This article is more than 1 year old

Network virty comes to VMware's cloud

vCloud Air gets closer to servers-by-the-hour and hangs out the 'startups wanted' sign

VMware's made some tweaks to its vCloud Air public cloud.

The biggie is the addition of network virtualisation. VMware looks to have baked just about all of its NSX network virtualisation platform into its cloud, so users get very fine-grained control over how data flows among virtual machines. Presumably this spans private clouds and vCloud Air.

Disaster recovery is an obvious cloud service: VMware has it and so does Microsoft, both in hybrid mode. VMware's offering now has multiple recovery points, failback from the cloud to primary data centres and more automation. Virtzilla's also taken strides towards becoming a servers-by-the-hour cloud. vCloud Air has, to date, offered rather structured consumption options, usually with either up-front commitments to required resource levels. The new vCloud Air Virtual Private Cloud OnDemand offering is touted as “pay-as-you-go” infrastructure.

VMware's blunt about its cloud being different to the likes of Azure, AWS and Google's. The company doesn't mind people showing up with credit cards and a workload, but is far more interested in hybrid clouds in which its management software oversees rigs that span on-premises bit barns and vCloud Air.

The changes announced today may offer more AWS-style flexibility, but also improve to VMware's hybrid story.

We can expect more such improvements in the first week of February, when what looks certain to be the launch of vSphere 6 - whatever it's called – unfurls.

VMware's also kicked off an incubation program for cloudy startups. vCloud Air Edge is flinging US$100k of vCloud Air credit at early-stage cloud outfits. VMware promises to help participants hone their ideas and wares, and take them to market if it looks like a good idea to do so. ®

More about

TIP US OFF

Send us news


Other stories you might like