VMware and Google Preview a New Plugin Unlocking More Hybrid Cloud Scenarios

July 24, 2018 Off By David
Written by David Marshall

VMware and Google have announced a preview of a new Google Cloud Platform (GCP) plugin for VMware vRealize Orchestrator, and support for GCP resources in VMware vRealize Automation.

The vRealize Orchestrator is used to automate other VMware products like the vSphere virtualization platform and the vCloud suite.  This new GCP plugin for vRealize Orchestrator is said to provide customers with a consistent management and governance experience across on-premises and GCP-based IT environments.  As an example, Google and VMware said a user would be able to use Google-provided blueprints (or build their own blueprints for Google Compute Engine resources) and publish them to the vRealize service catalog.  This means a user could select and launch resources in a predictable manner that would be similar to how they would launch VMs in their on-premises VMware environment, using a tool with which they are already familiar.  

"Many of our customers with hybrid cloud environments rely on VMware software on-premises.  They want to simplify provisioning and enable end-user self service," said Shan Kulandaivel, Google Compute Engine product manager.

"At the same time, they also want to make sure they’re complying with IT policies and following IT best practices.  As a result, many use VMware vRealize Automation, a platform for automated self-service provisioning and lifecycle management of IT infrastructure, and are looking for ways to leverage it in the cloud."

The preview release will also allow users to request and self-provision resources in GCP using vRA’s catalog feature; gain visibility and reclaim resources in GCP to reduce operational costs; enforce access and resource quota policies for resources in GCP; and initiate Day 2 operations (start, stop, delete, etc.) on Compute Engine VM Instances, Instance Groups and Disks.

According to a VMware blog post, the plug-in allows users to "start provisioning VMs and storage to GCP, as well as publish blueprints that include Google Compute VMs and storage buckets" into the user’s self-service catalog.  Example use cases for the plug-in include:
  1. Reach new regions to address global business needs. (i.e. FinlandMumbai and Singapore.)
  2. Define large scale applications using vRA and deploy to Google Compute Engine to leverage GCP’s worldwide load balancing and automatic scaling.
  3. Save money by deploying VMs as Compute Engine Preemptible VM Instances and using Custom Machine Types to tailor the VM configuration to application needs.
  4. Accelerate the time it takes to train a machine learning model by using Compute Engine with NVIDIA Tesla P100 GPUs.
  5. Replicate your on premises-based applications to the cloud and scale up or down as your business dictates.

The new GCP plugin for vRealize is now available for preview.  And as customers expand their portfolios to include GCP, it will be added to the VMware Solutions Exchange. 

To join the preview program, you will need to submit a request using the preview intake form.

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About the Author

David Marshall is an industry recognized virtualization and cloud computing expert, a ten time recipient of the VMware vExpert distinction, and has been heavily involved in the industry for the past 20 years.  To help solve industry challenges, he co-founded and helped start several successful virtualization software companies such as ProTier, Surgient, Hyper9 and Vertiscale. He also spent a few years transforming desktop virtualization while at Virtual Bridges.

David is also a co-author of two very popular server virtualization books: "Advanced Server Virtualization: VMware and Microsoft Platforms in the Virtual Data Center" and "VMware ESX Essentials in the Virtual Data Center" and the Technical Editor on Wiley’s "Virtualization for Dummies" and "VMware VI3 for Dummies" books.  David also authored countless articles for a number of well known technical magazines, including: InfoWorld, Virtual-Strategy and TechTarget.  In 2004, he founded the oldest independent virtualization and cloud computing news site, VMblog.com, which he still operates today.

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