VMware Introduces Next-Generation Hyper-Converged Software Enabling Simple, High Performance Infrastructure for the Software-Defined Data Center

PALO ALTO, CA--(Marketwired - February 10, 2016) - VMware, Inc. (NYSE: VMW), a global leader in cloud infrastructure and business mobility, today advanced its enterprise-proven, hyper-converged software with a new release of VMware Virtual SAN™. VMware is a leader in hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) software having sold to more than 3,000 customers in 21 months since the initial release of Virtual SAN.

As the optimal foundation for the software-defined data center, HCI systems are the fastest growing converged or integrated systems (1), and are expected to grow to $1.5 billion in revenues in 2016, according to IDC. (2) Combining software-defined compute, storage and networking capabilities with off-the-shelf x86 hardware, HCI systems simplify IT operations and increase performance while lowering IT capital and operating expenditures.

VMware's hyper-converged software, consisting of VMware vSphere®, Virtual SAN and vCenter Server™ transforms x86 servers and direct-attached storage into simple and robust HCI systems that help organizations reduce IT costs and management complexity while achieving breakthrough performance. In conjunction with its expansive partner ecosystem, VMware offers its hyper-converged software on the broadest set of consumption options from turnkey HCI appliances developed jointly by VMware and EMC to certified platforms in the form of VMware Virtual SAN Ready Nodes available from 11 OEMs.

"VMware's hyper-converged software is gaining customer traction due to its simple, cost-effective and high-performance architecture that enables customers to rapidly and predictably deliver infrastructure to meet business needs," said Yanbing Li, senior vice president and general manager, Storage and Availability Business Unit, VMware. "We anticipate that today's launch of VMware Virtual SAN 6.2, which delivers up to 10x greater storage efficiency, will further accelerate customer interest in hyper-converged infrastructure powered by VMware software to build out their software-defined data centers."

VMware Virtual SAN 6.2 Data Efficiency Features Increase Storage Efficiency by Up to 10x

VMware continues to rapidly evolve its hyper-converged software with VMware Virtual SAN 6.2, the fourth-generation of VMware's simple, enterprise-grade native storage for vSphere. This latest release introduces new advanced data efficiency capabilities for all-flash storage, in addition to new Quality of Service and performance and capacity monitoring capabilities. The new features will help customers to achieve a more cost-efficient performance, improve support for any application and accelerate time-to- value. With its new data efficiency capabilities, VMware Virtual SAN 6.2 will enable an all-flash HCI system for as low as a $1 per usable GB (3) and increases storage efficiency by up to 10x. (4)

New features will include:

• Deduplication and compression: Deduplication and compression optimizes all-flash storage capacity to provide as much as 7x data reduction with minimal impact on CPU and memory overhead.
• Erasure Coding (RAID 5/RAID 6): Erasure Coding helps increase usable storage capacity by up to 2x while maintaining the same high level of data resiliency.
• Quality of Service (QoS): New QoS capabilities will provide increased visibility, control and reporting of the IOPS consumed by each virtual machine helping to eliminate noisy neighbors.
• Enhanced performance, capacity, and health monitoring: New features in the unified management plane make it easier for all customers to predictably realize the benefits of HCI systems powered by VMware Virtual SAN.

VMware Virtual SAN is designed to be the optimal storage solution for VMware vSphere virtual machines. The software enables core storage services for virtualized production environments, with greater performance, scalability, flexibility, and lower latency and cost. Featuring storage policy-based management, VMware Virtual SAN shifts the management model for storage from the device to the application, enabling administrators to provision storage for applications in minutes. VMware Virtual SAN is ideal for a range of use cases including business-critical applications, virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI), remote office/branch office (ROBO), and test and development environments.

Extended Virtual SAN Ready Nodes to Ease Customer Procurement, Support and Deployment

In conjunction with the introduction of VMware Virtual SAN 6.2, VMware is unveiling extensions to VMware Virtual SAN Ready Nodes (pre-certified configurations of servers) through its OEM partners. To date, VMware has partnered with 11 server OEMs to deliver more than 100 systems certified to run VMware's hyper-converged software.

New extensions to the VMware Virtual SAN Ready Node program will provide OEM partners with the option to factory install VMware vSphere and VMware Virtual SAN with certified drivers and firmware to simplify day-one operations and accelerate customer time-to-value. Fujitsu, Hitachi Data Systems and Supermicro are the initial OEMs to offer these new VMware Virtual SAN Ready Nodes. These extended VMware Virtual SAN Ready Nodes can also be bundled with software licenses or can accommodate customer-provided licenses. Additionally, OEM partners have the ability to offer unified support for both hardware and software components.

These extensions will enable VMware and its ecosystem partners to continue to offer customers the broadest selection of consumption models and system configurations. Over time, additional partner Virtual SAN Ready Nodes offerings will be introduced. VMware anticipates further expanding consumption options for its hyper-converged software later this month by partnering closely with EMC to develop a next-generation hyper-converged appliance family that leverages technology from EMC, VMware and VCE.

Read what partners have to say about VMware Virtual SAN Ready Nodes.

Supporting Quotes

"In the past, we had limited ability to add storage or scale to meet our growing needs. Today with VMware Virtual SAN, I can add more disk on the fly without even thinking about it, and memory upgrades have become a breeze. I'm looking forward to the new Quality of Service capabilities of Virtual SAN 6.2 to allow us to manage performance SLAs for our core business applications including our automation systems, ERP system and databases." - Caleb Holmstrom, Network Administrator, Agropur Ingredients

"Using VMware, we reduced 21 physical servers down to a three-node cluster with local storage based on Virtual SAN. It exponentially increased performance. What used to take our users 30 to 45 minutes to accomplish -- entering grades or scheduling, for instance -- in the old environment, now takes less than five minutes. I'm looking forward to testing the new data efficiency capabilities of VMware Virtual SAN 6.2 on our all-flash storage system." - Kenny Wilder, Director of Network Infrastructure, Fulton County Schools

"As a leading travel website, we support up to 25 million monthly visitors searching through our database of 634,000 hotels. Through VMware partner PlusServer, we use VMware Virtual SAN for a high performance, resilient and scalable shared storage solution. It ensures our business-critical applications are up-and-running even during the busy summer and winter seasons when we experience a surge of traffic. Working alongside PlusServer, we are keen to explore the new capabilities in order to achieve even more value from VMware's hypervisor-converged storage for VMs." - Frank Rössler, Head of IT Operations, HolidayCheck

"As part of United Utilities overall digital strategy we have made major steps forward with our journey to building a software-defined data center. Taking advantage of hyper-converged infrastructure systems allows us to simplify our operations. VMware Virtual SAN provides us with enterprise-class storage services for our virtualized environments. It seamlessly integrates with vSphere and the entire VMware stack, bringing predictable scalability and high performance. With the latest release of VMware Virtual SAN, VMware continues to innovate and introduce key new features for software defined infrastructures, and that makes our job easier." - Jorge Grifo, Head of Infrastructure Architecture, United Utilities

Pricing and Availability

VMware Virtual SAN 6.2 is expected to become available in Q1 2016. VMware Virtual SAN list price starts at $2,495 per CPU. VMware Virtual SAN for Desktop list price starts at $50 per user.

Partners are expected to deliver new VMware Virtual SAN Ready Nodes throughout 1H 2016.

Join the VMware Online Event: Enabling the Digital Enterprise

VMware will conduct a live webcast on February 10 at 8:30 a.m. Pacific to outline how VMware's software-defined approach simplifies how to build and manage hybrid clouds. Get up to speed on how VMware is enabling high-performance hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) solutions through radically simple storage and a tightly integrated software stack. Register for the webcast here.

Additional Resources

• Access the Online Media Kit
• Read the Hyper-Converged Software Strategy Q&A with VMware's Yanbing Li
• Learn more about VMware Virtual SAN
• Connect with VMware on Twitter and Facebook

About VMware

VMware is a global leader in cloud infrastructure and business mobility. Built on VMware's industry-leading virtualization technology, our solutions deliver a brave new model of IT that is fluid, instant and more secure. Customers can innovate faster by rapidly developing, automatically delivering and more safely consuming any application. With 2015 revenues of $6.6 billion, VMware has more than 500,000 customers and 75,000 partners. The company is headquartered in Silicon Valley with offices throughout the world and can be found online at www.vmware.com.

This press release contains forward-looking statements including, among other things, statements regarding VMware's Virtual SAN 6.2 and Virtual SAN Ready Nodes products, the interoperability of these products with VMware's other products, the potential benefits of these products to customers and OEM partners and VMware's relationship with EMC and VCE. These forward-looking statements are subject to the safe harbor provisions created by the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Actual results could differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements as a result of certain risk factors, including but not limited to: (i) adverse changes in general economic or market conditions; (ii) delays or reductions in consumer, government and information technology spending; (iii) competitive factors, including but not limited to pricing pressures, industry consolidation, entry of new competitors into the virtualization software and cloud, end user and mobile computing industries, and new product and marketing initiatives by VMware's competitors; (iv) VMware's customers' ability to transition to new products and computing strategies such as cloud computing, desktop virtualization and the software defined data center; (v) factors that affect timing of license revenue recognition such as product announcements and promotions and beta programs; (vi) the uncertainty of customer acceptance of emerging technology; (vii) changes in the willingness of customers to enter into longer term licensing and support arrangements; (viii) rapid technological changes in the virtualization software and cloud, end user and mobile computing industries; (ix) changes to product and service development timelines; (x) VMware's relationship with EMC Corporation and EMC's ability to control matters requiring stockholder approval, including the election of VMware's board members and matters relating to EMC's investment in VMware, and any changes that Dell may implement following the completion of the Dell-EMC merger; (xi) VMware's ability to protect its proprietary technology; (xii) VMware's ability to attract and retain highly qualified employees; (xiii) the unsuccessful integration of acquired companies and assets into VMware; (xiv) disruptions to VMware's business resulting from the pendency of EMC's acquisition by Dell and the potential for loss of VMware customers due to uncertainty that the Dell-EMC transaction could have on VMware's business;(xv) the potential negative impact on VMware's stock price due to any confusion or uncertainty caused by the VMware tracking stock that is expected to be issued by Dell to EMC stockholders in the transaction; (xvi) disruptions resulting from key management changes; (xvii) pending or future stockholder litigation related to the Dell-EMC transaction; (xviii) VMware's ability to implement workforce reductions and other components of the plan in various geographies; (xix) possible changes in the size and components of the expected restructuring charges and cash expenditures; (xx) fluctuating currency exchange rates; (xxi) fluctuations and volatility in VMware's stock price; (xxii) changes in VMware's financial condition; (xxiii) changes in business opportunities and priorities that could cause VMware to consider alternative uses of cash; (xxiv) fluctuations in the level of cash held in the United States that is available for stock repurchases; and (xxv) changes in the dilutive impact in 2016 of shares issuable through VMware's equity compensation programs. These forward-looking statements are based on current expectations and are subject to uncertainties and changes in condition, significance, value and effect as well as other risks detailed in documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including VMware's most recent reports on Form 10-K and Form 10-Q and current reports on Form 8-K that VMware may file from time to time, which could cause actual results to vary from expectations. VMware assumes no obligation to, and does not currently intend to, update any such forward-looking statements.

VMware, Virtual SAN, vSphere, vCenter and vCenter Server are registered trademarks or trademarks of VMware, Inc. in the United States and other jurisdictions. All other marks and names mentioned herein may be trademarks of their respective companies.

1. IDC Hyperconverged Systems 2015-2019 Forecast, April 2015
2. IDC Hyperconverged Systems 2015-2019 Forecast, April 2015
3. VMware Virtual SAN hardware configuration created on Supermicro reseller website: www.thinkmate.com and assumes a 6x storage efficiency based on VMware testing of VDI workloads, December 2015.
4. Based on internal analysis and comparison to VMware Virtual SAN 6.1, December 2015