Virtualization – Page 2

Air & vRealize: Rebranding Explained

October 3, 2014 Leave a Comment

One of the VMworld 2014 related announcements that is still working it’s way thru everyone’s lexicon and thinking are the rebranding related announcements. Everyone that I know (self included) is tripping over using the correct term and name when talking VMware. After numerous requests from clients and having scrubbed by acronyms list here is my quick and dirty rebranding explained.

Net-Net Two Changes

vCloud ~~Hybrid Services~~ is now known as vCloud Air (pretty straight forward)
- Many VMware products are now becoming avaialable via SaaS, if you see Air in the name, it denotes the SaaS varient
vRealize is the new family name to designate VMware management technologies
- many product names that used to start with ~~vCenter~~ now start with vRealize

Which Cascade across Suites and Offerings

vCloud Air – VMware’s public cloud platform built on vSphere, compatible with your on-premises data center. Available as a Virtual Private Cloud (shared hardware) or Dedicate Cloud (dedicated hardware) instance across seven (as of this posting) world wide data centers.

vCloud Government Services – hybrid cloud service for US Federal Government agencies adherent to FedRAMP security standards
vCloud Air Disaster Recover – Recovery as a Service for your on-premise workloads
vCloud Air Data Protection – Backup and recovery feature for Dedicated Cloud or Virtual Private Cloud instances.

vRealize Family – Since this is a standardizing of product names under one family, see the product rebranding map:

From	To
VMware vCenter Operations Management Suite VMware vCenter Operations Manager VMware vCenter Operations Foundation VMware vCenter Configuration Manager VMware vCenter Infrastructure Navigator VMware vCenter Hyperic VMware vCenter Operations Manager for Horizon	VMware vRealize™ Operations™ Standard/Advanced/Enterprise VMware vRealize™ Operations Manager™ No Change for v5.8.x VMware vRealize™ Configuration Manager™ VMware vRealize™ Infrastructure Navigator™ VMware vRealize™ Hyperic® VMware vRealize™ Operations for Horizon®
VMware vCenter Operations Management Pack for XYZ	VMware vRealize Operations Management Pack for XYZ (in Q1, 2015)
VMware vCloud Automation Center Standard/Advanced/Enterprise VMware vCloud Application Services VMware vCloud Automation Center Desktop VMware vCloud Automation Center Development Kit	VMware vRealize™ Automation™ Standard/Advanced/Enterprise VMware™ vRealize Application Services™ VMware vRealize™ Automation Desktop™ VMware vRealize™ Automation Development Kit™
VMware IT Business Management Suite Standard/Advanced/Enterprise	VMware vRealize™ Business™ Standard/Advanced/Enterprise
VMware IT Benchmarking VMware IT Benchmarking Starter Kit	VMware vRealize™ IT Benchmarking™ (in Q1, 2015) VMware vRealize™ IT Benchmark Starter Kit™ (in Q1, 2015)
VMware vCenter Log Insight VMware vCenter Log Insight Content Pack for XYZ	VMware vRealize™ Log Insight™ VMware vRealize™ Log Insight™ Content Pack for XYZ (in Q1, 2015)
VMware vCenter Orchestrator	VMware vRealize™ Orchestrator™
VMware vFabric Data Director	No change

And while the official stance from VMware Product Management is that there are no acronyms for the vRealize suite….they automatically started appearing, you can reference my VMware Acronym List for the latest acronyms.

Real World Snapshot of OS Distributions

September 22, 2014 Leave a Comment

There is a profusion of sources of data about the deployment of Operating Systems available today, just see the references for the usage share of operating systems for a sample. I’ve always wondered about the accuracy and real world applicability of that data. Thus, I created a small data point in time snapshot of OS distributions thanks to a few anonymous contacts in my network. The following graph shows both Production IT managed and Development Team (DevOps) managed environments that span both physical and virtual environments:

This is a data point as the total aggregate OS instances involved is below 250,000. While the numbers in the graph represent both physical and virtual environments, the Production side was over 85% virtualized and the Development side was over 75% virtualized.

How does this compare to your own internal OS Distributions?

Some of the interesting points that jumped out at me:

Maybe I’m dating myself here, but I remember when those Windows and Linux proportions used to be flipped…
Solaris and HPUX are still breathing…thought I think it’s safe to say they are on hospice care
There was a larger percentage of development running ESX Nested than running HPUX (even when nested ESX is not officially supported by VMware)
Windows deployments are lower in Development; the sources of these data points were not using Azure as far as I know, I wonder how Azure might impact a graph like this moving forward
Unsure how to read the significant delta between Solaris deployments on the Production side versus the Development side

Post a comment if you want to compare your environment to the above. Since this is a data point snapshot I haven’t calculated any statistical margin of error…for entertaining discussion only. 🙂

VMworld 2014 Recap

September 5, 2014 3 Comments

I’m a bit delayed in posting my VMworld recap of VMware announcements…a week in the tech industry seems like a lifetime but real life items like kid’s birthdays, overseeing a landscaping project, and maintaining a thumb rehab schedule (I was the one walking around VMworld in the orange cast, and I’m finally back to two handed productivity on the keyboard!) sometimes get priority.

(Image via vmworld)

In retrospect, the imagery around VMworld 2014 struck a little to close to home considering the 6.0 earthquake that struck the Bay Area on the Sunday before… Anyhoo, here is my list of the most important stuff from VMworld last week:

General Trivia
- Over 22,000 attendees this year
- over 13,400 Hands On Labs were taken! The VMworld labs will be rolling out onto the public HOL in phases over September and early October, reference the VMworld 2014 HOL Guide as you see them appear.
- For a second year in a row, the NSX Introduction HOL was by far the most popular…
- There were over 440 Days (more than a Year) worth of time spent in HOL at VMworld 2014! Just dwell on that number for a second…
- VMware Foundation and over 2,500 VMworld attendees raised $248,460 as part of Destination Giveback
VMworld Top Items
- Keynote Sessions (replays)
- Top 10 Breakout Sessions (replays)
- Video Highlights
Software Defined Data Center (SDDC)
- VMware Integrated OpenStack –
- vRealize Suite – capabilities of VMware’s existing cloud automation, cloud operations and cloud business management solutions in a single offering
- vCloud Automation Center 6.1
- vRealize Air Automation – first in a family of new as a service (aaS) cloud management offerings
- vCloud Suite 5.8 – enhanced policy-based provisioning capabilities
  - vSphere Data Protection 5.8 and vSphere Replication 5.8
  - Site Recovery Manager 5.8 (videos from Jason Boche)
- vSphere Public Beta, next release will feature:
  - Fault Tolerance up to 4 vCPUs
  - Cross vCenter vMotion
  - Enhanced Long Distance vMotion
  - NSX network properties will be vMotioned
- New vCloud Air Mobile and Hybrid Cloud Services
- Tech Preview: vCloud Air Object Storage
Software Defined Networking (SDN)
- VMware NSX 6.1 – includes advanced network micro-segmentation capabilities, improved hybrid cloud connectivity, equal cost multi-path (ECMP) routing and VCAC 6.1 integration
- Arista Networks and VMware Enter Strategic Relationship to Advance Adoption of Network Virtualization
- F5 Big-IQ and NSX Integration to automate the delivery of application services
EVO – 3 simple Evolutionary letters
- the curtain drops…Project Marvin, Project Mystic, Project Starburst were all EVO (hmm, paranoid?)
- Introducing the Hyper-Converged Infrastructure Appliance: EVO:RAIL, single appliance supporting either 100 general purpose server VM’s or up to 250 Horizon View virtual desktops.
- Initial set of Qualified EVO:RAIL Partners. This is much more than a simple OEM of the VMware SDDC solution stack, these partners adhere to strict VMware hardware, packaging, and support specifications.
- EVO is a family…Tech Preview of EVO:RACK
End User Computing (EUC)
- VMware Unifies Mobile, Desktop and Content Management With VMware Workspace Suite
- VMware acquired CloudVolumes and introduced Project Meteor, technology preview showcasing next generation desktops and applications as a service
- VMware, NVIDIA and Google Collaborate To Deliver Graphics Rich Apps To Enterprise Cloud Desktops
- VMware announces New Horizon DaaS Services and Expansion to Europe
Dev-Ops
- VMware Teams With Docker, Google and Pivotal to Simplify Enterprise Adoption of Containers
- Docker & VMware: 1 + 1 = 3
- Tech Preview of Project Fargo, super fast, scalable, differential cloning of a running VM

And while technically this happened pre-VMworld, it’s important to note that vCloud Hybrid Services was rebranded to vCloud Air.