The highly anticipated ESXi on Arm Fling has just been announced and is NOW generally available as a new VMware Fling! Head over to https://flings.vmware.com/esxi-arm-edition and be sure to carefully read through the Requirements and documentation before try out the bits. We target four platforms: Raspberry Pi 4, as just mentioned, plus Ampere Computing eMAG-based servers for more traditional use-cases and a couple of NXP LayerScape-based Edge/IoT platforms. This week on the Virtually Speaking Podcast we welcome back William Lam and Andrei Warkentin to discuss the fling, targeted platforms, and more.
What is a VMware Fling?
A Fling is a VMware program sponsored through the Office of the CTO designed to offer early stage software to the VMware community. Our customers and the broader VMware community get to take new technology for a test drive and give us valuable feedback on use-cases and opportunities for improvement. A Fling is not generally available (GA) or production code (and thus not supported), nor is it necessarily on a path to productization. Flings both offer interesting functionality for the broader VMware community and provide a conduit for feedback and insights into how people want to use the technology. It’s a lightweight mechanism to get new innovation out to customers quickly and efficiently.
Project Monterey uses Arm-based SmartNICs
You may remember VMware announced Project Monterey last week at VMworld. It’s a rethinking of the hardware architecture underlying VMware Cloud Foundation. In particular, Project Monterey adds SmartNIC support to VMware Cloud Foundation. This can deliver some powerful use cases: improved network performance, zero-trust security, storage acceleration, bare metal support in vSphere, and hardware disaggregation through composability. This is all enabled by ESXi running on the SmartNIC, specifically on Arm-based SmartNICs.
Links Mentioned
- Grab the ESXi-Arm bits
- VMware announces ESXi on Arm Fling
- Williams Blog: VirtuallyGhetto
- ESXi on Arm Podcast Episode 102 with William and Andrei
https://twitter.com/lamw/status/1313496835344932864?s=20
For other inquiries or engaging with ESXi-Arm Product Team, please send an email to [email protected]
The Virtually Speaking Podcast
The Virtually Speaking Podcast is a weekly technical podcast dedicated to discussing VMware topics related to storage and availability. Each week Pete Flecha and John Nicholson bring in various subject matter experts from VMware and within the industry to discuss their respective areas of expertise. If you’re new to the Virtually Speaking Podcast check out all episodes on vSpeakingPodcast.com and follow on Twitter @VirtSpeaking
