VMware bolsters multi-cloud proposition with improved Tanzu integrations

At the first-ever virtual VMworld, VMware also revealed plans to restructure its architecture to make data-intensive applications run more efficiently

VMware kicked off virtual VMworld 2020 with a string of new cloud services and integrations with the world’s leading public cloud providers to strengthen its multi-cloud proposition.

Improved support for the VMware Tanzu product range is now being rolled out across VMware’s AWS, Google Cloud, Oracle and Azure partnerships, partnerships VMware launched to enable vSphere customers to embrace the hybrid cloud trend.

Tanzu Mission Control is now available for VMware Cloud on AWS, while a preview is live on Oracle Cloud VMware Solution and Google Cloud VMware Engine. VMware also teased imminent preview support for Mission Control on Microsoft Azure VMware Solution, an integration that is also now generally available as of today.

Tanzu Mission Control launched in March this year and aims to be a single point of control from which cloud users can manage all of their Kubernetes clusters regardless of whether they are located on-premises or in several cloud locations. Mission Control falls under the Tanzu family of Kubernetes-focused products VMware launched at last year’s VMworld, which form the core of VMware’s new multi-cloud strategy.

With Tanzu support now available or soon-to-be-available on almost all of the most popular clouds, VMware’s goal of enabling the much-hyped multi-cloud future seems to be gaining considerable momentum.

“VMware has reached a major milestone in its plan to unlock the power of every cloud for every business. We now support customers’ application strategies by delivering VMware-based services on every major public cloud provider and hundreds of VMware Cloud Verified partners worldwide,” said Raghu Raghuram, chief operating officer, products and cloud services, VMware.

AWS updates

AWS is the first cloud provider to receive fully-fledged Tanzu support as it is VMware’s preferred cloud partner, which is not entirely surprising given that it is the most popular public cloud provider.

At today’s launch event, VMware shared some stats on the rising popularity of its cloud integration with AWS: As of August 2020, total VMs are up 140% and the total number of hosts are up 130% year over year.

VMware Cloud on AWS is also being beefed up with a new Disaster-as-a-Recovery Service, an on-demand offering which allows enterprise customers to protect in-house vSphere workloads and quickly failover to the cloud when disaster strikes, instead of having to keep backup capacity in-house.

Project Monterey

Alongside updates to its existing portfolio, VMware teased Project Monterey, a technology preview geared towards restyling VMware’s data centre, cloud and edge architecture to enable consistent operations for the new crop of resource-intensive AI, machine learning and 5G applications.

The main idea is to build an architecture that eases the burden on CPUs and doesn’t wholly rely on hardware accelerators such as graphics processing units (GPUs), field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) and network interface cards (NICs), a trend VMware notes has introduced new levels of complexity and security requirements.

As part of Project Monterey, VMware wants to offload network and storage I/O functions that server CPUs would normally handle to SmartNICs (also referred to as data processing units or DPUs).  “This will allow applications to maximize the use of the available network bandwidth while saving server CPU cycles for top application performance,” the company said, adding that SmartNICs’ integrated firewall capabilities will enable security at the application service level.

In addition, the VMware Cloud Foundation will be rearchitected to enable disaggregation of the server, allowing applications running on one physical server to consume hardware accelerator resources such as FPGAs from other physical servers.

“Organizations are introducing increasingly sophisticated applications from cloud-native to machine learning to streaming apps that are distributed and data intensive,” said Rajiv Ramaswami, chief operating officer, products and cloud services, VMware. “We’re announcing Project Monterey to help customers address the shifting requirements of next-gen apps. By re-imagining the architecture of the data centre, cloud and edge, we expect to offer customers the freedom to run these apps in the best environment.”

Other announcements from day one of VMworld virtual 2020 include:

• VMware Cloud on Dell EMC: VMware Cloud on Dell EMC now includes support for VMware HCX-based workload migration, making it simple to migrate VMs to the new environment.
• VMware vRealize AI: Project Magna, introduced at last year’s conference, is now generally available as VMware vRealize AI, a tool that uses reinforcement learning to self-tune application performance.
• VMware NSX Advanced Threat Prevention: VMware bolstered its NSX service-defined firewall with machine learning threat detection inherited from its recent acquisition of AI security vendor Lastline.