VMware Advances Hybrid Cloud Operations and Automation with Refreshed vRealize Cloud Management Platform

VMware, Inc. announced advancements across its integrated VMware vRealize cloud management platform to help IT enable developers and IT admins to quickly build and deliver applications in hybrid cloud environments with more secure and consistent operations. The new product releases – vRealize Operations 7.5, vRealize Network Insight 4.1, vRealize Automation 7.6, and vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager 2.1 – will combine to provide expanded self-driving operations and enhanced programmable provisioning capabilities across private and hybrid clouds.

VMware Introduces New Application Operations and Compliance Capabilities
VMware vRealize Operations delivers self-driving operations management from applications to infrastructure to optimize, plan and scale hybrid clouds including on-prem environments. It delivers continuous performance optimization based on operational and business intent, efficient capacity management, proactive planning, intelligent remediation and integrated compliance. VMware vRealize Operations 7.5 will extend self-driving capabilities to help customers achieve:

• Continuous Performance Optimization: To further enhance application performance based on operational and business intent, this release introduces hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) performance optimization of VMware vSAN clusters via workload rebalancing that is resync-, slack space- and Storage Policy Based Management (SPBM)-aware. Additionally, the platform will introduce placement optimization for vSAN workloads using storage intent definition.   
• Efficient Capacity Management: To further reduce costs and risks through optimal utilization, proactive planning and procurement, this new release will add allocation-based capacity management alongside existing demand-based modelling. This release will also include updated vSAN capacity management capabilities including new HCI cost drivers and “what-if” scenarios to model the impact of increasing the capacity of vSAN clusters. In addition, it will provide expanded “what-if” scenarios for comparing costs of VMware vSphere-based private clouds with VMware Cloud on AWS, AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, IBM Cloud, and other VMware Cloud Provider Program partner clouds. To help customers succeed in their multi-cloud journey, this integrated portfolio combines with CloudHealth by VMware to deliver complete visibility, optimization and governance for a multi-cloud environment.
• Intelligent Remediation: To predict, prevent and quickly troubleshoot application and infrastructure issues, this new release will introduce Telegraf agent-based application and OS monitoring with agent lifecycle management and out-of-the-box (OOTB) application troubleshooting dashboard. It will also provide enhanced capabilities mapping the relationships between applications and infrastructure to decrease time-to-identify root cause of performance and availability issues.
• Integrated Compliance Capabilities for VMware vSphere: To reduce risk and enforce IT and regulatory standards, this new release will introduce integrated compliance and automated drift remediation capabilities for VMware vSphere. Customers will be able to measure vSphere compliance stature against critical public standards, extend into custom compliance standards as well as automate configuration management with OOTB workflows and vRealize Orchestrator integration. (Read the what’s new in vSphere 6.7 Update 2 blog post).

Emirates Airline uses vRealize Operations for capacity management and planning as well as monitoring and alerting of its private cloud environment. “From day one, VMware vRealize Operations has had a positive impact on our private cloud. It has helped us to improve our operational efficiency as well as enable us to achieve significant cost savings by pinpointing and reclaiming wasted compute, memory and storage resources-equal to 300 virtual machines each averaging 4 vCPUs, 8 Gigabytes of RAM and 200 Gigabytes of disk space,” said Fabian Thomas, Datacenter Manager at Emirates Airline. “The reclaimed resources and cost savings we achieved helped fund additional IT projects.”

Introducing Application-Centric Security and Network Analytics for Kubernetes
VMware vRealize Network Insight, which is also available as a VMware Cloud Service, will extend visibility for application-centric security and networking in Kubernetes environments. vRealize Network Insight 4.1 will enable organizations running Kubernetes or VMware Enterprise PKS environments to plan security, troubleshoot networking and use advanced analytics for containerized applications. The new release will further help organizations plan and troubleshoot security and networking in an application-centric manner by connecting with ServiceNow and adding application specific dashboards. Additionally, vRealize Network Insight 4.1 will deliver increased visibility across network overlay and underlay by introducing flow latency and F5 load balancer support.

Automation and Lifecycle Management Enhancements Ease Hybrid Cloud Adoption
VMware vRealize Automation 7.6 will introduce enhanced integrations with VMware’s software defined data center stack and management capabilities to make it easier and simpler for customers to automate their hybrid cloud environments. The new release will further extend its integration with VMware NSX Data Center with new on-demand support for private networks as well as VMware NSX-T and NSX for vSphere configuration for different clusters within a single VMware vCenter Server. To simplify building customized and enhanced request forms for catalog items, VMware vRealize Automation 7.6 will deliver enhancements to Custom Forms including API validation and Regular Expression support for DataGrid. Additionally, the release will provide an improved user experiences and support multi-tenancy in VMware vRealize Orchestrator.

VMware vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager 2.1 will further help customers to manage and automate their environments via enhanced integration with VMware Cloud Foundation, improved user experiences, more granular deployment options, and expanded content management capabilities including multi-content capture and support for Bitbucket endpoints.

New Study Highlights vRealize Operations Customer Cost Savings and Efficiency Gains 
VMware commissioned Forrester Consulting to conduct a Total Economic Impact (TEI) study and examine the potential return on investment (ROI) enterprises may achieve by deploying VMware vRealize Operations. The study provides readers with a framework to evaluate the potential financial impact of vRealize Operations.

To better understand the benefits, costs, and risks, Forrester interviewed five organizations, each with years of experience using vRealize Operations. Prior to deploying vRealize Operations, these organizations struggled with limited performance, inefficiencies in troubleshooting, and wasted capacity. Their deployments delivered improved visibility, performance and capacity optimization, and faster remediation. According to the study, organizations achieved the following benefits:

• A 30 percent productivity improvement from intelligent remediation, improved visibility, and faster reporting using advanced analytics to correlate metrics and log data to predict, prevent, and troubleshoot virtual environments.
• A 20 percent reduction in hardware cost savings plus 10 percent reduction in storage costs via capacity optimization that uses predictive analytics to automatically balance workloads and avoid contention.
• A 50 percent reduction in database software licensing costs via continuous performance optimization functionality that enables customers to automate workload balancing and host-based workload placement based on business intent leading to consolidation and separation of software licenses.
• A 93 percent reduction in unplanned downtime by applying continuous performance optimization based on operational and business intent, optimizing resource usage, detecting capacity shortfalls, and proactively resolving issues-helping to optimize their environments and improve availability.

“Organizations are using VMware’s self-driving operations and programmable provisioning to radically simplify application and infrastructure management,” said Ajay Singh, senior vice president and general manager, Cloud Management Business Unit, VMware. “Customers look to VMware and our vRealize Cloud Management Platform to operate and automate their hybrid cloud environments with a ‘hands-off’ and ‘hassle-free’ approach to focus on transforming their business.”

Product Availability 
VMware vRealize Operations 7.5, VMware vRealize Automation 7.6, VMware vRealize Network Insight 4.1, VMware vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager 2.1 are expected to become available in VMware’s Q1 FY20.