Enterprise Architect
This is Part 2 of a multi-part blog series discussing the pros and cons of private cloud vs public cloud computing, and some specific technologies that can enable Private Clouds. The information presented is meant to be used for educational and planning purposes. Please contact Mainline for more information and assistance in building or progressing your cloud strategy.
Introduction
In the first installment of this blog series, I discussed why an organization might consider running their on-premises infrastructure like a Public Cloud. These subsequent blogs will focus on specific technologies that can enable Private Clouds.
VMware by Broadcom
When you think of “Private Cloud,” does the company and product set of VMware, now rebranded as VMware by Broadcom, come to mind first? The answer to that probably depends on your frame of reference to VMware and your definition of “Private Cloud.”
VMware has been around for much longer than many realize. The company was founded in 1998 and it shipped its first commercial product, VMware Workstation, in 1999. VMware launched its Type-1 and Type-2 hypervisors – ESX and GSX, respectively – in 2001. But it was really 2003 that set the company apart with the general availability of VirtualCenter (now vCenter) and vMotion. The core management and live migration capabilities of those last two products catapulted VMware to nearly hero status, as companies of all sizes sought to modernize their datacenters and reduce their growing x86 hardware footprint.
I first started using VMware products in 2006 and became the administrator of my company’s ESX 3.5 cluster in 2008. My first VMware certification was in VI3 (Virtual Infrastructure, as it was then known) in January 2009.
Over the years, I’ve installed, upgraded, tuned, troubleshooted, migrated, and managed VMware clusters from 3.5 to the latest versions of vSphere 8. The core feature set and capabilities have improved massively over this time, not to mention all the acquisitions that VMware has made, increasing their reach to operations management, automation, security, networking, cloud-native workloads, AI, and more.
The Virtualized Compute Love Affair
But, despite all these extra proficiencies, VMware corporate struggled to successfully pitch these new products and capabilities to their existing install base. Why is that?
Well, if you’ve had any exposure to virtualization or cloud marketing in the past 10 years, you’ll have heard of all these ‘silos’ that need breaking down. The traditional ones are compute, storage, and networking. VMware gained a foothold in the datacenter and enterprise computing markets with ESX, which virtualized compute resources. And while storage and networking are certainly a part of ‘compute,’ they really only pertain to the physical and virtual server components, not the macro level datacenter. VMware won the hearts and minds of the folks who were responsible for running the server stack, and the love affair continues to this day. This solidified the business classification of “VMware” to mean “virtualized compute,” and that definition has been hard to change.
When vSAN and NSX came along to virtualize and abstract the storage and networking layers, the business looked at those products as “compute” products, since they were put out by VMware (and ran within the VMware stack). And while server admins usually have a pretty good grasp of storage, networking – especially routing and security – remained a more elusive concept. VMware marketing just couldn’t seem to break away from their primary adopters and speak directly to the storage and networking folks. In addition, even when they had technical buy-in from the storage and networking team architects, operationalizing those components meant collapsing certain infrastructure roles, responsibilities, and capabilities onto a common stack, which often introduced some friction. After all, the storage and network admins never before needed to concern themselves with the performance constraints, architecture, and maintenance schedules of x86 servers.
VMware Cloud Foundation
This is an unfortunate mental gap that VMware has been trying to bridge for years, and it’s a critical component to getting a highly automated Private Cloud up and running. To help bridge the many complexities of instantiating and operating all the separate VMware products that create a Private Cloud, VMware came up with a single offering: VMware Cloud Foundation.
Originally released as the “Software-Defined Datacenter” (SDDC) in 2016, the product now known as VMware Cloud Foundation was an evolution on the “VMware Validated Design” practice. This new offering had a special management component – the SDDC Manager – that helped with the entire lifecycle, as version compatibility and integration methods were still very complicated between all the components that made up the stack; mainly vSphere, vSAN, and NSX, but also included SRM, vRealize Automation, etc. The ironic thing is that “VCF” was first used to describe the VMware architecture and offering when running on AWS (VMC on AWS); the very type of hyperscaler cloud that VMware is competing against when talking about on-premises Private Clouds.
The Future of the Datacenter
But the reality is that the future of the datacenter is hybrid. Active agreements with the large hyperscalers – AWS, Azure, GCP, and IBM – allow for on-premises-like operating model, but in the ‘cloud’. There are also hundreds of smaller and specialized Cloud Service Providers that use the VMware stack and can seamlessly extend on-premises workload operations off-prem. Most of these offerings also come with the added benefit of consistent cloud costs, as opposed to the massively variable ones you could encounter when using the Public Cloud’s native services.
VMware certainly isn’t alone with its hybrid cloud offerings, but the maturity of their product set and sheer number of partners in the ecosystem make it the most ubiquitous offering around right now. Couple that with the large talent pool of skilled practitioners and VMware’s proven track record – and a newfound R&D acceleration imperative from Broadcom – and you simply cannot go wrong with this product.
And while mentioning Broadcom, we should acknowledge the likelihood that most customers will be paying more for their renewals than they have in years past. There are few reasons for this:
- Subscription-based vs. perpetual + maintenance
- Processor core-based vs. socket (meaning higher-core count CPUs are more expensive to operate now)
- More products bundled into the SKU
That last bit – the product bundling – does actually make the per-product cost come out much cheaper than it was previously. But the ‘value’ of that is really determined by how you intend to use the product stack.
Adding Value to the Business
Objectively, Broadcom has done a great job of re-focusing and re-aligning VMware to be more focused on the primary mission of creating an excellent Private Cloud software stack with VCF. In the past, VMware’s business units were aligned with their customers’ technology units, meaning there was still a divide between the compute, storage, network, orchestration, and application platform software teams. By collapsing those separate silos into a cohesive business unit with a holistic vision for the VCF product, the development and delivery of VCF going forward will be extremely well-integrated.
VMware is also expanding their target audience from infrastructure operators (Cloud Admins) to the DevOps teams (Platform Admins) responsible for the application lifecycle. This, too, shows how committed they are to breaking out of their historical swim lanes in the name of progression, relevancy, and adding value to the business.
Many of the newest features in VCF 5.2 and upcoming 9.0 release help to curtail hardware acquisition costs, namely Advanced Memory Tiering with NVMe, vSAN Global Deduplication, and the ability to use multiple profiles (graphics and compute) on a single GPU. These technologies allow you to consolidate more VMs into the same or less memory, gain more storage efficiency so you can either use less physical storage or store more data, and utilize expensive GPUs for multiple applications. If you can offset some capex for the hardware by allocating a little more in opex for the software, it can either come out as a wash or potentially be better for your wallet.
And financial costs are just one business risk factor. Another is the risk of migration and/or refactoring. Many customers have decided that it’s just not worth the risk to the business to migrate to a new platform compared to the cost savings on licensing. And even then, the price you pay for licensing is not the total cost of ownership of the product. VMware is continuing to innovate and provide value to their customers using both the core feature set of vSphere and accelerating that value in operational efficiency for those that choose to see things differently and operate their on-premises infrastructure more like a Private Cloud.
To aid this endeavor, VMware has introduced several new import and migration / conversion utilities in VCF 5.2 which will allow for an easier and less risky transition from standard vSphere deployments to managing those existing assets in the SDDC Manager; thus, becoming a Private Cloud. This further exemplifies Broadcom’s approach to positioning the VMware solution stack to compete with the Public Cloud and provide a compelling reason to operate your cloud privately.
Hybrid Cloud Solutions from Mainline
Looking to get more benefit from your Hybrid Cloud solution? Mainline’s experts help our clients craft migration and strategy roadmaps to ensure a return on investment. Our goal is to create a cloud infrastructure that offers scalability, agility, and cost-effectiveness to deliver optimal business outcomes.
Our experts can assist you from the initial assessment through post-implementation support to selecting cloud services that can help you maximize and sustain business efficiencies. Contact your Mainline Account Representative directly or reach out to us here with any questions.
You may be interested in:
BLOG:The Case for Private Cloud – Part 1: A Winning Strategy
VLOG: VMware Multicloud Strategy (5:38 mins)
BLOG: 5 Cloud Compliance Best Practices You Need To Know