No Barcelona this year, no trade show with over 10,000 people gathering, no lively discussions with peers and partners, and no Catalan delicacies. Did you miss the live version of VMworld as much as I did? I certainly did!
Missed VMworld?
Did you miss VMworld this year as much as I did? Sure, the event took place in a digital format last week, but watching and listening to everything online has its downsides. All topics were presented neatly via a well-functioning website and the quality was high, but the experience of being in Barcelona and truly immersing yourself in a different environment was missing this year. The context switch from our already mostly digital work-from-home routine was simply absent. Furthermore, the interaction with peers, partners, and users from the VMware community was a major loss. It’s all logical, but let’s hope it’s a one-time thing.
VMware HCX
Does this mean there was nothing interesting? Certainly not! There are a few components I found very interesting. For example, the VMware HCX product; a very simple way to connect VMware clouds. It works between different software versions, different locations, and different VMware management layers: both vCenter and Cloud Director are supported. And when I say connect, in this case, it also means extending: networks are easily stretched via SD-WAN, allowing you to move a virtual machine easily via live migration.
I see the power of this concept in two routes: extending capacity from an existing cluster to an external (datacenter) cluster. Think, for example, of replacing hardware in part of the infrastructure and then connecting it via an extension in a cloud service. A great way to perform a phased replacement via a hybrid cloud. The other route is a migration route; you can use the HCX technology stack to move workloads to, for example, a Fundaments Cloud. There are already tools for this in the form of Cloud Availability, which is why I think the power of HCX is better suited for a public cloud transformation, where, for example, a set of applications needs to be migrated to AWS. A lift-and-shift action where an existing environment is seamlessly moved as the first step of the transformation can be realized very easily with HCX. With this move, a large part of the transformation is already achieved; the next step is then to convert an application to a cloud-native variant.
Project Monterey: SmartNIC
Another cool concept is that of a SmartNIC. This network interface allows the entire ESXi stack to run on a network card, which can then present all kinds of functionality to the host it is installed in. Think of using disk capacity from an ESXi cluster with vSAN, but hosting a container on a host with a GPU card can also be done with this concept. It opens a path to easily add functionalities in a very granular way to existing environments, such as those based on physical hardware. This is crucial for realizing integrations in a world of applications and services that are no longer just CPU-based.
SmartNICs are part of what VMware calls Project Monterey. This project ensures that from an application world based on virtual machines and containers (managed with Tanzu), further integration is realized into a world of sensors and IoT without compromising communication security.
Evolution of existing products
In addition to these two topics, a lot of evolution for existing products was announced; plenty of things to read back and watch at your leisure. This highlights one advantage of the format used for VMworld 2020: practically all sessions can be watched on demand, which is a real improvement if you ask me.
