As you may have heard already, at VMworld 2017 we announced the general availability of VMware Cloud Foundation 2.2, the latest version of our integrated cloud infrastructure platform that enables the simplest path to hybrid cloud. Now, I want to take this opportunity to give you a closer look at the exciting improvements that our product has to offer.
The Most Advanced Capabilities
Cloud Foundation is a software platform that provides a complete set of software-defined services for compute, storage, networking and security. These services are based on the proven capabilities of VMware vSphere, VMware vSAN and VMware NSX. Cloud Foundation 2.2 integrates the latest versions of these software components (vSphere 6.5 U1, vSAN 6.6.1, NSX 6.3.3 and SDDC Manager 2.2), while adding support for Horizon 7.2. These means that we deliver the latest enterprise-grade functionality that VMware has to offer, including critical security features such as VM-level disk encryption and data at rest encryption.
Start Small and Grow Big
On the architectural front, we’ve made a major improvement that will allow customers to start with a smaller footprint (minimum 4 nodes). The new Consolidated Architecture supported in Cloud Foundation 2.2 allows customers to have compute workloads co-reside with management workloads within a single workload domain, with isolation enabled by vSphere resource pools. As the environment grows, users can either expand the consolidated workload domain, or easily switch to the Standard Architecture that deploys a dedicated management workload domain while compute workloads run on one or more separate workload domains.
Growing Partner Ecosystem
We’ve also significantly expanded our partner ecosystem. On the private cloud front, a variety of partners announced the upcoming availability of new integrated systems powered by VMware Cloud Foundation, namely the Hitachi Unified Compute Platform (UCP) RS Series, Fujitsu PRIMEFLEX for VMware Cloud Foundation, QCT QxStack and last, but not least, HPE Synergy.
Since at VMware we are all about choice, we also expanded the number of vSAN ReadyNodes certified to run Cloud Foundation, with the additions of Cisco USC C240, HDS UCP V210 and Fujitsu RX2530.
But we didn’t stop there. To enable customers to build hybrid cloud environments, we continue to expand our public cloud ecosystem. Several service providers announced the upcoming availability of services based on Cloud Foundation, such as Rackspace, CenturyLink and Fujitsu.
Customers now have more flexibility than ever to deploy Cloud Foundation on premises and run it as a service from the public cloud.
I encourage you to learn more about Cloud Foundation 2.2 by visiting the release notes page, and to come back for more information about Cloud Foundation in this blog.
