Disclaimer: I recently attended VMworld 2014 – SF. My flights and accommodation were paid for by myself, however VMware provided me with a free pass to the conference and various bits of swag. There is no requirement for me to blog about any of the content presented and I am not compensated in any way for my time at the event. Some materials presented were discussed under NDA and don’t form part of my blog posts, but could influence future discussions.
Firstly, a blurry photo from the blogger’s table. You can make out Chris Wahl and Mike Laverick.

Ben Fathi – CTO – kicks off by talking about the VMware Foundation and Destination Giveback. You can find out more here.
A theme from yesterday that is repeated in today’s keynote is that of conflict:
- traditional applications vs cloud-native applications
- IT vs developers
- on-premises vs off-premises
- safe and secure vs instant, elastic
According to VMware, it’s not a choice you have to make. VMware believes in the power of “&”. The SDDC architecture gives you the power to do this.
Sanjay Poonen – Executive VP and GM of EUC then takes the stage.
We live in a heterogenous world. VMware wants to cover all the platforms and help you work at the speed of life. There are three major areas covered here:
- Desktop;
- mobile;
- content.
VMware want to bring the “all about the end-user” folks together with the “all about the infrastructure” people.
Desktop – Unified VDI and App publishing, Desktop-as-a-Service, real-time app delivery, rich user experience (there was a partnership announcement with NVIDIA, Google and VMware – 3D on NVIDIA-powered Chromebooks).
Mobility – Device management, application management, content management, email management.
Security, multi-tenant, scale, privacy, access-control, self-service.
A partnership with SAP and VMW is announced – the key benefits being better integration / lower TCO, and faster time to installation. I’ve just never thought of SAP as a leader in mobility.
Content-collaboration
Anywhere, anytime access, hybrid deployment, enterprise-grade security, unified access to all content.
And this is all integrated. Apparently.
VMware Workspace Suite – horizon desktop, air watch mobile, content locker with a workspace portal
Kit Colbert, CTO of EUC then takes the stage.
Define centrally, implement locally – this is what the mobile cloud architecture enables.
The recorded demo is focussed on healthcare with some cool scenarios. They also demoed CloudVolumes with workspace integration.
Project Fargo is also discussed.
With their EUC strategy, VMware is going for
- A unified experience, on any device, anywhere
- customers driving industry change
- optimised for the SDDC
Raghu Raghuram – EVP of SDDC then takes the stage.
“You are Team SDDC”
vSphere 6 Beta (over 10000 downloads)
Virtual SAN
NSX is now GA (150 customers)
vRealize
VMware is delivering the power of AND – this is something I forgot to talk about when I summarised yesterday’s keynote.
The SDDC is 1 destination with 3 choices of how to get there – BYO, Converged, Hyper-converged.
Broad topics are:
- hardware choice;
- open cloud infrastructure;
- all applications; and
- management policy.
With these SDDC components, you can have the right (standard) building block. -> For VMware this is EVO.
Ben Fathi comes back on stage.
15 minutes – that’s how long it takes to get EVO:RAIL (Virtual infrastructure) up and running VMs.
EVO Supports:
- 100 Server VMs, 250 desktop VMs;
- deploys in 15 minutes,
- Supports non-disruptive upgrades
It is comprised of 4 identical but independent nodes with all the storage, compute and networking included.
You can scale out – 4 RAIL units can be connected together for a 16 node cluster.
The simple, Web-based UI can be used to create VMs that are small / medium / large. You can also leverage the standard management suite if you want to. This is GA Q3 2014.
EVO RACK (Cloud Infrastructure) – vCloud Suite, VSAN, NSX.
Data Centre Scale – go from Zero to Application in less than 2 hrs.
VMware integrated OpenStack is now in beta. This is “the best way to run OpenStack is on VMware”.
vSphere, NSX, VSAN + vRealize (operations, visibility, cost management)
vSphere 6 Beta features
SMP FT for scale-up apps (4 vCPUs) [applause]
Application mobility – cross vcenter vMotion, long distance vMotion (NSX enables this). [more applause]
Cloud-native Applications (Ben)
Containers have been around for a while (10 – 15 yrs). Then Docker came along. VMware believes in containers without compromise – persistence, network and security, resource management. They tell us they’re “working to make containers a first-class citizen in the SDDC”. Working with Pivotal, Google and Docker to make sure this happens.
vRealize (Product name fail of the year)
Now looking at on-premises – cloud automation – cloud operations – cloud business – as-a-service
Management by Policy (this is where the crowd start to lose interest – there’s something about management stuff that just isn’t sexy to the great unwashed).
Raghu says “The future is here – it is just not evenly distributed”. At least I think that’s what he said. I’m not sure what that means though.
Finally, Simone Brunozzi – VP and Chief Technologist – Hybrid Cloud takes the stage. @simon shows us footage of an alert in vCloud Air via Google Glass. And some other vRealize stuff. And our attention spans have once again failed us.
“Hybridity”
All in all, slightly more meat than yesterday, which was useful. 4 stars.