VI Team Blog

A few weeks ago, 14,000 of VMware’s customers and partners attended VMworld 2008 in

Las Vegas

. It was an incredible opportunity for VMware to define what we do and outline the exciting new products coming in 2009 …and we did. We defined a bold, clear vision, one that we’ve been marching to for a while, but have only recently articulated very precisely. In the process, we introduced new concepts, new definitions and new names…a quick overview is at the below link

http://www.vmware.com/technology/virtual-datacenter-os/

I’m going to use this blog to explain the thought process behind these new announcements.

What we announced: The roadmap for 2009

The vdc-os

We announced that we extend our product, VMware Infrastructure, to a virtual datacenter operating system.

In 2009, we will have a whole range of new capabilities and when you add them to the products and capabilities that we have currently, you get a computing platform that does 2 main things:

1. Abstract away from the complexity of hardware across servers, storage and network to create a unified and uniform platform which then provides resources to applications on an as-needed basis
2. Abstract away from the complexity of applications and provides OS-agnostic services to all applications

The first set of enabling capabilities is called Infrastructure vServices, the second set of capabilities is called Application vServices. In a single server environment, these capabilities would be delivered by a traditional, single server operating system such as Windows or Linux.

In an environment with many servers, you need a computing platform that works across all its disparate piece parts. You need an operating system for your entire datacenter – one that removes complexity and fundamentally simplifies IT. We call this the virtual datacenter operating system.

This is an operating system that virtualizes servers, storage, network into a giant shared resource and then precisely allocates this resource to applications. Along the way, the very nature of this distributed operating system enables point and click enablement of availability, scalability and security services to ALL applications. Applications that run on standard x86 servers, just run on this vdc-os with no modification and avail of all these services.

The virtual datacenter operating system fundamentally changes the way datacenters need to be managed because of 3 main reasons:

-         Resources are , by definition, shared

-         Applications are no longer tied to a single piece of hardware

-         Service level requirements of the applications are parameters that are easily set by app owners and delivered automatically by the infrastructure

Management vServices deliver the comprehensive management that is aware of these properties of a vdc-os. Management vServices also allow for easy integration with existing systems management frameworks – so that virtual environments retain the benefits associated with virtualization and also work well in the larger framework of non-86 environments.

So what?

Think about this in the context of some larger trends in the industry. Next year, volume servers will ship with 8 cores in a single socket – that is 16 cores per 2-way server. Very very few applications can truly take advantage of so many cores. Virtualization is inevitable.

Now think about whether you want your individual virtualized servers to be islands unto themselves, or whether you want your IT setup to be managed at a datacenter level, with an OS that unifies many industry standard parts.

Think about whether you want to set up and customize availability and scalability for every application or whether you want to enable it through point and click as part of the provisioning process. As applications get componentized, they will consist of many tiers. The process for guaranteeing service levels for each tier will be difficult unless service level guarantees were available in a application/OS independent way.

The VMware approach not only makes you less susceptible to failures of each individual component, it also gives you additional flexibility that you could not have had with a single server approach, such as the capability to scale any type of application quickly, the ability to assure a high priority application additional resources when needed or the ability to provide high availability in an application/OS independent way.

In times such as the one that we live in, lowering costs and running datacenters at the highest efficiency is going to be hugely important as all of us try to deliver more with less.

VMware is truly delivering what the industry calls utility computing. It is bringing the most efficient model of computing to every datacenter.

Want more?

The webcast at this link gives you a quick overview of the virtual datacenter operating system from VMware.

http://info.vmware.com/content/NextGenVDC_webcast_5059

For a deep dive on some of the new features such as the future vNetwork Distributed Switch and VMware Fault Tolerance, see below for a link to a couple of live webinars

Next-Generation Virtual Networking for VMware Infrastructure – 10/16, 9am PT

http://www.vmware.com/a/webcasts/details/157?src=BLOGS_08Q4_VMW_OTHER_WEBCASTSERIES_OCT16_LJ&ossrc=BLOGS_08Q4_VMW_OTHER_WEBCASTSERIES_OCT16_LJ 

Technical Track: Fault Tolerance for VMware Virtual Machines – 11/5, 9am PT

http://www.vmware.com/a/webcasts/details/152?src=BLOGS_08Q4_VMW_OTHER_WEBCASTSERIES_NOV5_LJ&ossrc=BLOGS_08Q4_VMW_OTHER_WEBCASTSERIES_NOV5_LJ

And as always, do send in any questions or comments to me at ljoshi@vmware.com