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VMware's got just one more thing you need to build a software-defined data center

EVO SDDC takes Virtzilla's best bits to build hybrid clouds

VMworld 2015 For the last couple of years, VMware has been talking up the software-defined data center and saying it can deliver it with vSphere and flagship products like VSAN, NSX, and vRealize.

This year it's saying there's one more thing needed: new software called the EVO SDDC Manager.

EVO SDDC is a replacement of sorts for EVO:RACK, which VMware announced last year as the web-scale version of the EVO:RAIL hyper-converged applianceware. The product's now gained a new name, lost the colon, and had its its scope narrowed a little to run both software and hardware in a software-defined data center (SDDC, hence the name). But the ambition remains broad: VMware thinks EVO SDDC can bring the public cloud experience to building and operating private clouds.

On-premises, VMware says EVO SDDC is an “automation engine that will simplify and significantly reduce the time required for power-up, provisioning, and monitoring of virtual and physical resources, including software, servers, top-of-rack and spine switches” and “will scale in capacity starting from one-third rack to multiple racks and thousands of nodes at single server increments.” Virtzilla's promising that EVO SDDC will get your data center up and working in hours and that it can handle lifecycle management chores like patch management. There's also “workload domains” to make it easier to get infrastructure humming under common workloads like big data or desktop virtualization. EVO not only does the job of driving vSphere, VSAN, NSX, and vRealize, but also manages servers and even switches. EVO SDDC leans heavily on the rest of VMware's suite: the automation engine works with vRealize, for example.

But VMware's schtick this year is hybrid clouds, so easier on-premises deployment management is a nice-to-have, but not the main game. What VMware wants you to do is use its best bits – vSphere, ESX, VSAN, NSX, vRealize – and use them across private and multiple private clouds. vSphere can abstract on-premises service providers running VMware and vCloud Air so that you just see VMs. Cross-cloud vMotion can shunt workloads between clouds, without shutting them down, thanks to NSX. Stretched clusters in VSAN 6.1 can help you to span different resources with storage.

VMware thinks this is all useful because core on-premises applications need to access the cloud, be it for reasons of resilience or scale. To address the first issue, VMware has delivered cross-cloud vMotion that can move live workloads between clouds. For scale, VMware thinks that running NSX across your own bit barn and VMware-powered clouds means you can take apps to the cloud with confidence that you're just about teleporting your network and all its security policies into a cloud.

EVO SDDC fits into this by making it easier to get started with a rig that's ready for hybridization.

For now, VMware's working with Quanta, Dell, and VCE on pre-prepared rigs that sell with EVO SDDC, but over time it will sell EVO SDDC as software anyone can buy and point at certified servers.

As our sibling publication The Platform reports, VMware thinks EVO SDDC will scale to about eight racks. VMware's told The Reg that a full rack will handle “1,000 infrastructure as a service virtual machines or more than 2,000 desktop virtual machines.”

8,000 VMs is a more-than-decent number. 2,000 seems a little light compared to claims for virtual desktops made by vendors of hyper-converged appliances and reference architectures tuned to the task. ®

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