Announcing Data Services Manager 2.0 and Two Key Partnerships
Today, I am pleased to announce the next generation of VMware Data Services Manager, a product for managing a wide range of data services, including databases. The product is natively integrated with VMware Cloud Foundation and serves the needs of IT admins, data teams, and developers alike. We are also announcing two key partnerships with Google Cloud and MinIO to support AlloyDB Omni and Object Store respectively by Data Services Manager in VMware Cloud Foundation environments.
VMware’s vision: make data as easy to manage and consume as we do for compute, storage, and networking.
Data and data services are essential for AI/ML, modern, and traditional applications that fuel the digital transformation initiatives of our customers. Telemetry data show that about a quarter of all workloads running on VMware Cloud (by count of CPU cores) is some form of a data service. The number of data service types and instances is growing rapidly over time.
For our customers, that means that they have to manage an increasingly diverse and sprawling data estate consisting of many different data services, each with a different operational model and management tools. And do that while they ensure service level objectives (SLOs) and an easy consumption experience for the application teams. This is a challenging task even for the most sophisticated organization!
Our strategy is to deliver best-in-class management for any type of data service, including databases, object stores, data lakes and warehouses, streaming, caching, and querying engines. We are also committed to delivering this as a natively integrated experience with VMware Cloud Foundation. We are enabling customers to use the same scalable operational model, and deliver SLOs for performance, resiliency, and security across all of their data services.
Announcing VMware Data Services Manager 2.0
VMware Data Services Manager is a key component of our strategy. At its core, Data Services Manager is a unified control plane for managing both VMware-built and partner-provided data services.
The upcoming release of Data Services Manager will be tightly integrated with VMware Cloud Foundation, with built-in database visibility and resource controls accessible through vSphere UI and APIs. Data Services Manager 2.0 will also support enhanced automation for data services lifecycle management, including non-disruptive patching and upgrades. Finally, it will deliver cloud-native self-service capabilities for application teams through tools of their choice, with support for VMware Aria Automation and Kubernetes.
Last but not least, with version 2.0, Data Services Manager will become a platform for managing different data services, based not only on data engines that come from VMware (currently Tanzu SQL), but also engines from 3rd parties. We are announcing our first partnerships with Google Cloud for AlloyDB Omni (more details here) and MinIO for Object Storage (more details here) on VMware Cloud Foundation. All managed by Data Services Manager with the same features, workflows, and user experience. This includes deeper integration with vSphere as well as VMware vSAN with data path optimizations and use of features like snapshots and clones.
Visibility and Control for IT Admins
IT Admins will benefit from the native VMware infrastructure management experience for data services, including full control of infrastructure policies that are critical for delivering SLOs.
Infrastructure policies can be defined and managed in two ways (not mutually exclusive). First, directly through the vSphere UI and API, which also helps VI Admins to monitor end-to-end the SLOs of data services and perform remediation actions if needed.
Second, it can be done through Aria Automation, including integration with Application templates. We enable Aria Admins to constrain data services operations for tenants or even create custom workflows including for Day-2 operations.
Management Automation for Data Teams
Data Services Manager empowers data teams to automate and scale some of the tedious tasks involved in standing up and operating data services. In addition to defining appropriate infrastructure policies for different deployment types, provisioning and even scaling of data services can all be done programmatically and with automated workflows. Similarly, Data Services Manager automates lifecycle management while ensuring that data services remain secure and available.
For example, database patches and upgrades can be rolled out automatically as directed by the data teams but within time windows specified by the owners of the data.
Similarly, data teams can specify data protection policies to ensure compliance with company or regulatory requirements. Those policies are enforced automatically without requiring manual intervention by admins.
Developer-friendly Consumption
Last but not least, Data Services Manager exposes a cloud-native data consumption experience for the application teams and data owners. Application developers, data engineers and analysts can provision and control the data services they depend on. All these through rich APIs and familiar tooling, including Aria Automation and/or CLI with a kubectl interface. For example, App teams can use the Data Services Manager API to provision database instances from their CI/CD pipelines, and integrate data service metrics with their application’s observability framework.
Next Steps
To summarize, VMware Data Services Manager will deliver best-in-class management for a wide range of data services, not just databases, as a natively integrated experience for VMware Cloud Foundation customers, serving the needs of IT admins, data teams, and developers alike. These capabilities, along with new data services partnerships with Google Cloud and MinIO, and new VMware Cloud advancements, will deliver developer-ready infrastructure to accelerate modern app innovation, provide multi-cloud flexibility and agility, and enable more secure and resilient organizations.
- To learn more, visit our webpage and contact your sales representative or partner.
- Register to our Early Access Program: https://via.vmw.com/DSM_EAP
Availability
The next generation of VMware Data Services Manager is expected to be available in VMware’s Q4 FY24. Google AlloyDB Omni and MinIO Object Store for VMware Cloud Foundation are currently in Tech Preview.