Live from VMworld Europe 2014: Most important announcements summarized

After VMworld 2014 US, it’s now time for VMworld Europe 2014 in Barcelona, Spain. For a wrap-up of what has been announced in San Francisco, I want to refer to an article I’ve published earlier: Live from VMworld 2014: Most important announcements summarized. This article summarizes the most important announcement of VMworld Europe 2014:

• Introduction of the vRealize Suite;
• vRealize Operations 6.0;
• vRealize Management Packs;
• vRealize Log Insight;
• vRealize Automation 6.2;
• vRealize Codestream.

The introduction of the vRealize Suite

Although the vRealize brand was already introduced at VMworld USA, the actual products + versions are announced at VMworld Europe. Soon available are:

• vRealize Operations 6.0
• vRealize Automation 6.2
• vRealize Log Insight 2.5
• vRealize Business Std 2.0
• vRealize Business Adv/Ent 8.2
• vRealize Operations Insight 6.0
• vRealize Codestream 1.0
• vRealize Air Compliance

vRealize is the new name for all vCenter Operations management products. For your convenience I have listed the old and new names in the following table:

As you can see vRealize comprises both an on-premises version and a vRealize-as-a-Service in a SaaS offering for most of the products. Also new is vRealize Operations Insight, which is actually an add-on for vSOM with vCops Standard replaced by vCops Advanced and vCenter Log Insight added to the package. As well as vRealize Codestream and Air Compliance are new products and not included in the table because there’s no old name. I would like to refer to some articles on vRealize I have published earlier on my blog:

• Live from VMworld 2014: A closer look at VMware vRealize.
• New license: Upgrade vSOM with vCops Standard to vCops Advanced, also available as vRealize Operations Insight.
• And read: What you can(‘t) do with vRealize Operations Insight.

vRealize Operations 6.0

VMware is launching vRealize Operations 6.0 (f.k.a. vCenter Operations Manager or vCops) which is a complete rebuild of the original vCops product. Although the philosophy of the product remains the same, vRealize Operations is running on a completely new codebase. The product now includes a scale-out architecture as opposed to the scale-up architecture of the original product. Also new: one interface for both the standard & advanced dashboard. The interface integrates better with the interfaces of other VMware products. The next table lists all the enhancements of vRealize Operations 6.0:

To get an idea how the new interface will look I have included a few screen dumps of vRealize Operations 6.0:

vRealize Operations Management Packs

A new feature of vRealize Operations is the availability of so-called Management Packs. A management pack is the new name for what used to be a vCops adapter, but there’s more. A management pack also includes some initial dashboards which will make dashboard development easier. A management pack can also include the relationship definition between the components that are being monitored. The development of management packs is not VMware only anymore but can be done by companies specialised in building the management packs. For example, take a look at the website of Blue Medora who are developing management packs for Oracle, NetApp and SAP.

vRealize Log Insight

The latest version of vRealize Log Insight is 2.5. vRealize Log Insight includes some improvements:

• First phase of multi-tenancy;
• Performance improvements;
• Data integration with vCenter Operations;
• Localization;
• Internal load balancer for scale-out;
• Hosts overview administration;
• Extension of Universal Collection Framework for Linux
• Real-time Dashboard Presentation Mode

vRealize Automation 6.2

VMware vRealize Automation 6.2 is the latest version of VMware’s cloud automation solution, formerly known as vCloud Automation Center. Improvements in this product are:

• Enhanced integration between vRealize Operations and vRealize Automation, which actually means that vRealize Automation will display health information gathered from vRealize Operations in the self-portal. As such, users of the self-service portal will get information on how their virtual machines are doing…straight from the operations management suite.
• Enhanced endpoint support, including support for vSphere 6, XenDesktop 7, improved vCloud Air support and Open Stack support;
• Admin friendly CLI, simplify scripting of vRealize Automation commands;
• Additional ease of use and supportability enhancements: vRealize Automation now includes a one-click generation of a support bundle across all components.
• Resource reclamation is improved and now includes improved identification of idle resources with an automated action. vRealize Operations information is used for this new option.
• Introducing CloudClient, a command utility that provides verb-based access with a unified interface across the vCAC APIs. Available as a separate download in Q4 2014, CloudClient will also support vCAC 6.1.

vRealize Code Stream

vRealize Code Stream is a new VMware management product which streamlines and automates the software delivery process. It provides governance and visibility across the entire release process. It enables a rapid and reliable push out of frequent software releases.

Also check the website of my co-worker Marcel van den Berg for some additional announcements.