VMworld Barcelona 2016
As VMware Enterprise Solution provider, ASP is always on top of new evolutions in the market.
This is one of the main reasons for us to attend vendor events, and we attended VMWorld. It is the cloud infrastructure and business mobility technology event of the year. Like every year it was held in Fira Gran Via in Barcelona from October 17th till October 20th. During the event, we dived into the journey of Virtualization, getting the training, education and industry insights.
During the first day keynote, we got an overview on where we came from (the state of the cloud from 2006 to 2016) and what the future has to offer us.
In 2006 the Cloud was a new concept; there was the private and public cloud which were only used a little bit. Almost everything of IT is traditional (on-premise).
In 2011 a lot has changed but still 87% of the IT world runs on a traditional data center model (VMware data). The public and private cloud are 7% and 6%.
In 2016 the weight of the cloud have doubled compared to 2011.
VMware wonders when 50% of the workload will be in the cloud. The analyzes say that by 2021, 30% public and 20% private cloud will be reality. The analyzes says that in 2030 only 19% of companies will still have its own data center.
Here is the video from the General Session Day 1.
VMware wonders when 50% of the workload will be in the cloud. The analyzes say that by 2021, 30% public and 20% private cloud will be reality. The analyzes says that in 2030 only 19% of companies will still have its own data center.
Here is the video from the General Session Day 1.
What’s new in vSphere 6.5?
This year VMWare announced version 6.5 of the vSphere suite. This release is one of the most feature rich releases in years. The vCenter server appliance will play a new major role into the vSphere suite. The installer of the VCSA got a full makeover and has now a very modern look and feel. Also the VCSA has some very exclusive features:
- Migration
- Improved appliance management
- VMWare update manager (finally)
- Native HA
- Built-in Backup / Restore
- And last but not least: a lot of general improvements in the vSphere 6.5 webclient + the fully supported HTML5-based vSphere Client.
1. Migration
As stated above there’s now a migration path available to move from Windows vCenter towards the vCenter Server Appliance which has support for vCenter 5.5 and 6.0. In vSphere 6.5 there is an improvement in the migration tool which allows for a more granular selection of migrated data:
- Configuration
- Configuration, events, and tasks
- Configuration, events, tasks, and performance metrics
2. Improved Appliance Management
One of the exclusive new features of the vCenter Server Appliance 6.5 are the improved appliance management capabilities. In the improved capabilities there are additional health and configuration options. The new interface now shows network and database statistics, cpu health and memory statistics. It also reduces the reliance of using the CLI for monitoring and operational tasks.
3. VMWare update manager
Before when the vCenter appliance was installed, a Windows Server had to be setup to be able to build in the Vmware Update Manager. Now the Vmware update manager is fully integrated into the appliance and now makes life much easier.
4. Native HA
The vCenter redundancy used to be very complex to achieve. Nows it is simple to setup and to configure. The new native high availability solution (HA) is in the build-in vCenter Server 6.5 appliance. This HA is based on Active, Passive and Witness nodes which are cloned from the existing vCenter 6.5 appliance. A failover in the cluster can occur when an entire node is lost or when key services fail. This failure from the 1 vCenter is now being collected by the clone vCenter.
5. Built-in Backup / Restore
Every IT’er will have it at least once in his/her career : a huge infrastructure crash. The only solution is to get everything up and running again: a revert to backup. Backing up and restoring a vCenter could be a struggle.
VMware has now added an out-of-the-box backup/restore into the VCSA 6.5 (which can be used next to your existing solution).
6. HTML5 vsphere client
Last but not least one of the biggest improvements is the HTML5 vsphere-client that will be available in the 6.5 release.
This webclient is much faster and stable then the old flash web clients (that irritated everyone).
The screenshot above is the partially finished HTML5 vsphere-client. As you can see it has a nice and intuitive look and feel. Be aware that this is still a work in process project of VMWare; new features and improvements are added twice a week.
Virtualization has many benefits. The word of the 2016 Order is “Digital Transformation”, which involves the transformation of business. Without innovation companies are destined to fail. For most of our customers, ASP already implemented a VMWare solution, and for some of them a VMware VDI solution.