VMware brings on-prem cloud connectivity to vSphere, vSAN

VMware is upgrading vSphere virtualization and vSAN hyperconverged software packages to better manage and efficiently meld on-prem applications with cloud-based resources.

The company introduced two subscription-based offerings: vSphere+ and vSAN+ that integrate cloud connectivity into both, enabling cloud services for workloads running on vSphere, but specifically targeting on-premise apps. The packages will include all necessary components such as VMware vCenter instances, VMware ESXi hosts, Tanzu Standard Runtime, and Tanzu Mission Control Essentials and support.

“Despite the recent trend of cloud migration many customers are choosing to keep many of their workloads on prem, or on the edge for a variety of reasons, such as data privacy, security, or in some cases, apps may have different requirements in performance and latency,” said Weiguo He, senior director of product marketing at VMware. “Here we are bringing cloud services and features to private data-center workloads, giving customers the best of both worlds.”

With the new services customers deploy a cloud gateway on-prem and connect the gateway to VMware Cloud Console workloads on other platforms, He said. Organizations can then register any number of vCenters in the console and convert them to subscriptions. There is no disruption to the host and workloads, which remain on-prem. 

Both vSphere+ and vSAN+, which will be available by the end of July,  can be managed via the VMware Cloud Console  that offers global inventory, configuration, alerts, administration, and security status for on-premises deployments, according to VMware executives.

Administrators will also be able to perform certain operational tasks from the VMware Cloud Console such as provisioning VMs to any vSphere cluster or existing vSAN datastores, the company stated. In addition, organizations will be able to quickly add other cloud services such as security and disaster recovery, and add additional compute or storage capacity in the cloud as needed, He said.

The  goal is to manage cloud resources across private on-prem clouds and multiple public clouds from a single console.

The new services stem from the company’s development plan known as Project Arctic that promises to bring multi-cloud to the fingertips of vSphere customers by natively integrating cloud connectivity into vSphere. That would make vSphere cloud-aware, and make hybrid cloud the default operating model, VMware executives stated.

The new VMware packages come on the heels of a report from IDC that estimated that half of the spending on server and storage infrastructure in 2021 was driven by on-premises deployments. IDC expects that these investments will continue to grow in the next five years at a compound annual growth rate of 2.9% and will reach $77.5 billion in 2026.

The researchers found that 71% of respondents to a survey expected to move all or part of their workloads currently running in the public cloud into a private IT environment over the next two years. Just 13% expect to fully run in a public cloud.

VMware competitors are also in on the act, with HPE this week announcing new GreenLake services that target enterprise on-prem deployments. The company rolled out GreenLake for Private Cloud Enterprise, which lets users integrate private-cloud applications into the GreenLake framework. The service opens options for organizations subject to heavy regulation, or those with operational concerns about putting their data in the public cloud, the company said.