Tag: data store

  • Latest Redis Update Streamlines Management of Platform

    Latest Redis Update Streamlines Management of Platform

    Redis made a unified release of its namesake data store available today for consistent deployment across all supported platforms. Previously, the pace at which upgrades were made was staggered across different offerings only as they became available.

    At the same time, Redis is moving to unify client libraries used to access its open source data store by working directly with the community maintainers of the five most popular client libraries—Jedis (Java), node-redis (NodeJS), redis-py (Python), NRedisStack (.Net), and Go-Redis (Go).

    Other capabilities added to version 7.2 of the platform include support for auto-tiering, to more easily migrate less frequently accessed data to less expensive storage devices. This is managed via an enhanced interface for the Redis cluster management and data integration tools, available in preview. Both make it possible to consume data in real-time from another data source, such as a SQL database. Developers can also take advantage of triggers and functions to build those types of applications.

    Redis is also previewing a search tool for vector data used to create generative artificial intelligence (AI) applications. Rather than employing a separate vector database to build these applications, the Redis platform supports this data type to enable generative AI applications to run alongside other classes of applications accessing the same data.

    Redis CEO Rowan Trollope said collectively these efforts will help DevOps teams reduce costs and streamline the management of upgrades to the platform and updates to applications accessing it.

    Most organizations initially adopt Redis to provide a layer of cache using a data store that runs in-memory. However, as more applications are developed many organizations wind up using Redis as their primary database for applications that require a lot of interactivity, noted Trollope.

    While developers primarily make that architectural decision, the overall management of the Redis data store falls to DevOps teams that will now find it easier to streamline workflows across multiple instances of Redis running in the cloud, or on a Kubernetes cluster, added Trollope.

    Of course, in some cases, organizations still rely on database administrators and data engineers to manage those workflows, but as DevOps continues to evolve, more instances of data stores are being incorporated into workflows managed by a DevOps team. The ultimate goal should be to align DevOps and DataOps best practices to increase the productivity of developers and data science teams building generative AI applications using vector data to customize an existing large language model (LLM).

    Regardless of the motivation, what’s clear is the volume of data that needs to run in-memory continues to increase substantially. As that shift continues to occur, more latency-sensitive applications are being deployed. Maintaining the performance of those applications across a highly distributed enterprise environment with multiple service dependencies requires a level of DevOps expertise that is still difficult to find and retain.

  • VMware Embraces Graph Technology to Manage Multiple Clouds

    VMware Embraces Graph Technology to Manage Multiple Clouds

    At the VMware Explore 2022 conference today, VMware launched a portfolio of multi-cloud management tools, dubbed VMware Aria, based on a graph-based data store that captures the resources spanning multiple clouds and their relationship to one another.

    Accessed via a VMware Aria Hub platform previously known as Project Ensemble, VMware Aria Graph provides a common definition of applications, resources, roles and accounts in near-real-time across a multi-cloud environment that can consist of millions of nodes.

    VMware CEO Raghu Raghuram told conference attendees the Aria Graph is at the core of an effort to enable IT organizations to move beyond “cloud chaos” to embrace a next-generation “cloud smart” approach to managing distributed computing environments that span multiple platforms.

    Based on an event-driven platform, the VMware Aria Graph aggregates data pulled from public application programming interfaces (APIs) into a data store residing on that cloud. The data store is based on a federated model so there is no need to move data into a central repository. Instead, VMware is making use of GraphQL to launch queries across a federated data model. In addition, IT teams can discover dependencies and analyze historical configuration data to discover the root cause of any issue. All operational data is now aggregated in a way that creates a single source of truth.

    VMware has also provided a set of API services that can be used to integrate the Aria Graph data store with third-party platforms.
    In general, the company is committed to accelerating “the great replatforming” of IT environments spurred by digital business transformation initiatives, said Raghuram. The challenges IT organizations are encountering are roadblocks that involve everything from a lack of skills, the weight of existing enterprise applications and fragmented operations and cybersecurity models, he noted.

    The VMware Aria graph data store will enable the company to automate a wide range of management tasks, Raghuram said. That includes using the right cloud for the right application and governing and accessing them at the lowest cost possible, added Raghuram. The ultimate goal is to enable a unified developer experience that provides a frictionless multi-cloud experience across a consistent set of enterprise infrastructure, he said.

    VMware offerings that leverage the VMware Aria Graph include VMware Aria Guardrails for enforcing IT policies, a VMware Aria Migration tool for automating assessment, planning and execution using the VMware HCX platform and a VMware Aria Business Insights tool that surfaces business insights using machine learning algorithms. The rest of the VMware Aria portfolio is anchored around extensions to existing platforms in the form of VMware Aria Cost powered by CloudHealth, VMware Aria Operations and VMware Aria Automation.

    VMware also announced today that its existing VMware Cross-Cloud Service offering for deploying its stack of software across multiple clouds has been extended to add support for the Microsoft Azure cloud.

    Overall, VMware claims there are now five million developers in its ecosystem that collectively launch 350,000 projects every week. That equates to roughly 35 new applications a minute, according to Raghuram. All told, VMware claims there are 85 million workloads running globally on its platform.

    The bulk of those workloads today still run in on-premises IT environments. In fact, Raghuram noted that cloud platforms still only account for $413 billion in IT spending each year, which is only 10% of the total IT spending that reaches $4.4 trillion each year.

    VMware, which is expecting to complete its acquisition by Broadcom in the next few months, is betting that as more of those workloads move to the cloud, the need to centrally manage heterogenous IT environments will play to its strengths.