Today, VMware made several announcements during its virtual event (and there is even more!).

VMware Tanzu

VMware Tanzu is a portfolio of products and services that enable enterprises to deliver better software faster. It was already announced at VMworld 2019 and is now finally here. A quick run down of the 3 components included.

• VMware Tanzu Kubernetes Grid is a Kubernetes runtime that helps customers install and run a multi-cluster Kubernetes environment on the infrastructure of their choice. It is designed to run Kubernetes consistently across any environment including data centers, hyperscalers, service providers, and at the edge.
• VMware Tanzu Mission Control is a centralized management platform for consistently operating and securing Kubernetes infrastructure and modern applications across multiple teams and clouds. It provides operators with a single control point for consistent management across environments and increased security and governance. Developers have self-service access to resources so they can get code into production faster.
• VMware Tanzu Application Catalog delivers a customizable selection of open source software from the Bitnami catalog that is verifiably secured, tested, and maintained for use in production environments. The service gives developers the productivity and agility of pre-packaged apps and components while enabling operators to meet the stringent security and transparency requirements of enterprise IT.

This solution allows companies to build applications and run them anywhere. Think about the Multi-Cloud possibilities which allow you to easily change between on-premises and clouds.

VMware Cloud Foundation 4

VMware Cloud Foundation 4 with Tanzu will provide hybrid cloud infrastructure with consistent management for both VM-based and container-based applications while delivering security and lifecycle management across software-defined compute, storage and network resources. The platform helps to bridge the gap between developers and IT.

VMware Cloud Foundation 4 with Tanzu includes the following components:

• New vSphere 7: Newly rearchitected using Kubernetes, vSphere is now optimized to run both modern container-based and traditional virtual machine-based workloads. Initially, vSphere 7 with Kubernetes will be available solely through VMware Cloud Foundation 4.
• New vSAN 7: To provide storage virtualization including File Services and Cloud-Native Storage for modern apps.
• New vRealize 8.1: To provide self-driving operations and modern infrastructure automation capabilities for virtualized, cloud-based and containerized workloads and applications.
• NSX-T: To provide full-stack networking and security services that connect and protect VMs and containers.

Here we have it folks, a new major vSphere version!

Interesting new features in vSphere 7

vSphere 7 brings several improvements such as an improved vSphere Lifecycle Manager, redesigned DRS with a more workload centric approach and vMotion improvements to provide non-disruptive operations to mission critical workloads.

With version 7, there is also the possibility of using Kubernetes (for now only available through VMware Cloud Foundation). VMware Cloud Foundation Services consists of two families of services -Tanzu Runtime Services and Hybrid Infrastructure Services. Powered by innovations in vSphere 7 with Kubernetes, these services enable a self-service experience through Kubernetes APIs.

The full document with changes is available via the official VMware website.

vSAN 7

There is a lot of new good stuff coming in the industry-leading hyperconverged infrastructure software. For more information, check out the official VMware blog.

Get started today!

VMware Tanzu Application Catalog, VMware Tanzu Kubernetes Grid, and VMware Tanzu Mission Control are all available today.

Other solutions are all expected to become available by May 1, 2020 (such as VMware vSphere 7, VMware vSAN 7, VMware vRealize Automation 8.1 and VMware vRealize Operations 8.1).

Important to understand is that VMware vSphere 7 will be available in two major configurations. The first configuration, vSphere with Kubernetes, will be available in VMware Cloud Foundation 4 with Tanzu to power container- and VM-based applications. vSphere 7 will also be available in a configuration for VM-based applications in a number of editions including VMware vSphere Standard Edition.