Johannesburg, 07 May 2018
VMware (NYSE: VMW) has unveiled new releases of VMware vSphere and VMware vSAN, which power the industry's leading hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) solutions, to help enterprises securely run their business-critical and modern applications in the data centre, at the edge, in the public cloud, or in hybrid cloud environments. VMware vSphere 6.7 and VMware vSAN 6.7 will both enhance user experience, security, application support, and hybrid cloud management features.
Enterprises are faced with increasingly complex technology environments, made up of a growing landscape of public cloud services as well as data centre and edge resources. To cope with this complexity and the growing rate of technological changes, enterprises need to build on a digital foundation that provides consistent infrastructure and operations, and is secure by default.
VMware's software forms an integrated digital foundation that powers the apps and services transforming businesses and industries. For customers, this provides the broadest investment protection by enabling a flexible and secure common operating environment from the cloud to the data centre to the edge.
"The continued innovation in our award-winning compute and HCI portfolio makes the hybrid cloud a reality for our customers," said Rajiv Ramaswami, chief operating officer, Products and Cloud Services, VMware. "The rapid adoption of vSAN, coupled with longstanding vSphere leadership, is a testament to the importance of a digital foundation that extends from on-premises to the public cloud."
VMware vSphere and VMware vSAN, building blocks of this digital foundation, both have leading positions in their relative industries, according to IDC. (1,2)
VMware vSphere 6.7: efficient and secure platform for hybrid cloud
VMware vSphere 6.7 will introduce new capabilities and enhancements to help deliver an efficient and more secure platform for hybrid cloud environments. The latest release will feature simple and efficient management at scale, comprehensive built-in security, increased support for more workloads, and further enable a seamless hybrid cloud experience. VMware vSphere 6.7 will continue to offer customers a universal application platform that supports workloads spanning artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), big data, business-critical, cloud-native, in-memory, and 3D graphics, among others.
The enhanced vCenter Server Appliance will deliver an improved user experience made possible through more efficient management capabilities and significant performance improvements. It will deliver a faster experience for vSphere admins (compared to vSphere 6.5), while delivering considerable time and cost savings. Performance improvements will include:
* 200% faster performance in vCenter operations per second (3);
* 300% reduction in memory usage (3); and
* 300% faster DRS-related operations (eg Power-on, Placement of VM) (3)
VMware vSphere customers can deploy VMware AppDefense to further secure applications running in the data centre or cloud. AppDefense leverages its unique position in vSphere to understand what applications are intended to do, monitor against that intended state, and automate a response if anyone or anything attempts to manipulate them.
VMware vSAN 6.7: elevates the HCI experience on-premises and in the cloud
Powering the largest hybrid cloud ecosystem of any HCI vendor, vSAN enables customers to evolve their vSphere environment on-premises or in the cloud with hyper-converged infrastructure that lowers total cost of ownership (TCO) with efficient operations and that easily scales to future demands. VMware vSAN 6.7 reduces time-to-expertise with a new intuitive interface and accelerates decision-making through advanced monitoring and analytics.
New and enhanced features in VMware vSAN 6.7 include:
* New VMware vSphere HTML5 Client Support: Will provide vSAN admins with a unified, intuitive management experience using the HTML5-based vSphere Client that introduces new functionality and optimised workflows for vSAN operations.
* New integrated vRealize Operations health checks in vCenter Server: Will offer a single pane of glass to monitor and control multiple HCI environments. vRealize Operations 6.7 will provide a global operations view of vSAN 6.7 environments with six new dashboards embedded within vCenter Server 6.7, enabling customers to monitor capacity, performance, KPIs and alerts, and more. This capability does not require a separate vRealize Operations licence, and is available to anyone with a vSAN Advanced or vSAN Enterprise licence.
* New host-pinning and iSCSI failover support: Will extend the suitability of HCI to applications such as Cassandra, Hadoop and MongoDB, as well as to clustered Windows Server environments. New application support requires customers to contact VMware for additional details.
* New intelligent self-healing capabilities: Will mitigate the effects of disruptive events, such as hardware failures, with smart resource allocation.
* Enhanced vSAN encryption: Will meet strict US Federal government security requirements with FIPS 140-2 validation to protect data from disruptive events.
As part of the announcement, VMware is also introducing vSAN ReadyCare to improve the support experience for HCI environments. VMware will help customers maintain performance by avoiding or quickly resolving issues and minimise downtime through a combination of proactive telemetry capabilities from vSAN Support Insight advanced analytics, and a broad investment in VMware support staff.
VMware is widely recognised as the leading HCI software provider, and now delivers vSphere and vSAN-powered HCI in two of the top four public cloud providers, including AWS and IBM. Through an expansive partner ecosystem, VMware supports the broadest set of consumption options for its HCI software from turnkey HCI integrated systems such as Dell EMC VxRail and VxRack SDDC solutions to certified vSAN ReadyNode hardware reference architectures to as a service consumption models in public clouds.
Visit VMware at the ITWeb Security Summit and ask the company all of your security-related questions. The ITWeb Security Summit is southern Africa's definitive conference and expo for information security, IT and business professionals. This year, over 70 expert speakers will deliver key insights across seven tracks, including workshops and training courses, during the expanded five-day event. The ITWeb Security Summit will be staged at Vodacom World, Midrand, from 21-25 May 2018; and CTICC Cape Town on 29 May 2018. Focused and interactive workshops, as well as in-depth training courses, will be run in the days around the main conference and exhibition.
ITWeb Security Summit 2018
Registration is open for the ITWeb Security Summit 2018, being held in Johannesburg on 22 and 23 May and in Cape Town on 28 and 29 May. This is the must-attend annual event for information security professionals, featuring international speakers, workshops, as well as a beginners' guide to cyber security. Click here.
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