with partners, and enabling the delivery of a full, complete solution,” he says.
The first solution in this portfolio is VMware EVO:Rail, which allows about 100 VMs or 200 VDI terminals in just minutes.
“We are delighted with the range of ecosystems support that we have managed to bring to EVO:Rail,” Gelsinger says, adding that hardware partners include Dell, EMC, Fujitsu, Inspur, NetOne and SuperMicro.
“Today I’m happy to announce the newest member of EVO:Rail partners,” Gelisinger says. VMware, he says, has also signed up Hitachi Data Systems as part of the EVO:Rail family of partners.
Coming soon to the portfolio, Gelsinger adds, is EVO:Rack, which is available as a technical preview this week. Gelsinger says EVO: Rack offers the power of EVO at a data centre scale, letting users scale out to a data centre in less than two hours.
The new system will also attract a range of certified hardware partners, he adds.
Networking is a major element of the software-defined data centre.
But there are three challenges with the network today, Gelsinger says. “It has become the bottleneck, we need new economics, and we need new levels of security.”
VMware NSX is a network virtualisation platform. NSX establishes a network hyper-visor, creating a software VM for networking. These virtual networks include the capabilities of switching, routing and firewalls into the virtual domain. These can be managed just like VMs in the compute world.
Today, adds Gelsinger, VMware has also expanded its partnering network, signing up Palo Alto Networks.
