VMware updates vRealize to help customers with hybrid investments
VMware on Tuesday is rolling out a series of updates to its vRealize cloud management platform driven largely by the enterprise's adoption of hybrid, multi-cloud environments.
After surveying its enterprise customers, VMware found that 67 percent foresee an "ideal end state" in which they rely on multiple clouds, Mark Leake, senior director of product marketing for VMware, told ZDNet. They're moving toward cloud native, mobile applications based on containers and micro services.
Even so, the vast majority of their business processes are driven by traditional applications. "For most of our customers for the next five, 10 or 15 years or longer, their reality is going to be a mixed mode environment," Leake said.
To accomplish that, VMware is updating its cloud management platform in the areas of automation, intelligent operations, and devOps-ready IT.
In the intelligent operations space, VMware is adding automated workload balancing to vRealize Operations 6.6, to "get to a state of almost lights-out systems operations management," explained Taruna Gandhi, group manager for Cloud Management at VMware. It includes an entirely new user interface -- more than 20 new dashboards out of the box -- for users who may not be familiar with the technology. "It gives them, in normal human language, options to drill deeper into their area of choice," Gandhi said. VMware is also introducing native vSAN management to vRealize Operations 6.6, as well as more multi-cloud support with Azure and AWS enhancement.
Within vRealize Automation 7.3, the company is bringing in automated placement of new workloads, to help with what Leake called "Day-One provisioning decisions." Its automation enhancements also include increased integrations with NSX and vSAN.
For devOps-ready IT, VMware is adding new container management functionality into vRealize Automation 7.3, including added support for Docker volumes and Docker Remote API. vRealize Automation 7.3 also includes a configuration management tool framework and database-as-a-service enhancements.