Pretty much everyone who has heard about, or worked with VMware Products, knows that at this very moment VMworld – our biggest Tech Event – is happening in San Francisco. You may also know that with VMworld happening, there are also plenty announcements. And I am very happy to share, that SDDC Version 1.8 has been pushed out and is now GA (generally available).
So, let’s talk a little about what is new in this release:
Elastic vSAN / EBS Storage scale-up
If I remember correctly, at last years VMworld we’ve announced Amazons EBS (Elastic Block Storage) as a Storage Option for more capacity on VMC Clusters. The Solution has been named “Elastic vSAN” – quite a good name, I think.
Even more so today: one challenge our customers faced has been that they needed to chose the amount of Storage they’d need while creating the Cluster. With the new 1.8 release, you can simply start with the smallest Option (15GB/host) and grow as you need (minimum increment 5GB) – up to the maximum of 35GB per Node.
Distributed Firewall
Now this one is a Banger, in my (very) humble Opinion.
If you have used the service already, and you are familiar with the Networking Section within the Cloud Console, you’ve probably seen this:
Pretty much every Customer I spoke to loves this feature and was eager to leverage it going forward, depending on the pricing.
I am very pleased that the decision has been made that this feature is now included within the Service at no extra costs.
Multiple stretched Clusters with Elastic-vSAN
Customers are now able to create multiple Clusters with EBS backed vSAN within an SDDC. It is also possible to mix i3 Clusters with r5 Clusters inside the same SDDC, providing an easier way of managing and migrating your workloads.
Content Library updates
The Content Library, CL for short, is a great way of pushing your templates, ISOs, etc. into your VMC SDDC. With the newest release, you are able to push in-place updates and have the option to roll-back, if needed. (A previous copy of the template is retained). This is provided now thanks to a build-in version view.
VMware Cloud Marketplace
Ever wondered, what 3rd Party App might already be available for VMC? With the new release, there is now a place to go: the VMware Cloud Marketplace.
Most of these Appliances are provided by bitnami, a company which VMware acquired not long ago (see: https://cloud.vmware.com/community/2019/05/15/vmware-to-acquire-bitnami/ for more Info).
Summary
There is plenty new to learn about VMC – and even more to come in the future.
You can find all VMC release Notes here:
https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-Cloud-on-AWS/0/rn/vmc-on-aws-relnotes.html
The Product Roadmap is also available online and can be found online here:
https://cloud.vmware.com/vmc-aws/roadmap
To everyone who is in SFO: have fun at the event!
And if you are not able to be there, like myself, make sure to read the announcements and the recorded sessions after the Event closes.
#JourneyToCloud #MakeYourMark