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The following content is from an older version of this website, and may not display correctly.Vmware announced vSphere 4, a data center operating system for building internal cloud systems with the promise of holistic management of large pools of processors, storage and networking equipment.
"vSphere 4 will bring the power of cloud computing to the data center, slashing IT costs while dramatically increasing IT responsiveness. For hosting service providers, VMware vSphere 4 will enable a more economic and efficient path to delivering cloud services that are compatible with customers' internal cloud infrastructures," the company said in a statement.
Next step is to support "dynamic federation" between internal and external clouds, enabling "private" cloud environments that span multiple data centers and/or cloud providers, Vmware said.
Paul Maritz, president and chief executive officer, Vmware, said: "By giving IT organizations a non-disruptive path to cloud computing, we will be leading our customers on a journey that delivers value every step of the way, delivering up to an additional 30 percent cost reduction today while enabling IT to provide reliable and adaptable IT services."
Emulex was first out of the traps to announce its Lightpulse Host Bus Adapters and Converged Network Adapters are fully supported with in-box drivers as part of the product.
The vSphere 4 product spec compared with vSphere 3:
o 2x the number of virtual processors per virtual machine (from 4 to 8)
o 2.5x more virtual NICs per virtual machine (from 4 to 10)
o 4x more memory per virtual machine (from 64 GB to 255GB)
o 3x increase in network throughput (from 9 Gb/s to 30Gb/s)
o 3x increase in the maximum recorded I/O operations per second (to over 300,000)
o New maximum recorded number of transactions per second - 8,900 which is 5x the total payment traffic of the VISA network worldwide4
ÔÇó Targeted performance improvements for specific applications:
o Estimated 50 percent improved performance for application development workloads
o Estimated 30 percent improved performance for Citrix XenApp
VMware vSphere 4 can pool together up to:
o 32 physical servers with up to 2048 processor cores
o 1,280 virtual machines
o 32 TB of RAM
o 16 petabytes of storage
Pricing Starts at $166 per Processor
The product is expected to be generally available later in Q2 2009.
For data center deployments it provides four editions:
Standard priced at $795 per processor provides significant server consolidation ROI with new cost saving capabilities including thin provisioning for up to 50 percent lower storage costs and performance optimizations for up to 30 percent higher consolidation ratios than the previous generation of VMware software.
Advanced priced at $2,245 per processor provides application availability and protection. Live migration with VMware VMotion, and the addition of VMware Fault Tolerance for continuous availability, VMware Data Recovery for backup, and VMware vShield Zones for security uniquely deliver Always on IT in one integrated package.
Enterprise priced at $2,875 per processor adds automated resource management with VMware DRS and VMware Storage VMotion.
Enterprise Plus priced at $3,495 per processor includes the full range of VMware vSphere 4 features for transforming data centers into internal cloud computing environments including VMware vNetwork Distributed Switch and VMware Host Profiles for simplifying the operational management of large deployments.
Customers and analyst comment:
"As a critical player in the global financial services ecosystem, we require flexibility and standards to stretch the limits of our IT resources and adjust to the unknown," said Christopher Rence, CIO, FICO. "With VMware vSphere as the foundation of our cloud computing initiative, we're now in a better position to deliver a unified platform that enables the world's top financial services institutions to make effective and confident decisions at all stages of the customer lifecycle."
"VMware has provided us with cost savings and efficiencies for a number of years," says Paul Poppleton, IT architect, Qualcomm. "With VMware vSphere 4, we can leverage our virtualization implementations to get greater economies through an internal cloud strategy. As a leader in virtualization, VMware is positioned to help us continue to automate and streamline our infrastructure to best serve our business needs, on or off premise."
"Cloud computing is the future for us, and VMware vSphere 4 is the ideal platform to build our internal cloud," said Nasser Mirzai, IT director at TradeBeam. "In our business, every sale requires a proof of concept which can become lengthy and expensive by using dedicated infrastructure. With an internal cloud built on VMware vSphere 4, we will be able to provide that infrastructure as a user friendly service to our sales teams and prospects. They will be able to request the infrastructure they need through a simple web portal and get it on-demand with guaranteed service levels and lower costs. That means getting the prospect up and running in one day instead of two weeks; the lead stays hot and we can increase our conversion rate while decreasing the cost of sales."
"We have been using the VMware vSphere 4 beta, and even with the beta code, we have observed greatly accelerated application performance compared to VMware Infrastructure 3," said Steve Bonney, vice president of business development at BayScribe. "As a result, we are now planning to run the production database for our primary revenue generating application in a virtual machine on vSphere so that we can also take advantage of the availability, security and scalability features built in VMware vSphere 4."
"The days of the traditional monolithic operating system are numbered," said Chris Wolf, senior analyst with Burton Group. "Server platforms are now being purposed-built for virtualized workloads, and many of the roles associated with the traditional OS are transitioning to virtualized internal and external cloud-based infrastructures. Organizations looking to gain the operational and financial benefits of cloud-based IT can do so today by deploying purpose-built cloud infrastructure software that streamlines internal data center operations, while providing a gateway to future external cloud expansion."
"vSphere 4 will bring the power of cloud computing to the data center, slashing IT costs while dramatically increasing IT responsiveness. For hosting service providers, VMware vSphere 4 will enable a more economic and efficient path to delivering cloud services that are compatible with customers' internal cloud infrastructures," the company said in a statement.
Next step is to support "dynamic federation" between internal and external clouds, enabling "private" cloud environments that span multiple data centers and/or cloud providers, Vmware said.
Paul Maritz, president and chief executive officer, Vmware, said: "By giving IT organizations a non-disruptive path to cloud computing, we will be leading our customers on a journey that delivers value every step of the way, delivering up to an additional 30 percent cost reduction today while enabling IT to provide reliable and adaptable IT services."
Emulex was first out of the traps to announce its Lightpulse Host Bus Adapters and Converged Network Adapters are fully supported with in-box drivers as part of the product.
The vSphere 4 product spec compared with vSphere 3:
o 2x the number of virtual processors per virtual machine (from 4 to 8)
o 2.5x more virtual NICs per virtual machine (from 4 to 10)
o 4x more memory per virtual machine (from 64 GB to 255GB)
o 3x increase in network throughput (from 9 Gb/s to 30Gb/s)
o 3x increase in the maximum recorded I/O operations per second (to over 300,000)
o New maximum recorded number of transactions per second - 8,900 which is 5x the total payment traffic of the VISA network worldwide4
ÔÇó Targeted performance improvements for specific applications:
o Estimated 50 percent improved performance for application development workloads
o Estimated 30 percent improved performance for Citrix XenApp
VMware vSphere 4 can pool together up to:
o 32 physical servers with up to 2048 processor cores
o 1,280 virtual machines
o 32 TB of RAM
o 16 petabytes of storage
Pricing Starts at $166 per Processor
The product is expected to be generally available later in Q2 2009.
For data center deployments it provides four editions:
Standard priced at $795 per processor provides significant server consolidation ROI with new cost saving capabilities including thin provisioning for up to 50 percent lower storage costs and performance optimizations for up to 30 percent higher consolidation ratios than the previous generation of VMware software.
Advanced priced at $2,245 per processor provides application availability and protection. Live migration with VMware VMotion, and the addition of VMware Fault Tolerance for continuous availability, VMware Data Recovery for backup, and VMware vShield Zones for security uniquely deliver Always on IT in one integrated package.
Enterprise priced at $2,875 per processor adds automated resource management with VMware DRS and VMware Storage VMotion.
Enterprise Plus priced at $3,495 per processor includes the full range of VMware vSphere 4 features for transforming data centers into internal cloud computing environments including VMware vNetwork Distributed Switch and VMware Host Profiles for simplifying the operational management of large deployments.
Customers and analyst comment:
"As a critical player in the global financial services ecosystem, we require flexibility and standards to stretch the limits of our IT resources and adjust to the unknown," said Christopher Rence, CIO, FICO. "With VMware vSphere as the foundation of our cloud computing initiative, we're now in a better position to deliver a unified platform that enables the world's top financial services institutions to make effective and confident decisions at all stages of the customer lifecycle."
"VMware has provided us with cost savings and efficiencies for a number of years," says Paul Poppleton, IT architect, Qualcomm. "With VMware vSphere 4, we can leverage our virtualization implementations to get greater economies through an internal cloud strategy. As a leader in virtualization, VMware is positioned to help us continue to automate and streamline our infrastructure to best serve our business needs, on or off premise."
"Cloud computing is the future for us, and VMware vSphere 4 is the ideal platform to build our internal cloud," said Nasser Mirzai, IT director at TradeBeam. "In our business, every sale requires a proof of concept which can become lengthy and expensive by using dedicated infrastructure. With an internal cloud built on VMware vSphere 4, we will be able to provide that infrastructure as a user friendly service to our sales teams and prospects. They will be able to request the infrastructure they need through a simple web portal and get it on-demand with guaranteed service levels and lower costs. That means getting the prospect up and running in one day instead of two weeks; the lead stays hot and we can increase our conversion rate while decreasing the cost of sales."
"We have been using the VMware vSphere 4 beta, and even with the beta code, we have observed greatly accelerated application performance compared to VMware Infrastructure 3," said Steve Bonney, vice president of business development at BayScribe. "As a result, we are now planning to run the production database for our primary revenue generating application in a virtual machine on vSphere so that we can also take advantage of the availability, security and scalability features built in VMware vSphere 4."
"The days of the traditional monolithic operating system are numbered," said Chris Wolf, senior analyst with Burton Group. "Server platforms are now being purposed-built for virtualized workloads, and many of the roles associated with the traditional OS are transitioning to virtualized internal and external cloud-based infrastructures. Organizations looking to gain the operational and financial benefits of cloud-based IT can do so today by deploying purpose-built cloud infrastructure software that streamlines internal data center operations, while providing a gateway to future external cloud expansion."