06/28/2022 | News release | Distributed by Public on 06/28/2022 06:31
On-Premises and Cloud: Workloads In The Multi-Cloud Era
As organizations embrace the multi-cloud era, workloads continue to proliferate everywhere. Each workload has its own set of requirements, which defines it's optimal deployment location. As a result, most enterprises have workloads running in multiple clouds as well as on-premises, either as traditional infrastructure, as private clouds, or hosted by third parties. As we look to the future, one thing we know for sure is that there will be more workloads everywhere, including on-premises.
Workloads running on-premises enjoy a variety of benefits, including locality, low latency, performance, predictable cost, and much more. However, they can miss out on the innovations available in the cloud.
Furthermore, in the case of a distributed environment, workloads may be spread across infrastructure siloes and multiple operating models, making management difficult. The underlying infrastructure resources may not come with the toolset needed to enable developer velocity and modern applications.
Bringing the Benefits of Cloud to On-premises Workloads
What if the benefits of public clouds could be harnessed by on-premises workloads, without having to migrate them to the cloud? What if new capabilities could be accessed through SaaS, relieving maintenance burdens while fast-tracking new enhancements? What if developers could provision infrastructure just as easily on-premises as they do in the public cloud? What if services could be consumed when they are needed and easily increased when demand spikes? What if all this was possible today?
Introducing VMware vSphere+
VMware vSphere+, the multi-cloud workload platform, delivers benefits of the cloud to on-premises workloads. vSphere+ combines industry-leading virtualization technology, an enterprise-ready Kubernetes environment, and high-value cloud services to transform existing on-premises deployments into SaaS-enabled infrastructure that can help organizations centralize management, supercharge productivity, and accelerate innovation.
Building upon the advanced technology within the latest version of vSphere Enterprise Plus edition, vSphere+ provides access to a wide selection of cloud services and centralizes management through the VMware Cloud Console. Workloads remain on-premises, running on ESXi hosts orchestrated by vCenter instances, just like traditional vSphere today. But now vCenter can connect to the Cloud Console through a VMware cloud gateway, allowing metadata to be collected and used to centrally manage the entire distributed vSphere+ estate. Admin services can then be used to simplify global operations, developer services can be used to manage the Kubernetes environment, and optional add-on hybrid cloud services can be purchased to extend the capabilities of vSphere+ even further.
Using vSphere+ together with vSAN+, IT admins and application developers will more easily be able to build, run, manage, protect, and secure their traditional and next-gen workloads. vSphere+ is available through a flexible subscription plan which will appeal to a growing majority of organizations that now prefer this way of consuming software. Everything you need - all components of vSphere+, including ESXi hosts, vCenter instances, cloud gateways, Cloud Console for admin services, Tanzu Standard Runtime and Tanzu Mission Control Essentials (in development) for developer/devops services, and service/support, are included in one subscription.
vSphere+ deliver benefits in three key areas:
Let's take a better look at each.
Workloads, applications, and data tend to grow exponentially, but staffing and budgets do not. The only way to keep up is by scaling the efficiency and productivity of your teams so they can achieve more with the limited resources they have. vSphere+ connects to the Cloud Console providing a set of admin services to drive significant operational efficiencies and productivity gains.
Cloud Console
The Cloud Console builds upon the foundation laid by VMware's other cloud offerings, and acts as a single management plane to centralize many tasks that would normally need to be performed separately from multiple vCenter instances.
Admin Services
Through the cloud console, several admin services can be utilized to simplify and streamline management of the entire vSphere+ estate. These services are delivered through the cloud, so they are easy to use without having to download or install anything.
Since admin services are delivered as SaaS through the Cloud Console, enhancements will appear without requiring any manual downloads or updates. New services will also be introduced when they are ready.
Every enterprise is a software company now. The digital transformation has placed applications at the center of every goal, mission, project, and campaign. How well an organization executes will increasingly depend on those applications and how quickly they can be developed and deployed. vSphere+ goes beyond virtual machines and brings containers to the fingertips of your developers, enabling them to bypass ticking systems and get the infrastructure resources they need to build applications, through a Kubernetes API surface. If you are familiar with vSphere with Tanzu, then you know how we integrated Kubernetes directly into vSphere back in 2020. With vSphere+, we have taken this integration several steps further.
Developer Services
With vSphere+, users can transform their existing vSphere-based infrastructure into an enterprise-ready Kubernetes environment, unifying VMs and containers on a single platform.
We have made vSphere+ easy and non-disruptive to adopt and use. For new customers or new deployments, it's easy to subscribe and get started. For customers with existing vSphere deployments, you can upgrade in place and then convert your existing perpetual licenses to subscription. After you've made the switch, you can extend the capabilities of vSphere+ even further with optional add-on hybrid cloud services that you can subscribe to when you're ready.
Upgrade in Place
For existing vSphere customers, transitioning to vSphere+ is quick and easy. All of your existing vCenter instances and ESXi hosts remain on-premises. Nothing is migrated or moved. At the user's discretion, their selected vCenter instances are connected to VMware Cloud via one or more cloud gateways, also installed on-premises. While your vCenter instances will probably need to be updated to the latest release, your ESXi hosts will likely not need to be touched since the currently supported ESXi versions continue to be supported in vSphere+. Once you are connected to the cloud, you're ready to convert your licenses to subscription.
Convert to Subscription
If you have any vSphere Enterprise Plus licenses that you would like to convert to vSphere+, we are ready to help. We have an upgrade program to help you preserve the value of your existing vSphere investment. With the help of VMware customer service or a certified VMware Partner, your perpetual licenses will be converted to subscription, and you'll never have to deal with license keys ever again. After that, it's easy to monitor your subscriptions and usage from the Cloud Console.
Activate Add-on Services
vSphere+ has an immense feature set with tremendous potential. But when you consider the entire VMware SaaS portfolio of cloud services, the possibilities would seem unlimited. Disaster recovery, ransomware protection, cloud burst capacity, and capacity planning are just a few of the key use cases we are developing right now, based on customer feedback. Workflow integration will ensure that these extended capabilities will be actionable within the Cloud Console.
The first of these optional add-on services that will be available very soon will be VMware Cloud Disaster Recovery. With this add-on service, you will be able to reliably protect and recover mission-critical applications. Customers will benefit from integrated protection workflows directly within the vSphere+ cloud console that will streamline IT operations and reduce risk of downtime in the event of regional outages or ransomware attacks.
Learn More
There's so much to talk about in vSphere+ and we're excited to share it all with you today. Don't miss: