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PALO ALTO, CA, April 21, 2009 — VMware, Inc. (NYSE:
VMW), the global leader in virtualization solutions from the desktop to
the datacenter, today announced VMware vSphere™ 4, the industry’s first
operating system for building the internal cloud, enabling the delivery
of efficient, flexible and reliable IT as a service. With a wide range
of groundbreaking new capabilities, VMware vSphere 4 brings cloud
computing to enterprises in an evolutionary, non-disruptive way –
delivering uncompromising control with greater efficiency while
preserving customer choice.As the complexity of IT environments has continued to increase over
time, customers’ share of IT budgets are increasingly spent on simply
trying to “keep the lights on.” With the promise of cloud computing,
customers are eager to achieve the benefits, but struggle to see the
path to getting there. Leveraging VMware vSphere 4, customers can take
pragmatic steps to achieve cloud computing within their own IT
environments. With these “internal” clouds, IT departments can
dramatically simplify how computing is delivered in order to help
decrease its cost and increase its flexibility, enabling IT to respond
more rapidly to changing business requirements.VMware vSphere 4 will aggregate and holistically manage large pools
of infrastructure – processors, storage and networking – as a seamless,
flexible and dynamic operating environment. Any application – an
existing enterprise application or a next-generation application – runs
more efficiently and with guaranteed service levels on VMware vSphere
4. For enterprises, VMware vSphere 4 will bring the power of cloud
computing to the datacenter, slashing IT costs while dramatically
increasing IT responsiveness. For hosting service providers, VMware
vSphere 4 will enable a more economic and efficient path to delivering
cloud services that are compatible with customers’ internal cloud
infrastructures. Over time, VMware will support dynamic federation
between internal and external clouds, enabling “private” cloud
environments that span multiple datacenters and/or cloud providers. …VMware vSphere 4 delivers significant performance and scalability
improvements over the previous generation VMware Infrastructure 3 to
enable even the most resource intensive applications, such as large
databases and Microsoft Exchange, to be deployed on internal clouds.
With these performance and scalability improvements, VMware vSphere 4
will enable the 100 percent virtualized internal cloud.
- VMware vSphere 4 delivers more powerful virtual machines with up to:
- 2x the number of virtual processors per virtual machine (from 4 to 8)
- 2.5x more virtual NICs per virtual machine (from 4 to 10)
- 4x more memory per virtual machine (from 64 GB to 255GB)
- 3x increase in network throughput (from 9 Gb/s to 30Gb/s)
- 3x increase in the maximum recorded I/O operations per second (to over 300,000)
- New maximum recorded number of transactions per second - 8,900 which is 5x the total payment traffic of the VISA network worldwide4
- Targeted performance improvements for specific applications:
- Estimated 50 percent improved performance for application development workloads
- Estimated 30 percent improved performance for Citrix XenApp
VMware
will introduce three new VMware vSphere 4 product editions for SMBs
that deliver cost-effective server consolidation, high availability and
data protection to enable Always On IT. Small businesses can deploy a
server consolidation and management solution for only $166 per
processor with VMware vSphere 4 Essentials and get higher application
uptime with VMware vSphere 4 Essentials Plus (only $499 per
processor)—these are features that are otherwise out of reach for most
small companies. VMware vSphere 4 Essentials Plus is the only
virtualization solution that provides high availability and data
protection at this price point.
VMware vSphere™ 4 Sets New Records in Virtualization Performance.
VMware has demonstrated new record performance results and new performance maximums with VMware vSphere 4 including:
- Record number of transactions per second.
New performance throughput record of 8,900 database transactions per
second, as demonstrated on Oracle database with an OLTP workload
modeled after TPC-C*.- Record low overhead compared to native.
New performance efficiencies with resource-intensive SQL Server
databases utilizing 8 CPUs per VM and running at 90 percent of native
or better as tested by an OLTP workload modeled after TPC-E*.- Record I/O throughput. 3x increase in the maximum recorded I/O operations per second.
VMware vSphere 4 triples the maximum recorded I/O operations per second
to more than 300,000. For comparison purposes, according to data from
VMware Capacity Planner, most demanding databases that are on Intel
architecture servers usually require a few tens of thousands of I/O
operations per second. VMware vSphere 4 also includes a newly rewritten
storage stack that demonstrates full wire speed on 10 Gbps iSCSI
connections.- Record network throughput. Improved
virtual machine networking and support for NetQueue that shows up to
100 percent improvement in network throughput and fully saturating
hardware bus limits of 30 Gpbs. Estimated 30 percent improved performance for Citrix XenApp
VMware vSphereTM 4 Launch Supported by Broad Virtualization Ecosystem.
VMware vSphere 4 provides ecosystem partners with numerous
integration and co-development programs such as VMware ReadyTM, VMware
VMsafeTM and VMware Community Source that enable them to use VMware
APIs and interfaces to build advanced technology integrations that
deliver value-added solutions. These integrations will plug seamlessly
into VMware vSphere 4, which provides simplified integration
capabilities, backward compatibility with previous versions of VMware
software, and new interfaces that support industry-leading management
solutions.VMware partners of all sizes across the application, channel, cloud,
desktop, management, network, security, server and storage segments are
offering to support VMware vSphere 4 today or plan to support the
product by the end of 2009:
The
VMware VAM is the premier location for finding ISV and
developer-generated virtual appliances with more than 1,000 virtual
appliances available. The VMware VAM includes new features for ISVs and
developers to manage and track information and customer leads about
their appliances, community resources such as reviews, whitepapers, and
blog postings, and listings for VMware vCloud service providers for
running virtual appliances. …VMware Virtual Appliance Marketplace App on Demand Beta: Making It Easy to Try Applications in the Cloud
Software
vendors and developers use the VMware VAM as a cloud-based service to
publish their software. The newest functionality of the VMware VAM is
App on Demand, which enables users to run a trial version of an
application in the cloud with just a simple login. …VMware vCloud Partner Free Trials: Making It Easy to Try Services in the Cloud
VMware
vCloud partners, including Hosting.com, iTricity, Tata Communications
and Terremark are offering free trials for end customers to experience
the simplicity and power of running applications on VMware
Infrastructure 3 and VMware vSphere™ 4.
[I think that the first press release up the is one of those press releases that's worth reading all the way through. But check them all out, and then please join us later today for the live simulcast with VMware President & CEO Paul Maritz or go directly to learn more about VMware vSphere 4. Bloggers and beta testers, please feel free to share with us your vSphere experiences so far. I'll see everybody at the event. -jtroyer]
