VMware Unveils the Easiest Way to Deploy and Operate the Software-Defined Data Center at Scale

SAN FRANCISCO, CA--(Marketwired - August 31, 2015) - Designed to dramatically simplify the build out and ongoing operations of software-defined data center at scale, today at VMworld® 2015, VMware, Inc. (NYSE: VMW) announced VMware EVO™ SDDC™ and VMware Virtual SAN™ 6.1.

Serving as the foundation of VMware's Unified Hybrid Cloud platform, the software-defined data center extends the virtualization principles of abstraction, pooling and automation across all data center resources and services. As a result, a software-defined data center is designed to be dramatically more efficient. By extending virtualization across the data center, IT organizations can slash CAPEX by as much as 49 percent(1) while reducing deployment and provisioning time from days to hours.

With the introduction of VMware EVO SDDC, customers will be able to more easily deploy and operate virtual infrastructure as a service; providing efficiency, agility and control for building and operating private, public and hybrid clouds. VMware EVO SDDC will include foundational components of VMware's hyper-converged infrastructure -- VMware vSphere®, VMware Virtual SAN and VMware NSX™ -- which will enable the convergence of compute, storage and networking onto a single, integrated layer of software that can run on any commodity x86 infrastructure.

The Easiest Way to Deploy and Operate the Software-Defined Data Center
VMware EVO SDDC (previously code named VMware EVO: RACK™), will be a fully automated software suite for delivering the software-defined data center as an integrated system. Enterprises and service providers will be able to use VMware EVO SDDC to deploy a software-defined data center at scale. With VMware EVO SDDC, IT organizations can meet key data center scale initiatives, ranging from application and infrastructure delivery automation to business mobility to high availability and resilient infrastructure, without compromising security, control or choice.

"Organizations have adopted the software-defined data center architecture to become more agile, responsive and profitable," said John Gilmartin, vice president and general manager, Integrated Systems Business Unit, VMware. "VMware EVO SDDC will bring to bear the entirety of our innovations across our software-defined data center portfolio in a comprehensive and integrated system that will be easy to deploy, operate and scale."

VMware EVO SDDC will include VMware EVO SDDC Manager™, a new intelligent automation engine that will simplify and significantly reduce the time required for power-up, provisioning and monitoring of virtual and physical resources, including software, servers, top-of-rack and spine switches. The EVO SDDC Manager will pool resources across multiple racks as a single "virtual rack" and can dynamically carve out workload domain capacity based on availability and performance requirements. VMware EVO SDDC Manager will provide automated lifecycle management of the entire hardware and VMware integrated software stack, including:

• Compute - VMware vSphere, the industry-defining virtualization solution, delivers a highly available, resilient, on-demand cloud infrastructure to run, protect and manage any application from business-critical to cloud-native applications.

• Storage - VMware Virtual SAN is the ideal storage platform for virtual machines, including business-critical applications. A 64-node VMware Virtual SAN cluster exceeds eight petabytes of storage capacity while delivering up to seven million input/output operations per second (IOPS) with nearly perfect linear scalability.

• Networking - VMware NSX is helping hundreds of customers realize the full potential of a software-defined data center. Integrated within VMware EVO SDDC, VMware NSX reduces the time to provision multi-tier networking and security services from weeks to seconds, abstracting virtual networks from the underlying physical network. VMware NSX also brings security inside the data center through micro-segmentation and automated fine-grained policies tied to the virtual machines.

• Cloud Management - VMware vRealize™ Operations™ provides intelligent operations management across physical, virtual and cloud infrastructures using predictive analytics and policy-based automation. The combination of VMware vRealize Operations and VMware vRealize Log Insight™ enables IT teams to combine and analyze structured and unstructured data for end-to-end operations management to help them improve overall performance and avert disruptions.

VMware EVO SDDC will also include Hardware Management Services to abstract the characteristics of heterogeneous switching, server and power distribution unit (PDU) hardware. Hardware Management Services will be responsible for executing hardware management tasks. VMware intends to offer this solution as open source code, enabling the company to work with a broad ecosystem of partners to drive ongoing development leading to broad hardware compatibility and improved technology.

VMware EVO SDDC customers will be able to easily add VMware Horizon® virtual desktops and VMware vRealize Automation™ to enable infrastructure as a service. In addition, VMware is exploring future integration between VMware EVO SDDC and VMware vCloud Director® and VMware Integrated OpenStack to support service provider environments.

Rack-scale offerings built and managed with VMware EVO SDDC will scale in capacity starting from one-third rack to multiple racks and thousands of nodes at single server increments. Each fully populated rack will support more than 1,000 infrastructure as a service virtual machines or more than 2,000 desktop virtual machines, delivering a highly efficient and scalable infrastructure for cloud and virtual desktop deployments.

Initially, the solution will be available via branded, integrated system offerings direct from partners Dell, QCT (Quanta Cloud Technology) and VCE. Over time, customers will also have the option to purchase the software direct from VMware, and then work with a pre-qualified partner to integrate the software onto hardware.

Learn more about VMware EVO SDDC.

VMware Virtual SAN 6.1, the Foundation of VMware's Hyper-Converged Infrastructure
VMware Virtual SAN 6.1 will increase data protection options for business-critical environments with the new Stretched Cluster Feature and enhanced VMware vSphere Replication™ providing five-minute Recovery Point Objective (RPO). Additionally, the latest release enables new advanced management and monitoring through deep integration with VMware vRealize Operations and a new Health Check Plug-In for performance monitoring, root cause analysis and capacity planning.

VMware Virtual SAN is designed to be the optimal storage solution for VMware vSphere virtual machines. The software will enable core storage services for virtualized production environments, with greater performance, scalability, flexibility, and lower latency and cost. VMware Virtual SAN is ideal for a range of use cases including business-critical applications, virtual desktop infrastructure, remote IT, and test / development.

In 15 months since its initial release, more than 2,000 customers have adopted VMware's industry-leading hyper-converged infrastructure stack globally. 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.

"Customers have adopted VMware Virtual SAN because of the simple, high-performance storage it offers for VMware vSphere virtual machines," said Charles Fan, senior vice president and general manager, Storage and Availability Business Unit, VMware. "The enhanced enterprise availability and data protection, new flash hardware device support, and advanced management and troubleshooting capabilities of VMware Virtual SAN 6.1 are examples of the rapid evolution of the storage software to meet the needs of enterprise customers."

Learn more about VMware Virtual SAN 6.1.

Supporting Quotes
"Our data center is 90 percent virtualized, and I see VMware Virtual SAN as a compelling hyper-converged storage solution for virtual machines," said Manu Mishra, senior systems engineer, Keck Medical Center. "We started the data warehouse production cluster with three Virtual SAN nodes. When we decided to add two nodes, it was a seamless process. We just dragged and dropped two new hosts into the cluster and our VMware Virtual SAN storage pool grew automatically. For that data warehouse, we no longer have to worry about managing conventional storage and can focus more of our attention on delivering projects that directly support the business."

"As one of the largest data center operators in the world, VMware EVO SDDC allows us to deploy a standardized, reliable and automated infrastructure solution at any data center location and rapidly deliver capacity to our tenants," said Indranil Sengupta, senior director of Cloud Service Development, NTT America. "The ability to scale quickly and seamlessly as customer demands rise will also enable us to better manage costs in-line with our total ICT outsourcing capabilities."

"After the merger of TUI AG and TUI Travel in 2014, TUI Group is now the world's No. 1 tourism business," said Christian Rudolph, Infrastructure Architecture Lead (NGI Programme), TUI. "Currently we have a total of 36 data centers geographically distributed throughout Europe. Our priority is to consolidate these 36 datacenters into two centralized locations within the next two years, and we are excited by the prospects of standardizing on VMware EVO SDDC for our next generation infrastructure."

Read Supporting Quotes from VMware EVO SDDC Ecosystem Partners

Pricing and Availability
VMware expects partners to ship initial VMware EVO SDDC integrated systems in the first half of 2016. VMware Virtual SAN 6.1 is expected to be generally available in Q3 2015.

Additional Resources

• Read the "Introducing VMware EVO SDDC -- The Fastest Path to the Software-Defined Data Center" blog post
• Read the "VMware Hyper-Converged Infrastructure: What's All the Fuss About?" blog post
• Read the "What's New: VMware Virtual SAN 6.1" blog post
• Watch Raghu Raghuram discuss VMware's Software-Defined Data Center Vision
• Read more about Keck Medical Center's use of VMware Virtual SAN
• Go to VMworld.com to watch a live stream of the VMworld 2015 Keynote today 10:00 a.m. PT
• Go to the VMworld 2015 Online Press Kit
• Connect with VMware on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+

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 2014 revenues of $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.

VMware, VMworld, EVO, EVO SDDC, EVO SDDC Manager, Virtual SAN, vSphere, NSX, EVO: RACK, vRealize, vRealize Operations, vRealize Automation, Log Insight, Horizon, vCloud, vCloud Director and vSphere Replication are registered trademarks or trademarks of VMware, Inc. in the United States and other jurisdictions. The use of the word "partner" or "partnership" does not imply a legal partnership relationship between VMware and any other company.

Forward-Looking Statements
This press release contains forward-looking statements including, among other things, statements regarding the expected availability, features and benefits to customers of VMware Virtual SAN 6.1, EVO:RACK and VMware EVO SDDC technologies, the expected availability, features and benefits to customers of the Unified Hybrid Cloud, future integrations of these technologies with other technologies, such as VMware's hyper-converged infrastructure and storage solutions and the potential impact of these technologies on the industry. 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) changes to priorities and spending allocations; (ii) adverse changes in general economic or market conditions; (iii) delays or reductions in information technology spending; (iv) competitive factors, including but not limited to pricing pressures, industry consolidation, entry of new competitors into the enterprise software and cloud computing markets, and new product and marketing initiatives by our competitors; (v) our customers' ability to develop, and to transition to, new products and computing strategies such as cloud computing and software-defined data centers; (vi) the uncertainty of customer acceptance of emerging technology; (vii) rapid technological and market changes in virtualization software and application platforms for enterprise computing; (viii) changes to product development timelines; (ix) the successful interoperability and integration of the technologies involved; (x) VMware's ability to protect its proprietary technology; and (xi) VMware's ability to attract and retain highly qualified employees. 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 our most recent reports on Form 10-K and Form 10-Q and current reports on Form 8-K that we 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 after the date of this release.

(1) "For Lowest Cost and Greatest Agility, Choose Software-Defined Data Center Architectures Over Traditional Hardware-Dependent Designs," Taneja Group, August 2014