VMware Hybrid Cloud Launch Day – Why this is important, and What is New

So today is a big announcement day for VMware. Not a total surprise of course, because they have teased this offering for a while, and they have actually had the system in customer beta testing for a while. I know, because I was one of the lucky ones who was able to get a first crack at the system 🙂

If you’ve read what I wrote back then (Article: vCloud Hybrid Cloud) you have probably had some interest in what I was after too; the opportunity to add VMware supported services for on-demand cloud usage to ease the transition to cloud infrastructure.

Ready for Prime Time Finally

Admittedly, I found the original beta to be a little light duty. I have had two servers running in that environment with a variety of configurations. I even have my Puppet environment hosted there now as a proof of concept deployment for some projects I have that are brewing up.

Today is a different day because of that testing and the continuous feedback that has poured back into the VMware Hybrid Cloud group. They have had their hands full I’m sure with support calls, and the growing reliability of the service was evident. But today, as I’ve said, is a different day. Today, this is a real system.

What is Next for the vCloud Hybrid Cloud

One word: Growth. This is the beginning of something great in that it adds competitiveness to the market, and it allows for a logical first step for many organizations to use public cloud infrastructure for their production workloads.

What was interesting is how many conversations, some of them very animated, were sparked up over the announcement. The Twitterverse was alight with speculation that this is meant to be an AWS killer, or an OpenStack killer. In my opinion, it is neither of those but it is as important as the iOS, BlackBerry, Android OS battle in the mobile space.

Dedicated or Virtual Private (multi-tenant)

The cool feature of this is is that there are two service offerings. The Dedicated vCloud environment is a physically isolated environment which you retain complete control over and can easily link to your on-premise vCloud using the vCloud Connector.

If you want to use the on-demand capability of the Virtual Private cloud infrastructure, those resources are also available which are logically isolated from other environments using the well tested vCloud Networking and Security suite.

image courtesy of VMware (click for source page)
image courtesy of VMware (click for source page)

Partnerships – The Real Power of the Cloud

It doesn’t have to go much further than the announcement that the amazing automation engine Puppet is fully integrated into the environment, so you can dive right in with this popular configuration management tool and even if you aren’t already dipping your toes into the Puppet waters, I can tell you that the water is beautiful and it is a quick transition.

Even if you don’t interact with it, the truth is that Puppet is now part of the fabric of the vCloud ecosystem which is the result of some amazing work by the Cloud Services Team and the symbolic investment that VMware has made with Puppet Labs.

Some have proposed that this is a shot across the bow of partner cloud providers, but I think that this is really an opportunity to widen the net and gain a strong adoption of the vCloud products in public, private and hybrid deployments across the board.

Comfort Food in the Datacenter

We like this announcement in the same way that we smell our grandma’s apple pie cooking, or the taste of your favorite curl up on the couch meal. This is about comfort. We know that this technology is working well for us today in our on-premise deployments, so this is the chance to confidently take the next step and take advantage of a growing wave in technology. I really see this as a way to take those who we traditionally see in the “laggards” category, and move them much closer to the peak of the technology adoption curve.

Bravo VMware, and I can’t wait to watch this come together. Production general availability in North America datacenters is scheduled for Q3 2013 and early access will be available in June.

View the VMware vCloud Hybrid site here: http://vcloud.vmware.com/

And most importantly, here is the pricing info: http://vcloud.vmware.com/about_services/pricing

Here is the announcement from Puppet Labs: http://puppetlabs.com/blog/vmware-new-public-cloud-and-puppet-enterprise/?utm_campaign=blog&utm_medium=socnet&utm_source=twitter&utm_content=vchs_interview_blog

 

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