VMware, Inc.,
a global leader in cloud infrastructure and business mobility, today
advanced its enterprise-proven, hyper-converged software with a new
release of VMware Virtual SAN.
VMware is a leader in hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) software
having sold to more than 3,000 customers in 21 months since the initial
release of Virtual SAN.
As the optimal foundation for the
software-defined data center, HCI systems are the fastest growing
converged or integrated systems (1), and are expected to grow to $1.5
billion in revenues in 2016, according to IDC. (2) Combining
software-defined compute, storage and networking capabilities with
off-the-shelf x86 hardware, HCI systems simplify IT operations and
increase performance while lowering IT capital and operating
expenditures.
VMware's hyper-converged software, consisting of VMware vSphere, Virtual SAN and vCenter Server
transforms x86 servers and direct-attached storage into simple and
robust HCI systems that help organizations reduce IT costs and
management complexity while achieving breakthrough performance. In
conjunction with its expansive partner ecosystem, VMware offers its
hyper-converged software on the broadest set of consumption options from
turnkey HCI appliances developed jointly by VMware and EMC to certified
platforms in the form of VMware Virtual SAN Ready Nodes available from
11 OEMs.
"VMware's hyper-converged software is gaining customer
traction due to its simple, cost-effective and high-performance
architecture that enables customers to rapidly and predictably deliver
infrastructure to meet business needs," said Yanbing Li, senior vice
president and general manager, Storage and Availability Business Unit,
VMware. "We anticipate that today's launch of VMware Virtual SAN 6.2,
which delivers up to 10x greater storage efficiency, will further
accelerate customer interest in hyper-converged infrastructure powered
by VMware software to build out their software-defined data centers."
VMware Virtual SAN 6.2 Data Efficiency Features Increase Storage Efficiency by Up to 10x
VMware continues to rapidly evolve its hyper-converged software
with VMware Virtual SAN 6.2, the fourth-generation of VMware's simple,
enterprise-grade native storage for vSphere. This latest release
introduces new advanced data efficiency capabilities for all-flash
storage, in addition to new Quality of Service and performance and
capacity monitoring capabilities. The new features will help customers
to achieve a more cost-efficient performance, improve support for any
application and accelerate time-to- value. With its new data efficiency
capabilities, VMware Virtual SAN 6.2 will enable an all-flash HCI system
for as low as a $1 per usable GB (3) and increases storage efficiency
by up to 10x. (4)
New features will include:
-
Deduplication and compression: Deduplication and
compression optimizes all-flash storage capacity to provide as much as
7x data reduction with minimal impact on CPU and memory overhead.
-
Erasure Coding (RAID 5/RAID 6): Erasure Coding helps increase usable storage capacity by up to 2x while maintaining the same high level of data resiliency.
-
Quality of Service (QoS): New QoS capabilities
will provide increased visibility, control and reporting of the IOPS
consumed by each virtual machine helping to eliminate noisy neighbors.
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Enhanced performance, capacity, and health monitoring:
New features in the unified management plane make it easier for all
customers to predictably realize the benefits of HCI systems powered by
VMware Virtual SAN.
VMware Virtual SAN is designed to be the optimal storage
solution for VMware vSphere virtual machines. The software enables core
storage services for virtualized production environments, with greater
performance, scalability, flexibility, and lower latency and cost.
Featuring storage policy-based management, VMware Virtual SAN shifts the
management model for storage from the device to the application,
enabling administrators to provision storage for applications in
minutes. VMware Virtual SAN is ideal for a range of use cases including
business-critical applications, virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI),
remote office/branch office (ROBO), and test and development
environments.
Extended Virtual SAN Ready Nodes to Ease Customer Procurement, Support and Deployment
In conjunction with the introduction of VMware Virtual SAN 6.2,
VMware is unveiling extensions to VMware Virtual SAN Ready Nodes
(pre-certified configurations of servers) through its OEM partners. To
date, VMware has partnered with 11 server OEMs to deliver more than 100
systems certified to run VMware's hyper-converged software.
New
extensions to the VMware Virtual SAN Ready Node program will provide OEM
partners with the option to factory install VMware vSphere and VMware
Virtual SAN with certified drivers and firmware to simplify day-one
operations and accelerate customer time-to-value. Fujitsu, Hitachi Data
Systems and Supermicro are the initial OEMs to offer these new VMware
Virtual SAN Ready Nodes. These extended VMware Virtual SAN Ready Nodes
can also be bundled with software licenses or can accommodate
customer-provided licenses. Additionally, OEM partners have the ability
to offer unified support for both hardware and software components.
These
extensions will enable VMware and its ecosystem partners to continue to
offer customers the broadest selection of consumption models and system
configurations. Over time, additional partner Virtual SAN Ready Nodes
offerings will be introduced. VMware anticipates further expanding
consumption options for its hyper-converged software later this month by
partnering closely with EMC to develop a next-generation
hyper-converged appliance family that leverages technology from EMC,
VMware and VCE.
Pricing and Availability
VMware Virtual SAN 6.2 is expected to become available in Q1
2016. VMware Virtual SAN list price starts at $2,495 per CPU. VMware
Virtual SAN for Desktop list price starts at $50 per user.
Partners are expected to deliver new VMware Virtual SAN Ready Nodes throughout 1H 2016.