Key Takeaways from VMworld 2021
In this blog
WWT's breakout sessions
If you didn't have a chance to attend our VMworld breakout sessions, don't worry, we've got them right here for you to watch at your leisure.
Journey to Business Modernization: A Technology Story
DevOps is too often associated with only cloud native application development. In actuality, DevOps can benefit the entire business: apps and data, infrastructure, security, as well as ITOps. In this session, we will dive into these four key business use cases where WWT has seen customers advancing and transforming the way they deliver outcomes from utilizing these methodologies.
Starting with Horizon Cloud Service on Microsoft Azure: Tips and Tricks
A VDIscover experience session. Overnight, enabling successful remote work through desktop became the chief focus of organizations around the world, stretching the skills of IT teams to the limit. VMware Horizon Cloud can help enable distributed work, and extend Windows Virtual Desktop functionality on Microsoft Azure. This session will discuss why VMware Horizon Cloud Service on Microsoft Azure can be the simplest path to implementing a new VDI solution. We will review the basic architecture of the Horizon Cloud Service on Microsoft Azure solution and implementation requirements.
Modernizing applications
Tanzu Community Edition
One of the most talked about announcements at VMworld was Tanzu Community Edition. This user-friendly platform to manage Kubernetes can be installed and configured in minutes on a local workstation or cloud, and features an automation platform that enables application developers, IT managers, and DevOps to streamline end-to-end application delivery. Heck, you can even use it at home as an aspiring developer! Support for this fully-featured products comes directly from the community.
VMware has a complete list of who Tanzu Community Edition is perfect for:
- Aspiring and experienced cloud native practitioners (including operators, DevOps and developers) looking to build new cloud native skills.
- Skilled cloud native practitioners looking for a free Kubernetes-based application platform to use in their self-supported environment.
- Platform and IT infrastructure operators as well as Site Reliabilty Engineers looking to provide and manage container infrastructure for their internal users or customers in self-supported environments.
- Cloud native ecosystem participants, for example, independent software vendors looking to build their businesses around platform-adjacent opportunities.
Tanzu Mission Control Starter
Looks like another free offering coming very soon from our friends at VMware. As a tier of Tanzu Mission Control, it will offer a set of Kubernetes management services like global visibility and policy control over any Kubernetes cluster wether it be at the edge, on-prem or in the cloud.
Another plus is that this can be used in along with Tanzu Community Edition to manage container based apps with Tanzu. VMware stated that even if you are already using other providers like EKS,AKS, etc. these can be bolted on and managed with Tanzu Mission Control Starter.
Make sure you check out our Tanzu labs:
VMware Tanzu Service Mesh Fundamentals Lab
VMware Tanzu Mission Control Fundamentals Lab
VMware vSphere and Tanzu Kubernetes Grid Fundamentals Lab
Cloud Management Platforms
vRA + Terraform
WWT has always viewed vRA and Terraform as a better together vs competitors. This wasn't always the case with VMware and as use cases have been developed and the mass adoption of Terraform from VMware customers. It was great to see VMware embrace the idea and even showcase it in their "vRA or Terraform or Both" Presentation. We have showcased the Art of the Possible with vRA and Terraform in our ATC many times to our customers.
Terraform is very strong in the Cloud space and vRA is very strong in the VMware space. With the integration we can take advantage of each technologies strengths to push your business further faster.
vRA is Enterprise ready and Terraform can also benefit through that integration. Other benefits include built in auditing, role based access, compliance, visibility to mention a few. The biggest benefit Terraform integration brings is it makes a Terraform solution business ready with less hassle.
On the other hand, vRA can take advantage of Terraforms massive library and can be leveraged as extensibility events for ABX actions, vRO workflows, or Service Broker catalog items. They really do a great job of complimenting each other to give you a finished solution for your Automation and Orchestration needs.
Terraform vRA Provider
VMware published a fully featured Terraform Provider for vRA. "A self-contained deployable integration between Terraform and VMware vRealize Automation (vRA) which allows Terraform users to request and provision vRA IaaS resources such as machine, network, load balancer, along with initial setup of cloud accounts, zones, and projects."
Cloud Health Integration
In addition, other announcements included a native integration from vRA to CloudHealth. This has been a highly requested feature from customers and will allow users to see Public Cloud Costing from the UI and be able to leverage costing for both public and private clouds with vRealize Operations.
Be sure to check out our two related labs:
Accelerating vRealize Automation 8.x With OneFuse
Accelerating Terraform with OneFuse
The best of all clouds
VMware Cloud (VMC)
In the ongoing pursuit of digital transformation, customers are adopting multiple Clouds to access each one's best of breed services. Unfortunately, such multicloud architecture deployments take time to realize, introduce additional complexity and often come with cost inefficiencies. VMware seeks to speed up Cloud migrations, simplify infrastructure and operations and provide flexible workload placement with VMware Cloud (VMC). With VMware Cloud Foundation at its core, VMC extends the IaaS and PaaS capabilities of the VMware Software Defined Data Center from Private Cloud to Public Clouds and beyond to the edge. VMware's message to customers is clear, "Standardize in some places to enjoy flexibility in others."
As part of this strategy, VMware seeks to deliver their infrastructure to more Clouds and locations than ever before. The ongoing partnership with Dell Technologies will see VMC on Dell, VMware's managed Cloud offering for on-prem, offered as part of the APEX as-a-Service portfolio (APEX Cloud). Four years into their jointly engineered offering, VMC on AWS is being extended to include Tanzu Services and Mission Control Essentials. VMware Cloud Disaster Recovery, A DRaaS solution built on top of VMC on AWS, is getting additional enhancements like single file recovery and advanced security capabilities. VMware also announced the
general availability of VMC on AWS Outposts, giving customers yet another option for fully managed VMware Cloud on-prem. Additionally, other major public cloud providers (Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, Oracle Cloud, IBM Cloud and Ali Baba Cloud) are all now offering VMware infrastructure as a service based on the VMware validated design established by VMware's Cloud Provider Program. Finally, VMware's Edge Compute Stack, built on vSAN HCI and Velocloud SD-WAN, will bring a simplified licensing model and a consistent platform experience to the edge.
VMware also announced a slew of Tech Previews, like Project Ensemble, which seeks to unify Cloud governance and operations, Project Arctic, which promises to make bursting into public clouds as easy as just a few mouse clicks, and Project Cascade, which will make Kubernetes the abstraction layer for VMC and cement its status as the "lingua franca" for Cloud infrastructure. All of these present and future offerings are intended to make VMware Cloud something of a Rosetta stone for deploying and migrating virtual machine and container based application workloads across many different clouds. For customers this means providing consistent infrastructure and operations across Clouds, the flexibility to access best of breed Cloud services and a faster path to ROI through both time savings and cost efficiency.
Explore related content:
VMC on AWS: Hybrid Cloud Made Easy
TEC37 E05: Enabling Hybrid Cloud with Google Cloud VMware Engine
Intrinsic security
VMware Security
We are all well versed in the new hybrid workforce that the vast majority of the world shifted to in March of 2020. IT teams found themselves overwhelmed trying to keep their end users connected and secure. VMware Anywhere Workspace solution to the rescue!
At VMworld we learned how VMware is taking on Zero Trust not only in the data centers but in the cloud as well.
Securing the plethora of apps that organizations are using proves to be difficult now more than ever. Older security solutions aren't able to secure these endpoints due to their complex chemistry which communicate via APIs. Why the big deal about securing APIs? Well they were built to never see the light of day and security was never part of their design. They were built for developers by guess who? Developers.
This is where Tanzu Service Mesh (TSM) comes into the picture. TSM delivers application connectivity, resiliency and security capabilities that add value to enterprise initiatives focused on application modernization, multicloud and data protection.
Within our Advanced Technology Center (ATC), our Technical Solutions Architects have built a Tanzu Service Mesh Lab which will show you how this VMware solution can make your modern applications secure and compliant so you can turn your attention to other aspects of your business.
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