VMware Virtual SAN Delivering Self-Tuning Storage for VMs

VMware, Inc. at VMworld 2013 announced a wave of new products and services designed to help IT accelerate their adoption of a software-defined data center architecture and take advantage of the value of virtualization in areas such as networking and security, storage and availability, and management and automation.

The news was unveiled at the company’s 10th annual VMworld in San Francisco, where more than 22,000 attendees saw details and demos of newly-introduced technology including VMware NSX, VMware Virtual SAN, VMware vCloud Suite 5.5 and vSphere with Operations Management 5.5.

"With today’s news, VMware is further empowering IT to help organizations become more agile, responsive and profitable," said Raghu Raghuram, EVP, cloud infrastructure and management, VMware. "New products such as VMware NSX and VMware Virtual SAN will fundamentally redefine the hypervisor and its role in the data center. Along with the recently introduced VMware vCenter Log Insight, these products represent the next wave of innovation at VMware. We continue to evolve the software-defined data center architecture to address IT’s critical needs – enabling them to build infrastructure that is simpler and more efficient while delivering the agility and flexibility to support the velocity of their businesses."

A year after introducing the software-defined data center architecture, VMware’s IT framework has gained wide acceptance across global business giants and start-ups alike. In addition, customers that moved to a software-defined data center architecture have experienced greater value than those that did not. In a recent survey, for example, VMware found two-thirds of respondents reported being able to generate new revenue for their businesses when they expanded their use of virtualization1. Of those businesses able to take advantage of a complete software-defined data center architecture, 85% were able to generate new revenue as high as 22% for their businesses.

"The development of new software and services for the auto retail and the OEM auto manufacturing industry globally is key to ADP Dealer Services business," said Bill Naughton, CIO, ADP Dealer Services, Inc. "The software-defined data center architecture enables us to deliver true Infrastructure-as-a-Service and Platform-as-a-Service to our lines of business and our development organization with the requisite performance, availability, and security – all automated by software. With increased IT agility and efficiency, we’re poised to meet the present and future demands of the business."

Enabling the Future of the Data Center
By extending the virtualization principles of abstraction, pooling and automation across all data center resources and services, the software-defined data center architecture can simplify and speed up the provisioning and management of compute, storage and networking resources through policy-driven automation. VMware is announcing four products that enable customers to virtualize infrastructure and deliver it as a service; providing efficiency, agility and control for building and operating private, hybrid and public clouds:

VMware NSX, Platform for Network Virtualization
It a network virtualization platform that will deliver the entire networking and security model in software, decoupled from networking hardware. By virtualizing the network, NSX delivers a new operational model for networking that breaks through current physical network barriers and will enable data center operators to achieve better speed and agility, while reducing costs.

Like server virtualization, VMware’s approach to network virtualization enables data center operators to treat their physical network as a pool of transport capacity that can be consumed and repurposed on-demand. Virtual networks are programmatically created, provisioned and managed, utilizing the underlying physical network for simple IP connectivity. NSX brings together the best of Nicira NVP and VMware vCloud Network and Security into one unified platform, delivering the entire networking and security model (Layer 2 – Layer 7) in software. In addition, the NSX virtual networks support existing applications, unchanged, on any physical network infrastructure.

Similar to other distributed vSphere services, NSX is built upon a distributed architecture where the network services are integrated with the hypervisor kernel. This enables network services to scale out in concert with the hypervisor to meet the application’s needs. Since it delivers Layer 2 – Layer 7 services via software, all that customers need to do to grow their infrastructure is add more server nodes. This architecture enables NSX to handle as much as 1TB/s of network traffic per cluster of 32 hosts.

NSX is an extensible platform that leverages a distributed service framework for easy insertion of partner services. NSX technology partners are organized into service categories that follow the network virtualization lifecycle and include network service gateways to bridge physical and virtual environments; network security platforms that provide multi-service network security including firewall and threat prevention; application delivery services including load balancing, application delivery and WAN optimization controllers; and security services including anti-virus, IDS/IPS and vulnerability management. More than 20 partners announced support or showed demonstrations of VMware NSX at VMworld.

VMware NSX will be available in Q4 2013.

VMware Virtual SAN
Delivering Simple and Dynamic Storage for VMs
This technology extends vSphere to pool compute and DAS. It will deliver a virtual data plane that clusters server disks and flash to create high-performance, resilient shared storage designed for VMs. It will unlock a new tier of converged infrastructure that enables rapid and granular scaling of compute and storage resources.

Similar to NSX, Virtual SAN is built on a distributed architecture that will enable storage services to scale out linearly with the needs of the application. Through the integration of Virtual SAN with vSphere, VMware has redefined the role of the hypervisor to deliver virtualized compute and storage services in an elastic, flexible fashion. The distributed architecture enables Virtual SAN to deliver I/O performance comparable to mid-range storage arrays while leveraging the economics of DAS.

Virtual SAN offers a policy-driven control plane that automates storage consumption and management via VM-centric policies. Relying on server-side SSDs and HDDs, Virtual SAN delivers lower TCO for VDI and test/development environments, among other use cases. Customers can start small and grow storage performance and capacity by adding servers as needed.

Virtual SAN will be available via a free public beta program in Q3 2013.

VMware vCloud Suite 5.5
New Release of Cloud Infrastructure
and Management Suite
VMware introduced VMware vCloud Suite 5.5, which features new and enhanced product functionality as well as broad product integrations. The vCloud Suite will enable customers to build and operate a vSphere-based private cloud using the software-defined data center architecture, providing virtualized infrastructure services with built-in intelligence to automate on-demand provisioning, placement, configuration and control of applications based on policies. The integrated private cloud infrastructure solution simplifies IT operations while also delivering best SLAs for all applications.

vCloud Suite is built on the foundation of vSphere. With vSphere 5.5, VMware continues to evolve vSphere to provide customers with a platform for all their applications including new workloads through new and enhanced compute, availability, storage and backup capabilities. To improve the availability of business-critical applications, vSphere 5.5 introduces vSphere App HA to detect and recover from application or OS failure. New vSphere Flash Read Cache virtualizes server-side flash to lower application latency. To further improve the response time of latency-sensitive applications, vSphere 5.5 introduces a low-latency sensitivity feature. vSphere 5.5 enables configurations two times the previous physical CPU, memory and NUMA node limits.

With vSphere Big Data Extensions, customers can now run Apache Hadoop and big data workloads on vSphere 5.5, alongside other applications, to achieve greater resource utilization, reliability and agility. In addition, vSphere 5.5 now supports next-generation Xeon processor E5 v2 and Atom Processor C2000.

vCloud Automation Center and vCenter Operations Management Suite capabilities have been added to all vCloud Suite 5.5 editions. vCloud Automation Center provides the agility customers need with the control they require through a flexible solution for automating the delivery of IT applications and services. vCenter Operations Management Suite offers integrated, proactive performance, capacity and configuration management capabilities for dynamic cloud environments. vCloud Suite 5.5 also features new releases of vCloud Connector, vCloud Director, vCloud Networking and Security, and vCenter Site Recovery Manager.

vSphere with Operations Management 5.5
Optimize Virtual Platform Capacity
Introduced in February 2013, vSphere with Operations Management combines the vSphere virtualization platform with insight to workload capacity and health. vSphere with Operations Management will enable customers to optimize their environment through integrated capacity planning while proactively monitoring and maintaining overall performance of their environment. It will take advantage of vSphere 5.5 to provide customers a platform for all their applications and workloads.

New Services and Certifications
VMware also announced new professional services to help customers outline the strategy and technology roadmap to define and implement a software-defined data center architecture:

New levels of Certifications including VMware Certified Associate (VCA). Available for cloud (VCA-Cloud), data center virtualization (VCA-DCV), and network virtualization (VCA-NV), these certifications offer a new credential to validate entry-level skills before progressing on to the VMware Certified Professional (VCP) certifications.

New Technology Consulting Services focus on building an extensible platform for a software-defined data center architecture. These services address the key design and deployment elements that deliver the efficiency, agility, control and choice enabled by VMware products and technologies.

Strategic Consulting Services, through VMware Accelerate Advisory Services, that help organizations quantify the value of a software-defined data center model within their IT environments, mapping out an actionable strategy to deliver tangible business value.

Partner Support for the Software-Defined Data Center
More than 55,000 strong, VMware’s partner community is central to delivering VMware’s software-defined data center solutions to customers. This new generation of VMware solutions is supported by a range of partners including technology partners and ISVs, solution providers, service providers and systems integrators, as well as major global hardware manufacturer.

Pricing and Availability
vCloud Suite 5.5 and vSphere with Operations Management are expected to be available in Q3 2013. vCloud Suite 5.5 is licensed per processor with prices starting at $4,995 per processor.

vSphere with Operations Management 5.5 is offered in three editions: Standard, Enterprise and Enterprise Plus. Pricing starts at $1,745 per processor.

NSX is expected to be available in Q4 of 2013.

Virtual SAN is expected to be available via a public beta program in Q3 of 2013.