As VMworld 2014 kicks off, we set the tone for the whole conference. Most of the announcements that will be made are expected, but we’ll get to find out just how awesome they are. Also, maybe we’ll have a surprise or two! I’m live-blogging from the bloggers table in the Hang Space. If you’re at VMworld, stop by and say hello!

This morning, the following announcements bubbled up to the top of the list of highlights. These are exciting, to be sure!

EVO:RAIL combines VMware compute, networking, and storage resources into a hyper-converged infrastructure appliance to create a simple, easy to deploy, all-in-one solution offered by our partners.

So VMware has decided to enter the hyper-converged game. This does not fall into the “surprise” category. With the introduction of VSAN and NSX, it looked a lot like VMware was leading up to this. I wonder what this means for Nutanix and Simplivity. They both have their own unique value add, but won’t customers be more comfortable sticking with vendors they’re familiar and comfortable with? To that end, Simplivity also has a big announcement around OmniStack in partnership with Cisco. More on that in another post.

VMware has never been in the hardware game, and I don’t think they will be. This will be OEM hardware from partners like Dell, EMC, Supermicro, etc.The building block is a 2U box that can include 4 nodes. One can stack 4 of these boxes for a total of 16 nodes – half of the current vSphere cluster size limit. EVO:RACK is currently being tested at VMware, and when this goes public it will allow for larger scale deployments.

There is an area in the Solutions Exchange showcasing EVO gear and doing demos. Be sure to stop by there and check it out if you’ve got some time!

vRealize Suite

At VMworld 2014 today, the Cloud Management team introduced the VMware vRealize Suite, a Cloud Management Platform. The need for a comprehensive Cloud Management Platform (CMP) arose from the convergence of multiple management disciplines employed by new models of developing, deploying, and managing applications. Essentially, CMP enables robust application and infrastructure delivery while managing to a set of polices in the most cost-efficient manner.

The vRealize suite provides an efficient way to manage a hybrid cloud. vRealize will swallow up vCAC and vCOps and ITBM. It will also contain two new things:

vRealize Air Automation – vCloud Automation Center offered as SaaS

– vCloud Automation Center offered as SaaS vRealize Operations Insight – a new version of Log Insight

There is also a private beta program you can apply to be a part of! Register for the beta program here.

VMware Integrated OpenStack

VMware Integrated OpenStack (Beta) is a VMware-supported OpenStack distribution that makes it easy for IT to run an enterprise-grade OpenStack on top of their existing VMware infrastructure.

There’s no getting away from OpenStack – VMware administrators who aren’t already proficient with OpenStack should start working on it now. If you need ramp up material, I’d highly recommend Eric Wright‘s Pluralsight course Introduction to Openstack.

Because it is becoming so prevalent, enabling VMware customers to quickly and easily use OpenStack is a high priority for VMware. To address this, they’ve introduced VMware Integrated OpenStack (VIO). This is distributed as an OVA and it deploys a vApp containing all the components of an OpenStack deployment. This seems like a more mature iteration of VOVA. Once deployed, you will have access directly from the vSphere Web Client!

Thoughts

This is sure to be an exciting week, and I’m sure there’s many more new developments to research and discuss. Of the announcements so far, I’m most excited about EVO. Between EVO and Simplivity’s announcement about UCS, I see customers being a lot more interested and willing to get into the hyper-converged game. This afternoon will involve some Tech Field Day action, so be sure to tune in for that. I’ll be bumming around the Hang Space most of the day, and maybe pop over to the Solutions Exchange to pick up some vExpert gifts later on. See you around!