devopsy.kinsta.cloud

Tag: VMware cloud

Broadcom Strengthens Case for Integrated VCF Platform

Broadcom today revealed it is adding a raft of additional capabilities to the optional portfolio of services it makes available on top of VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF), including a module that makes it simpler to deploy databases on top of instances of Kubernetes that are integrated with the VMware virtual machine platform.

Announced at the VMware Explore 2024 Barcelona conference, other additions include support for Google Cloud VMware Engine (GCVE) as a recovery target for VCF workloads and that the VMware vDefend Advanced Service for VCF now includes a generative artificial intelligence (AI) assistant that can be used to triage threats.

Finally, Broadcom is announcing support for Microsoft Azure AI Video Indexer, a service for running video and audio analysis on instances of VMware Private AI, which is based on VCF platform running on the Microsoft Azure cloud that makes use of the Microsoft Arc management framework.

Krish Prasad, senior vice president and general manager, VCF Division at Broadcom, said these latest editions to the Advanced Services portfolio for VCF, are part of an ongoing effort to reduce the overall level of complexity that IT organizations are required to manage when they are required to integrate multiple infrastructure technologies themselves.

It’s not clear how much traction Broadcom is gaining with VCF following its acquisition of VMware. The company has been aggressively making a case for a subscription service that provides a much wider range of capabilities at a higher cost. The overall goal is to generate more revenue for virtual storage and networking technologies that VMware developed to extend its reach beyond virtual machines. As part of the effort, Broadcom is now adding a VCF Architect certification that is designed to encourage more IT professionals to acquire VCF skills.

Each IT organization will need to decide for itself to what degree VCF augmented by various optional services makes sense for their organization. Many of them, however, have already invested in rival storage and networking services that they would have to replace to justify investing in VCF. In effect, Broadcom is making a case for deploying VCF across a hybrid cloud computing environment that will be easier to centrally manage. That approach should lower the total cost of ownership (TCO) by relying on a single integrated platform to deploy applications across multiple types of cloud computing environments.

Of course, the biggest challenge Broadcom will in many cases be simple inertia. Even if an IT organization concludes that VCF provides a better alternative, it might take them several years to make a transition.

IT teams are, of course, under pressure to reduce the cost of IT. One way to go about accomplishing that goal is to reduce the number of IT vendors engaged, which in theory should make it simpler to automate more processes. The challenge is that the initial cost of achieving that goal is often higher than many organizations can initially afford, no matter how much they might save later.

November 5, 2024
HPE Adds VMware Cloud Platform to Managed GreenLake Service

At the VMware Explore 2022 Europe conference, Hewlett Packard Enterprise and VMware, Inc. this week extended their alliance to integrate instances of the VMware Cloud platform into the managed HPE GreenLake service.

Hang Tan, chief strategy officer for HPE, said for the first time HPE is managing the entire VMware Cloud stack in addition to its servers and storage platforms via a service that is based on a consumption pricing model. The goal is to reduce the total cost of IT by not requiring IT teams to overprovision IT infrastructure resources to run VMware Cloud, he said.

Previously, IT teams could have deployed VMware Cloud on the HPE GreenLake service in a more disaggregated fashion, but that would have required separate billing processes, added Tan.

Many organizations are currently revisiting their IT strategies during increasingly challenging economic times, noted Tan. The managed HPE GreenLake service enables IT teams to devote more of their internal IT resources to building and deploying applications rather than managing IT infrastructure, he added.

It’s not clear how many organizations are transitioning toward a subscription model for consuming on-premises IT infrastructure, but in the cloud era it’s apparent that more of them are comfortable consuming IT as a service. HPE reported that the HPE GreenLake service supports more than 120,000 users accessing more than one exabyte of data worldwide. Among the top 100 HPE customers, nearly 80% have already adopted the HPE GreenLake platform, the company claims.

The challenge many organizations face is they still need to deploy and update application workloads in on-premises IT environments for both performance reasons and to meet various compliance mandates. The HPE GreenLake service is an effort to bring a cloud operating model to on-premises IT environments running not just VMware Cloud but also a wide range of other rival software stacks that HPE already supports.

Naturally, organizations that have embraced DevOps workflows would need to align the way they build and deploy applications to a managed service. IT teams that find that challenging, however, could opt for a self-service edition of the HPE GreenLake service that provides IT teams with more control over the underlying infrastructure being consumed as a service, noted Tan.

Regardless of approach, it’s apparent that some type of as-a-service approach to consuming IT infrastructure is being more widely employed across what are becoming highly distributed computing environments. Each organization will need to determine for itself to what degree treating IT more as an operating versus capital expense makes the most economic sense.

However, there’s no doubt that infrastructure cycles are generally going to be less disruptive when they are included as part of a multi-year services agreement. IT teams may also find it easier to take advantage of ongoing artificial intelligence (AI) advances when IT environments are managed on their behalf by a vendor.

One way or another, the way IT infrastructure is managed is continuing to evolve at a time when organizations are starting to focus more of their efforts on applications that are becoming more difficult to build, deploy, secure and maintain.

November 11, 2022
IBM Adds Fully Managed VMware Service to Cloud Portfolio

At the VMware Explore 2022 Europe conference, IBM this week announced an IBM Cloud for VMware-as-a-Service offering that integrates instances of VMware Cloud with the infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) platform managed by IBM in the cloud.

Rohit Badlaney, vice president of product management and strategy for IBM Cloud, said now that VMware Cloud can be consumed as a subscription service, it’s now possible for IBM to integrate it with its cloud platform to create a fully managed service. Previously, IT organizations would have had to separately license VMware Cloud and deploy it on IBM Cloud themselves, he noted.

In general, Badlaney said IBM is focused on working with organizations in highly regulated industries that need to run complex workloads in the cloud. IBM is not interested in competing against other cloud service providers to run workloads on commodity infrastructure, he added.

The majority of applications that run in the cloud today consume a narrow range of memory and storage resources. The IBM cloud is clearly more focused on providing higher-margin services to complement the cloud infrastructure it makes available via its data centers. Less clear is to what degree monolithic applications running in on-premises IT environments are being lifted and shifted to the cloud. While there is clearly a segment of organizations that no longer want to operate their own data centers, the bulk of applications continue to run in on-premises IT environments. The reasons for this include everything from performance requirements and security concerns to regulatory compliance issues.

However, since most on-premises applications run on VMware virtual machines, much of the focus on cloud migration has revolved around platforms that would not require IT teams to refactor applications to run on a different virtual machine platform. IBM is also betting that, given the current state of the global economy, more organizations will soon be opting to not manage their own data centers. Cloud platforms managed by a third party would enable those organizations to focus more of their own internal IT efforts on application development and deployment.

Each organization will need to determine for itself whether to treat IT as an operating versus a capital expense, depending on which approach makes the most economic sense. Organizations that have embraced DevOps workflows would need to align the way they build and deploy applications to a managed service.

In theory, of course, a managed cloud computing service makes IT teams more agile and efficient. Less IT infrastructure winds up being overprovisioned by developers that can programmatically spin up resources on demand. Of course, there are a lot of IT stacks other than VMware Cloud that can be deployed in the cloud. IBM, for example, makes available the Red Hat OpenShift platform to run cloud-native applications on Kubernetes clusters. IBM has not yet committed to offering the VMware Tanzu platform for running those types of applications.

Not every application is going to wind up running in the cloud, but what is certain is that application environments are becoming more complex to manage in the next era of cloud computing.

November 11, 2022