Missed our most recent VMware Cloud Foundation Tweet Chat? Don’t worry, we have got you covered!
During our latest #VMwareVCFchat, our VMware experts Josh Townsend and Rick Walsworth dove into all things Business Continuity as we continue to navigate through our new normal. Check out what they had to share in our recap below!
Q1: Business Continuity has been challenging for everyone in 2020. Looking back, what is something that has surprised you about the experience? (Tweet Link)
Josh Townsend: I’ve been impressed with just how productive folks have been during this time in organizations who took a people-first approach in planning for Business Continuity. Those who focused on backup and recovery only are struggling to support remote users.
Rick Walsworth: What was most surprising was the number of companies that were unprepared for this series of events that led to the majority of their workers were WFH. ESG published a very interesting report on this data. DM me on Twitter if you’re interested in learning more.
Q2: Looking forward, what are your top Business Continuity priorities for technology planning and investment in 2020 and beyond? (Tweet Link)
Josh: Business Continuity has often been relegated to back up/recovery motions. COVID-19 has taught us that it needs to be so much more. VMware’s approach to providing consistent infrastructure and consistent operations across hybrid clouds, which in turn run any applications needed by the org – and can be consumed by users through VMware’s secure end-user computing platforms – is what is needed. Going forward, investments ought to be focused on the user experience – giving users access to all their apps across any location where they might be stuck working for a period of time.
Rick: We’ve seen incredible demand for remote access tools such as VMware Horizon VDI Workspace One and VeloCloud SD-WAN all working with VCF. It’s a Business Continuity solution that can be deployed rapidly. Just what the doctor ordered.
Q3: Why is flexible infrastructure so important right now and how can HCI help enable? (Tweet Link)
Josh: A crisis isn’t the time to reinvent your infrastructure. With office/data center access restricted, rolling out new infrastructure is tough. Flexible infrastructure that can adapt and scale to meet dynamic business needs allows organizations to meet the needs of users wherever they are.
Rick: Think about it, when the COVID lockdown hit, most companies had to go from less than 20% working remote to almost 100% WFH literally overnight. You need flexible infrastructure and a cloud operating model to respond to those types of demands.
Q4: What should organizations know about VMware Horizon and Cloud Foundation for Business Continuity? (Tweet Link)
Josh: Cloud Foundation deployed across hybrid clouds is nicely complemented by VMware Horizon Cloud Pod Architecture. Seamless VDI environments to provide access to remote workers around the world. Like two peas in a pod! VMware Horizon and Cloud Foundation dovetail nicely to provide not only consistent infrastructure and operations across hybrid clouds, but a consistent VDI experience for users across hybrid working environments.
Rick: It’s a fully automated solution that provides day 0 deployment and day 1 configuration, removing all the manual steps needed to deploy VDI at scale on-prem or in the cloud. Takes deployments times down from weeks to hours. Perfect for these crisis scenarios.
Q5: What are some of the top reasons to adopt VDI for HCI? (Tweet Link)
Josh: VDI can be quite a dynamic workload with very demanding users. Letting the users down will get you in serious trouble! HCI provides a simple, scalable, resilient, and flexible hybrid cloud infrastructure for VDI environments.
Rick: VDI on HCI has so many applications both on-premises and remote workers; here are just a few of the benefits: Rapid Deployment and Reconfiguration, Patch Management; Testing, Delivering consistency to a widely distributed and growing workforce.
Q6: From your experience or customer examples, what are VDI deployment best practices, and how does Cloud Foundation assist in VDI deployment and management for Business Continuity? (Tweet Link)
Josh: Be ready to scale! I’ve seen many VDI environments that were deployed with no easy way to add capacity. With workers relying on VDI to do their jobs, working 60% of the time, every time just won’t cut it! Cloud Foundation offers flexibility in (re)deploying infrastructure assets to meet changing business needs. Flexibility is key!
Rick: Take advantage of the integration VMware Horizon on VMware Cloud Foundation to provide automation of the initial deployment and configuration of the parameters. This removes configuration issues getting systems operational and allows you to scale by adding more clusters.
Q7: What new updates in Cloud Foundation are essential for Business Continuity? (Tweet Chat)
Josh: Integrating Kubernetes with VMware Tanzu provides another level of both consistency and abstraction for applications across hybrid clouds. This allows organizations to move workloads to the right data center, closest to users, at the right time, for the right cost. Having this level of flexibility also gives organizations the ability to create and deploy brand-new apps to meet whatever nature, the markets, competition or users throw at them!
Rick: The integration of VMware Cloud Foundation with VMware Horizon has been a key factor in the ability to rapidly deploy and scale these deployments. Check this out for more information: https://bit.ly/3ezuaFf
Q8: Security is always a top concern for Business Continuity. How does Cloud Foundation step in? (Tweet Chat)
Josh: Security doesn’t work if it is a weak perimeter protection & outdated in light of the threats faced today. Cloud Foundation provides intrinsic security across hybrid clouds, with security built into all layers of the infrastructure: compute, storage, networking and management. Beyond intrinsic security from core VCF components, VMware recently announced VMware Advanced Security for Cloud Foundation. This brings new, modern security capabilities for infrastructure and apps running across hybrid clouds. Stay tuned for more on this!
Rick: This has been extremely challenging for CISOs trying to maintain security compliance with their workforce remaining remote. VMware NSX features such as Micro-segmentation, workloads isolation, intrusion detection and prevention (and more) are all integrated into VMware Cloud Foundation.
Q9: What are the can’t-miss resources for Business Continuity planning as we move into the next phase? (Tweet Link)
Josh: Check out 3 Ways Hyperconverged Infrastructure (HCI) Enables Business Continuity to see how HCI can help simplify, if not solve, your Business Continuity challenges both now and when the next crisis hits. There’s lots of materials on http://VMware.com, but before you go and try to read them all, take some time to come up with your list of priorities. What is most important to protect, what could go wrong (and how can you flip it to go right).
Rick: I always recommend this link as the first stop to learn more about how to maintain a strong posture for business continuity. You can also take a close look at this solution brief: https://bit.ly/3ezuaFf
Q10: What are your personal tips and tricks for remote working with VMware? (Tweet Link)
Josh: Have a dedicated workspace, define your work hours, and take breaks. But more importantly, find ways to interact with others outside of work and serve those who are hurting. There’s lots of volunteer work that can be done remotely. I’ve found my sanity during this time by volunteering as a firefighter/EMT. Use this time to break the bad habits, try something new, challenge yourself.
Rick: The transition to remote working at VMware has been seamless. The portfolio of tools VMware Horizon, Workspace One EUC portfolio allows us to literally work from anywhere. My biggest challenge is fighting for WIFI bandwidth with the rest of the family.
That’s a wrap for another successful Tweet Chat in the books! Don’t forget to follow our VMware experts Josh Townsend (@joshuatownsend) and Rick Walsworth (@RickWalsworth) and the hashtag #VMwareVCFchat to stay up to date and to join future conversations!
Stay tuned to our channels for the next Tweet Chat topic and additional details!
