Wow! What an amazing day of announcements from VMworld 2018! If you didn’t already know, today was the first day of VMworld 2018, and it didn’t disappoint! Although I’ve never been to VMworld, I always follow each years event closely. With that said, I will be blogging each day to recap the major highlights and developments from the event.

Today’s announcements focused on these main areas:

• AWS (RDS on-premise and EBS on vSANonAWS)

  – Previously, AWS’s RDS offering was only available on AWS. This has now changed, with AWS now allowing for you to offer RDS within your VMware hybrid environment. RDS stands for Relational Database Service, and it’s AWS’s one of many DB offerings, albeit the major one. Will support Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle, PostgreSQL, MySQL, and MariaDB databases. Additionally, support for EBS allows for the ability to scale computer and storage independently from one another. Previously, one had to scale both within vSAN. Also the biggest take away is price. You can now save up to 50% with a three hosts configuration (entry-level)

• vSphere Platinum Edition (Availability later this year)

  – No this isn’t a joke! We aren’t talking a Nissan Armada here, this is a new version of vSphere that enables machine learning with VMware AppDefense via the hypervisor plane. This will help not only administrators, but also Security. Provides a known “good state” of applications, which allows for better response and detection of security events by providing better tools and alerts.

• CloudHealth Technologies (Intent to Aquire)

  – For the management of Data in public clouds. Allows for cost management, automation, performance, etc, of data within Clouds. Allows for costs optimization and data accountability. This is going to be huge with the data explosion, and being able to track and allocate usage is paramount in keeping up with expenses and ensuring money spent is money spent wisely.

• vSphere 6.7 U1 (Availability later this year)

  – vSphere client is now the only client needed for managing vSphere. VUM, HA Setup, etc can now all be completed within the client (no more switching back/forth) Additionally, it will provide support for VMware Platinum Edition (See Above). Furthermore, NVIDIA workloads can now VMotion with no down time. Support for additional GPU hardware is also provided. Finally, the vCenter Server Convergence tools allows for migration of External PCS to Embedded PCS. This allows for a more convenient setup, with less to mange compared to having an external PCS.

• ESXi on ARM (Availability later this year)

• – Designed for edge locations in mind (ruggedized) allows for Internet of Things, and will allow for VMware to work within applications with limited cooling, power, etc, at the edge. Major development since as of today, VMware is x86 only. This will allow for a huge expansion into new areas, specifically edge and IoT.

Closing thoughts:

What an amazing first day, and what an exciting way to kick off VMworld 2018! This isn’t even all of the announcements that were announced today, rather just the highlights.

With that said, with all of today’s announcements, what does it all mean? Personally I believe VMware is combining all of it’s technology of today with all of the needs of the future.  AWS and public cloud’s integration is here to stay. Little by little, the walls of complexity continue to crumble.  Many people in recent years have blown cloud predictions off, and as recently as five years ago. The reason was simple as to why: Adaptation, it just wasn’t there. That has changed, and we now have the world’s leader in Virtualization diving off deep into cloud. If that doesn’t cause you to think the cloud is serious, I’m not sure what will. It’s time for cloud to be taken seriously.

I do get that most organizations are too small to utilize the cloud, but adoption continues to grow, and as they say the only thing constant is change, so instead of resisting, embrace! The costs to utilize public cloud is steadily decreasing.  Sure, this is going to be a process over many years (5 or 10), but the adaptation is there and will continue to grow quickly simply for one reason: Money. The competition will continue to evolve, making all others play catch up, which in turns increases adoption. The other major reason? Technology. The technology to seamlessly migrate workloads between on-premise and AWS will be easier, thanks to these technological breakthroughs. Obviously, adaptations will vary based on business size, needs, etc, but the technology is allowing for small operations to accomplish what only the large organizations could do with more capital.

What once started as a nice place to copy your offsite data to or replicate cold VMs to is quickly evolving each year. Last year really got things moving with VMware’s announcement of VMware on AWS. This year, AWS is announcing that it is doubling down on it’s integration within AWS, and it’s a smart move judging by their stock price. This is very smart on VMware’s side by embracing AWS and enhancing their offering by allowing RDS on premise and extending EBS to vSANonAWS. Next year I predict will see things get more integrated with not only AWS, but all public clouds. VMware’s official stance of “on-premise” vs “public cloud” is neither, but rather a combination of the two, which is called “hybrid”. Hybrid as they say, is the best of both worlds. Continue to run on-premise workloads onsite like you do today, but investigate and migrate workloads to the cloud as business needs dictate. In my opinion this is the only way for traditional on-premise VMware workloads to have success in the cloud. Having the flexibility is really the key driver of value. For example, the days of complicated DR planning/co-location may soon be numbered since we now can seamlessly migrate workloads to the cloud with VMware’s integration with AWS.  This takes the complexity of planning/hoping your DR plan works to reality. CAT5 Hurricane expected to make a direct hit on the coast? No worries, extend your on-premise Datacenter to AWS with the help of NSX and VMware’s SDDC platform. Migrate your workloads before disaster hits, and if it misses? Just migrate everything back, and continue business as usual.

I truly believe we are on the cusp of a cloud revolution, one that will truly change everything within the next 10/15 years. Artificial Intelligence, IoT, Big Data, etc will all transform everything we know today. If you are overwhelmed now, just wait until the future! 🙂 I truly believe the old school ways of doing things will be crushed, with organizations making big changes, but not because they want to; rather, because the competition has (money). It’s all about the money, so either you embrace and disrupt or become disrupted.

VMware is such a great company, and this is just many of the reasons why. They clearly see the cloud transformation as a fundamental shift in how business operate, and they have clearly set their roadmap to the future, well before the competition.  I’m proud to be opportunity to be part of this, thanks to the great #VMware community and #vExpert Program.