On March 26, the Cloud Foundation team hosted our very first #VMwareVCFchat tweet chat to discuss all the exciting announcements, updates, and questions around Cloud Foundation 4!
We kicked off the Tweet Chat by introducing our guests Josh Townsend and Rick Walsworth (Tweet Link), then it was off to the first question. Later on, we were joined by guests Bob Plankers and others from VMware as vSAN and vSphere hosted their corresponding #vSANchat and #vSpherechat virtual events at the same time. Continue reading for the highlight reel recap to our Q&A!
Q1: What does it mean to be on a Full Stack Hyperconverged Hybrid Cloud Platform like Cloud Foundation 4? (Tweet Link)
Rick: Core hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) is compute and storage, but full-stack adds networking, management and LCM with an automation framework to orchestrate workload deployment. Extend those HCI components into the Cloud for Hybrid Cloud.
Josh: One complete hybrid cloud platform that is easily consumable and simple to operate!
Q2: What are the main benefits of using Cloud Foundation 4 to an organization? (Tweet Link)
Rick: Short answer – it depends. For organizations that need to modernize infrastructure for business-critical apps, you get cost benefits through infra consolidation and can move to cloud without the need to re-platform the app. For organizations that are moving aggressively towards containers and DevOps, Cloud Foundation provides integrated Kubernetes orchestration with agile infrastructure in order to stand up clusters through K8’s APIs via self-service.
Josh: Consistency. Infrastructure that is consistently deployed, consistently operated and now, in Cloud Foundation 4, brings a consistent approach to deploying and managing apps with Kubernetes.
Q3: In most organizations, IT Ops and Developers are pretty siloed. How can Cloud Foundation 4 solve this challenge? (Tweet Link)
Rick: Most infra is rigid and dependent on the application. Cloud Foundation 4 integrates vSphere with Kubernetes which includes a K8s runtime environment that works in conjunction with VCF to build agile infrastructure as code. Check this blog.
Q4: Does Cloud Foundation 4 support both traditional and modern apps? What about workload mobility? (Tweet Link)
Rick: Yes, by integrating vSphere 7 with Kubernetes, containers and Kubernetes clusters are managed within the vSphere control plane. In this manner you can deploy Kubernetes clusters and applications within a Namespace and then apply vMotion for mobility. We go into this topic in more detail in this blog post.
Q5: Is it true that with Cloud Foundation 4 you can deploy apps using VMs, Containers, and Kubernetes? How does that work? (Tweet Link)
Rick: This video does an awesome job explaining how all of this works within. Cloud Foundation is integrated with vSphere 7 with Kubernetes, which enables native vSphere pods and Tanzu Kubernetes Grid to run alongside VMs. These can be grouped into Namespaces for easier management. Infrastructure is abstracted into services and delivered as code.
Q6: What are the potential cost savings and benefits when moving to Cloud Foundation 4? (Tweet Link)
Rick: Well, it depends. Customers moving from traditional 3-tier architecture can see significant CAPEX savings moving to full-stack HCI because you’re applying server-side economics and OPEX savings through automation and orchestration.
Josh: The ability of cloud administrators to support many more servers/storage/networking due to Cloud Foundation’s automation without extra work helps organizations to scale without requiring additional human capital.
Q7: Can existing VMware vSphere customers move to Cloud Foundation 4 easily? (Tweet Link)
Bob: Yes. SDDC Manager is pretty slick like that, and Cloud Foundation is just vSphere 7 at the core. It’s actually a very nice, standardized deployment. If I were still in Enterprise IT, I’d be looking hard at it.
Josh: Yes, because Cloud Foundation is based on vSphere, you don’t have to learn all new technologies or re-platform your workloads. Adoption of Cloud Foundation is easy!
Q8: Is it possible to support #multicloud infrastructure with Cloud Foundation 4? What’s available? (Tweet Link)
Rick: Cloud Foundation deploys a cloud operating model that uses consistent infrastructure for storage, networking and compute in private cloud environments that can extensible to AWS, Azure, GCP or a number of VMware Cloud Partners.
Josh: Cloud Foundation supports Multi-Cloud. VMware Cloud on AWS, Azure Services for VMware, plus Google, IBM, Oracle, and more cloud offerings are based on Cloud Foundation technologies. Consistent infrastructure, different clouds = simple administration & workload mobility.
Q9: If you had to sum up this new release into a song, which song would you choose and why? (Tweet Chat)
Rick: WHO LET THE DOGS OUT!!
A Few More #VMwareVCFchat Questions:
Additionally, as part of the tweet chat, we opened up the floor for customer and partner questions covering everything from NSX to upgrades.
Question: I’m curious about NSX-T integration. What is that managed by Cloud Foundation and what are the new features in -T? (Tweet Link)
Rick: NSX-T integration in Cloud Foundation 4 adds the ability to deploy NSX-T in both the management and workload domains. Cloud Foundation manages deployment, configuration and workload management of NSX-T. Learn more here.
Question: I would be interested in hearing more about networking cross containers and VMs. Is that part of the integration? (Tweet Link)
Bob: NSX provides all of that, both secure internal communications and things like ingress & egress controllers. All one big happy family.
Question: Is Kubernetes integrated with the vSphere for management? (Tweet Link)
Rick: Yes, vSphere has been re-architected using K8’s as a workload control plane, provides a management construct where containers and VMs can not only co-exist but be managed together. Namespaces make management much easier within vCenter Server. There is a very good video that describes how this all works together here and we go into this topic in more detail in this blog post.
Question: Does that mean that VMware is offering a supported Kubernetes distribution? Something that will be updated and versioned along with Cloud Foundation? (Tweet Link)
Rick: Yes, the vSphere 7 with Kubernetes uses Tanzu Kubernetes Grid which a fully upstream compliant distribution. Check this blog for more info.
Question: Another question for the Cloud Foundation #VMwareVCFchat. What is the plan to encourage upgrades? (Tweet Link)
Rick: Within Cloud Foundation, SDDC manager does provide notifications when new releases or patches are available, allows the admin to review and then applies the updates on a per-workload domain basis. This way you can schedule at a time that is most convenient.
Question: So what does (cost savings) really mean for customers? (Tweet Link)
Rick: When compared to legacy 3-tier architectures (physical compute, storage, network) there is a large CAPEX differential compared to SDDC, based on standardizing on x86 for server-side economics. OPEX, consider the time admins spend on LCM/maintenance vs automating.
Even the vSphere and vSAN teams got in on the action with their own questions like this one from vSphere, asking how does vSphere 7 integrate with vSAN 7 and VMware Cloud Foundation 4? (Tweet Link)
Bob: Cloud Foundation is very flexible about storage and infrastructure. You can use the storage you have for workloads, but for the Cloud Foundation management cluster, it relies on vSAN 7. vSAN 7 is pretty amazing. It eliminates a TON of admin overhead.
Thank you for joining us for this month’s #VMwareVCFchat! Stay tuned for when we announce the next chat. See you on Twitter!
Resources:
Read about Cloud Foundation 4, the latest release
Cloud Foundation 4 Modern Application Solution Overview
To get more information on Cloud Foundation, check out our website
