With more than 500,000 customers globally, VMware remains a proven leader not only in virtualization but also in all technologies related to digital transformation. This year marks 20 years since the creation of VMware by Diane Greene, Mendel Rosenblum, Scott Devine, Ellen Wang, and Edouard Bugnion in 1998.

VMware has always focused on virtualization and its flagship product—VMware vSphere—proves that this was the right choice. The first version of ESXi hypervisor was released in 2001 and the first version of vCenter was then released two years later in 2003.

The VMware vSphere suite includes ESXi (the evolution of ESX Server) for the virtualization layer and the vCenter Server for the management layer.

Compute virtualization is only the first step here; to move to a real cloud computing infrastructure, you will not only need to compute...

As well as the well-known vSphere product line, VMware has plenty of products available today. Let's have a look at the different segments that VMware currently covers.

VMware vSphere is a flagship in VMware's portfolio. However, there has been a rise in popularity of other products, as enterprise companies already broadly adopted VMware vSphere as a virtualization platform.

VMware vSphere has been around for more than 15 years now (the first version of a vCenter server with vMotion was released in 2003), yet with every new release, there are significant improvements.

Gartner named VMware as a leader in x86 virtualization Gartner's Magic Quadrant (MQ...

VMware Cloud on AWS is the only hybrid cloud solution that allows VMware vSphere customers to modernize, protect, and scale mission-critical applications leveraging AWS, the world's leading public cloud. With the inclusion of VMware Hybrid Cloud Extension (HCX) in the base offering, VMware has made it extremely easy to migrate applications at scale to VMware Cloud on AWS.

VMware Cloud on AWS provides the performance, availability, and scale required to support the most resource-intensive applications, including Oracle databases, middleware, applications, and Microsoft SQL Server. Running VMware vSphere, vSAN, and NSX on Amazon's EC2 dedicated, elastic, bare-metal infrastructure delivers the predictable, high-performance infrastructure required for these workloads:

In every VMware vSphere edition, there are a lot of new features available, and version 6.7 is no different. VMware vSphere 6.7 was released on April 17 2018, and by the end of 2018 there should be an upcoming U1 release.

At a high level, the new version focuses on the following four main areas of innovation:

• Simplified and efficient management at scale: There are several improvements in scaling and managing large deployments.
• Comprehensive built-in security: You should be able to run your workloads anywhere while still offering unmatched security features to your virtual machines.
• Universal app platform: Following the VMware vision, vSphere 6.7 could be a single platform to support...

VMware vSphere 6.7 does not represent a major release of vSphere compared to 6.5, but some exciting features might encourage you to think about going for the update. This is especially the case if you are interested in a hybrid cloud solution and interconnection with AWS; vSphere 6.7 is a clear way to go. Furthermore, the features described here are only available in the newest version of VMware vSphere. If you need to use some of those features, then make the update. There are almost no difference in configuration maximums, so scalability is probably not the most significant issue there.

Finally, don't forget to check that your physical hardware is supported by vSphere 6.7. This is necessary as there were some changes, especially with several CPU models that are no longer supported. Don't forget to consider all third-party code, including...

This chapter has covered a general overview of modern data center concepts as well as all key products and solutions from VMware.

In this chapter, we also covered VMware Cloud on AWS, a new option for utilizing VMware vSphere infrastructure as a service, its benefits, and guidance for migration from on-premises infrastructure.

We have also looked at new features of the vSphere 6.7 suite, comparing its evolution with the previous releases, and we have covered the differences between the most commonly used VMware vSphere editions currently available.

Finally, in this chapter, we have explained why you should or should not choose to upgrade to vSphere 6.7, and we have also briefly touched on upgrade paths from previous versions.

In the next chapter, we will focus on how to plan a virtualization project in order to build a proper infrastructure solution and reliable data center...

1. What are three essential products for fulfilling the SDDC concept?

a) VMware vSphere
b) VMware Cloud on AWS
c) VMware Site Recovery Manager
d) VMware vSAN
e) VMware Cloud Foundation
f) VMware NSX

2. Based on the following use case, which licensing option will be the most effective?

The customer has an existing central data center with VMware vSphere Enterprise Plus licenses. Additionally, the customer wants to deploy two secondary sites in a branch location, each serving only a small amount of virtual machines. The customer also needs to use vSphere Distributed vSwitch in branch locations:

a) VMware vSphere Enterprise Plus edition
b) VMware vSphere Essentials edition
c) VMware vSphere ROBO edition
d) VMware vSphere Standard edition

3. What are the benefits of using VMware Cloud on AWS?

a) Full integration with on-premises infrastructure
b) Deep integration of VMware...

For more information, feel free to check the following resources:

• Building VMware Software-Defined Data Centers: In this book, Valentin Hamburger explores the unified software-defined data center concept using all three essential products from VMware—vSphere, vSAN, and NSX. https://www.packtpub.com/virtualization-and-cloud/building-vmware-software-defined-data-centers.

• VMware cross-cloud architecture: If you are looking for unified hybrid cloud solutions, this book is the answer. https://www.packtpub.com/virtualization-and-cloud/vmware-cross-cloud-architecture/.

• VMware product pages: You can have a look at the official VMware product pages for additional white-papers, technical documentation, and datasheets of each product you are interested in.
  • https://www.vmware.com/products.html
  • https://labs.hol.vmware.com/HOL/catalogs/catalog/681