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The 2014 edition of VMworld US is started and, as usal, there are several news related to the VMware world (by the way, if you are not attending at VMworld, don’t miss the VMware NOW online event). Some are well know (like VVOLs or recent company acquisition), other will revealed during this event.

But apart the news themselfvel, the focus and the vision of VMware is evolving in this years to something more cloud oriented, or at least more and more close the cloud’s pillars: Abstrastrion, Automation and Agile.

The VM is still present (and most of the policies are VM centric), but the triple-A is driven the evolution. Starting from the Software Defined Datacenter (SDDC), that (in VMware’s vision) is still the Future of IT.

In in the SDDC there are the (from my point of view) most interesting news on how integrate it with other components or frameworks (lots related to OpenStack) and how build and managed it.

About how build a SDDC there are three different approaches:

  • “Build Your Own” using tradition hardware components (e.g. compute, storage, networking) procured separately and configured to build your infrastructure
  • “Converged Infrastructure” using traditional data center components (e.g. shared storage hardware, servers, switches) integrated and sold in a single chassis
  • Hyper-Converged Infrastructure by integrating hardware (compute, storage and networking) with software that provides a single point of entry for SDDC lifecycle management

Blocks like VCE vBlock, Dell vStart, HP Cloud Systems, IBM PureSystems may falls in the second approach, although their software may provide functions in the third approach.

One of the big news of this VMworld is the EVO:RAIL solution that will simplify how you buy, deploy and operate your SDDC. It’s not a “building block” provided by VMware, or at least is not only a building block, but more attentions is focused on the provisioning and management part. But I will describe it in a dedicated post.

What could be more interesting is that the EVO name will define a new family where EVO:RAIL is just one product (the first one). This will be also delivered in a different way: route to market through qualified EVO partners (similar in the concept on how vSphere could be sold through a pre-installed OEM channel). But in this case will be ONLY thought this way: if you want to play with EVO:RAIL you must buy an entire solution or use the Hands on lab.

Is not clear it which other EVO component will be available, and if all of them will be available only with this approach, but is reasonable that EVO will define a new family of ready-to-run products (and maybe existing VMware View partnership in prebuild system may evolve in a new EVO: component).

Let’s see… the EVOlution is just started.

PS: the origin of the EVO name is not clear (EVO:RAIL was previously called Project Marvin), but the idea that EVO could rappresent an evolution is also used by other bloggers (for example see this post).

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Virtualization, Cloud and Storage Architect. Tech Field delegate. VMUG IT Co-Founder and board member. VMware VMTN Moderator and vExpert 2010-24. Dell TechCenter Rockstar 2014-15. Microsoft MVP 2014-16. Veeam Vanguard 2015-23. Nutanix NTC 2014-20. Several certifications including: VCDX-DCV, VCP-DCV/DT/Cloud, VCAP-DCA/DCD/CIA/CID/DTA/DTD, MCSA, MCSE, MCITP, CCA, NPP.