VMware recently announced several new releases across its integrated VMware vRealize cloud management platform (CMP), which strive to ease hybrid cloud implementations and management, the enterprise software company says. The moves come as VMware also takes steps to bolster its worldwide partner program and associated MSP relationships.
vRealize CMP includes new operations, automation and lifecycle management features and enhancements across the integrated platform. They are designed to provide customers with faster overall time to value, improved ease of use, and increased control of VMware’s software-defined data center (SDDC) stack, the company claims.
Some of the newly announced features include:
VMware vRealize Operations 6.7
- Capacity Analytics Engine: Provides customers with real-time visibility into capacity usage and demand to predict and improve capacity utilization.
- Performance Automation based on Business and Operational Intent: The software uses predictive analytics and enhanced automated workload balancing to drive continuous optimization.
- Wavefront by VMware Integration: This integration will help to rapidly on-board Wavefront through the automatic discovery of applications and the installation and management of the required agents. A
- User Interface: Features a persona-based ‘Quick Start’ dashboard to help customers quickly perform operational tasks. Also includes updated workflows for enterprise-wide troubleshooting with metrics and logs.
vRealize Automation 7.4
- Curated Blueprints and OVF Files: Offers over 120 free, curated blueprints and OVF (Open Virtualization Format) files out-of-the-box. VMware has teamed with Bitnami to add 20 new blueprints and 100-plus new OVFs of popular applications and databases such as GitLab, Hadoop, Jenkins and MongoDB to speed application development and deployment.
- Custom Form Designer: Build rich service request forms for vRealize Automation 7.4 catalog items and reduce blueprint sprawl.
- Multi-Tenancy Capabilities: Includes filter-based networking services visibility and filter-based infrastructure elements visibility per tenant as well as support the latest release of vRealize Orchestrator, which is now multi-tenant.
vRealize Suite 2017
- In-Product Marketplace: A new and integrated “app store”-like experience for customers to consume out-of-the-box solutions from VMware and ecosystem partners. These solutions will span vRealize Operations management packs, vRealize Log Insight content packs, and vRealize Automation blueprints and plug-ins. Within the Lifecycle Manager, customers will be able to access, download, deploy and delete relevant packaged applications and content.
- IT Content Lifecycle Management: Automated release pipeline for content capturing, testing and deployment; storing and versioning of content via integration with GitLab; and, support for multi-developer use cases.
All updates are expected to be released before May 4, 2018. The enhancements arrive just as VMware also takes steps to bolster its channel partner program leadership. Microsoft veteran Jenni Flinders recently joined VMware to lead the global partner strategy. Meanwhile, VMware is striving to help more than 4,000 hosting providers push deeper into managed services, according to Ajay Patel, VP and GM, Cloud Provider Software Business Unit.
