Tag Archives: VMworld 2018 Announcements

VMworld 2018 Announcements – Summary

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To clarify whether products are announced or released, please read the following statement from this press release: “VMware vSphere Platinum Edition, VMware vSphere 6.7 Update 1, VMware vSAN 6.7 Update 1, VMware vRealize Suite 2018, VMware vRealize Operations 7.0, VMware vRealize Automation 7.5, and vRealize Network Insight 3.9 are expected to become available by the end of VMware’s Q3 FY19 (November 2, 2018).”

Digital Foundation:

  • vSphere 6.7 Update 1 and vSphere Platinum Edition – 
    • vSphere Platinum Edition –
      • This is a new edition of vSphere, adding in AppDefense to go along with all current capabilities in the Enterprise Plus license. Also included in this edition is a vCenter plug-in that tightly integrates AppDefense and vCenter Services for ease of administration and enhanced visibility for vSphere administrators.
    • vSphere 6.7 Update 1 – 
      • Fully featured HTML5 client
      • Enhanced support for NVIDIA Quattro VMs
      • vCenter Server Convergence Tool
      • Enhanced content libraries
  • vSAN 6.7 Update 1 – 
    • Simplified operations and better support resolution
    • Driver and firmware updates using VUM
    • Better VROPS integration
    • TRIM/UNMAP support
    • Enhanced stretch cluster flexibilityimage
  • vRealize Suite 2018 – The announcement of vRealize Suite 2018 is aimed at helping IT deliver developer- ready infrastructure, with batch of enhancements to our already-existing platforms.
  • VMware Cloud Foundation 3.0 – 
    • Now supports choice of any network switch for greater flexibility.
    • More vSAN ReadyNode partners.
    • Scalability improvements of up to 64 hosts per workload domain.
    • Improved and more responsive UX.
    • NSX Hybrid Connect to move workloads across clouds.
    • VMware Validated Design (VVD) support and guidance.
  • VMware Skyline – 
    • Global Availability – In addition to being included in VMware Premier Support Services contracts, Skyline is now available to Production Support customers.
    • Skyline Advisor – Skyline Advisor provides a self-service portal for customers to access real-time dashboards, proactive recommendations from VMware’s library of knowledge, and suggested upgrades to prevent potential issues.
    • Skyline Log Assist – Skyline Assist, available before the end of the year, automatically uploads desired log files to VMware Technical Support once an issue is identified to help resolve support requests more quickly.
    • Additional Product Support – Support for VMware vSAN
  • vRealize Network Insight (vRNI) 3.9 – 
    • Enhanced Security
    • Dashboard support for Cisco ASA firewall
    • Greater visibility into NSX-T Datacenter
  • NSX-T Datacenter 2.3 – 
    • Support for bare-metal hosts
    • extends advanced multi-cloud networking and security capabilities to AWS, in addition to Microsoft Azure and on-premises environments
    • Support for NSX-T Datacenter in VMC on AWS environments
    • Simplified installation workflow
  • Project Magna – 
    • Project Magna will make possible a self-driving data center based on machine learning. It is focused on applying reinforcement learning to a data center environment to drive greater performance and efficiencies.
  • Virtualization on 64-bit ARM for Edge – 
    • VMware demonstrated ESXi on 64-bit ARM running on a windmill farm at the Edge. VMware sees an opportunity to work with selected embedded OEMs to scope and explore opportunities for focused, ARM-enabled offering at the edge.
  • Project Concord – 
    • VMware demonstrated a highly scalable, energy-efficient decentralized trust infrastructure for digital consensus and smart contract execution. Project Concord may be used to power distributed trust infrastructures, including blockchains. It is available immediately as an open source project.
  • Pulse IoT Center 2.0 –
    • Scalability: Now supports up to 500m devices
    • SAAS Support: Customers will be able to consume Pulse IoT Center as an on premise or SaaS solution depending on their needs. SaaS services will be hosted by VMware and VCPP partners.
    • Low-touch Secure Enrollment: Minimal touch enrollment and configuration capabilities will be supported for select gateways.
    • Deeper Edge System Management: Ability to perform Gateway configuration through the action framework (sshd, turn on/off port, IP address table, etc.) as well as provide complete firmware and BIOS updates for selected gateways.
    • Richer Alerts and Notifications Capabilities: Alerts can now be set for individual managed object or a group of managed objects. Notifications for alerts can be received via email or SMS integration, and through an API into a third-party system.
    • Enhanced Over-the-air (OTA) Updates: Customers now have more granular control over OTA scheduling, activation, progress status, package type and failure handling
    • More Extensibility: RESTful APIs will be available for all functionalities for customer and partner integration, improving extensibility.
    • Additional Security Features: Customers will be able to leverage role-based user access and multi- tenancy restrict access for different organizations and use cases.

VMware Cloud Services:

  • VMware Cloud Operations Services – The initial availability of VMware Automation Services (formerly known as Project Tango) was announced to help tackle the challenge of managing and deploying workloads in multi-cloud environments. There is an excellent blog that was published on this page that delivers a high- level overview of the initial three components:
    • VMware Cloud Assembly:  With Cloud Assembly, IT and cloud operations teams can orchestrate and expedite infrastructure and application delivery in line with DevOps principles, improving the overall developer experience, developers get an experience equivalent to provisioning resources from native public clouds.
    • VMware Service Broker:  Service Broker provides simple, self-service access to multi-cloud infrastructure and application resources from a single catalog, without requiring disparate tools. With Service Broker, operations teams can more effectively govern resource access, and use and enforce security, deployment and business policies across multi-cloud environments.
    • VMware Code Stream:  Code Stream automates the code and application release process with a comprehensive set of capabilities for application deployment, testing, and troubleshooting.
    • VMware Secure State (public beta) – This is a tool focused on cloud configuration security and compliance.
  • VMware intends to acquire CloudHealth Technologies, a public cloud management platform.
    • This is a key acquisition that will bolster VMware’s multi-cloud management capabilities as we enter a time when that concept becomes more and more of a core operating requirement in enterprises. This platform delivers benefits to VMware customers in terms of public cloud cost management, resource optimization, granular visibility and reporting.
  • Wavefront Enhancements –
    • This release includes scalability and security enhancements, serverless instrumentation capabilities (AWS Lambda SDK and Delta Counters), and deeper integration with AWS services, and VMware Pivotal Container Services (PKS).
  • VMware Log Intelligence Enhancements – 
    • VMware Cloud on AWS audit logs can now be accessed through Log Intelligence as a core service.
    • Log Intelligence is now integrated with Wavefront for Dev-Ops end-to-end troubleshooting.
    • There is now deep native AWS support for logs from CloudWatch and CloudTrail.
  • Project Dimension: 
    • A VMware technology preview that will extend the VMware Cloud to the data center, branch offices and the edge. Project Dimension will combine VMware Cloud Foundation, in a hyperconverged form factor, with VMware Cloud managed service to deliver an SDDC infrastructure as an end-to-end service, operated by VMware. Project Dimension will dramatically simplify operational complexity and cost and offers built-in security and isolation, allowing customers to focus on innovating and differentiating their businesses.

VMware Cloud on AWS:

  • Expanding Global Reach – VMware Cloud (VMC) on AWS will growing to Asia Pacific, Canada, Europe and China in 2019 and has new enterprise capabilities.
    • VMC on AWS is now available in five regions worldwide.
      • US West (Oregon)
      • US East (N. Virginia)
      • Europe (London)
      • Europe (Frankfurt)
      • Asia (Sydney)
    • Advanced NSX – full integration with AWS Direct Connect, extension of micro-segmentation to individual VMs for follow-me security policies
      • Amazon Elastic Block Storage (EBS) integration
      • New minimum SDDC configuration – lowered to three nodes
      • 50% lower cost of entry pricing – now get three hosts for the price of two
      • Vendor license optimizations – new features for vendor license compliance
    • Relational Database Services (RDS) on VMware:
      • Amazon Web Services’ RDS service will soon be able to run on VMware in a private data center or in a public cloud, thus offering developers a familiar RDS functionality available to them.
    • VMware Hybrid Cloud Extensions –
      • Ability to seamlessly vMotion from on-premises to AWS via public internet, Amazon Direct Connect, or WAN.

 

Digital Workspace:

  • Workspace ONE Unified Endpoint Management enhancements – 
    • Predictive patching based on device CVE scores
    • Industry standard Center for Internet Security (CIS) policy templates
    • Over-the-Air configuration of Group Policies
    • GPO coverage beyond limited native MDM policies
    • Workspace ONE Sensors – a capability that allows admins to query using PowerShell scripts any asset attribute such as system information, custom hardware inventory, registry and app data and even custom WMI data, and perform actions to remediate the endpoint to a desired state.
    • MacOS and iOS management enhancements
    • Android and ChromeOS management enhancements
    • Peripherals and rugged device management enhancements
    • “Ready to Work” Dell partnership
      • Dell Provisioning for Workspace ONE on first boot of new Dell PCs
    • Workspace ONE AirLift – 
      • Connector for SCCM
      • Automatically migrate SCCM Collections and PCLM workloads to Workspace ONE
      • Accelerate transition to Windows 10 modern management
  • Workspace ONE Trust Network (Tech Preview) – 
    • Security policy enforcement across mobile, endpoint and cloud-access
    • Integrations with Carbon Black, Netskope and Lookout
  • Sneak Peek for upcoming Horizon enhancements – 
    • Horizon Cloud for Azure enhancements
      • Addition of new VM types to catalog
      • Azure Disk Encryption
  • Horizon 7 on VMware Cloud on AWS
    • Support for instant clones, App Volumes and UEM (Preview)
  • Other enhancements in VMware’s Digital Workspace Platform
    • Management consolidation of VDI with support for physical desktops as well as Persistent desktops
    • UEM templates
    • vMotion for nVidia GPUs
    • Intelligent Networking with support for QoS for Blast Extreme
    • Multi-media redirection for HTML live streaming
    • Workspace ONE Intelligent Hub (Beta)
      • Note: generally-available later this quarter
      • Seamless secure file editing with WS1 Send app and Content Locker
      • Seamless sharing between WS1 productivity apps, such as Boxer, and MS Office 365 mobile apps managed by Intune
      • Boxer improvements include NIAP, Common Criteria compliance, ENSv2 advancements including VIP notification, calendar attachments
    • WS1 SDK to accelerate enterprise app development
    • “1-Click integration” with Okta to ramp up delivery of SaaS apps for a better employee workspace catalog experience.