VMware – a partner for every cloud

It's a multi-cloud world, but it takes an integrated approach for organizations to achieve their digital transformation goals. Teaming up with VMware and standardizing on SDDC solutions that support both private and public clouds increases enterprise flexibility, security, and choice while rapidly reducing cost and risk.

Over the last two decades, VMware has been the leader in virtualization, and has held the top spot in Gartner's Magic/Leaders Quadrant for x86 Server Virtualization Infrastructure for more then seven consecutive years. VMware is positioned furthest in capability to execute and future roadmap vision in Gartner's latest report.

Customers can build a private cloud without any risk, which can extend seamlessly to compatible public clouds and run any application on any cloud.

We have to be very cautious when choosing a hybrid cloud provider compared to private or public cloud solutions. We have additional challenges such as integration, interoperability, and common operating environments in deciding a hybrid cloud provider over a public or private cloud.

We choose a private or public cloud based on customer applications and business objectives. We have to know the feasibility of applications while considering a hybrid cloud solution.

We are going to make use of a hybrid cloud for extending resources/services such as DR services from a private data center to a public cloud. We try to maintain uniform security, SLAs, and management as much as possible, so it is close to a private cloud, and achieve a common operating environment.

VMware vCloud Air

VMware's vSphere is one of the first tried and tested cloud operating platforms. vSphere hypervisor is rock solid in its performance and reliability to become a first choice for most of the cloud providers. VMware vCloud Air is a vendor agnostic public cloud platform running Microsoft, Linux, and vSphere supported operating systems and applications as per customer choice. It provides a consistent and certified platform suited to most operating systems, along with most of the applications running on x86 (32–64 bit) platforms (Intel/AMD). VMware uses the same vCloud software for both the private and public cloud deployments, along with all required APIs to keep seamless integration and management of resources.

VMware also helps in software defined networking (SDN) concepts and brings that exposure to the hybrid cloud through NSX and virtualizing both network and security components to achieve micro-segmentation.

Customers can get a hybrid cloud from VMware vCloud Air, as well as from vCloud Air partners who are certified to run VMware's vCloud Air services from different regions. Customers can optimize cost with various options to leverage VMware vCloud Air services.

AWS hybrid cloud

AWS doesn't have the privilege of providing a hybrid cloud service as compared to the other cloud providers. AWS helps customers run/host applications in their public cloud data center and utilize AWS in a hybrid environment to run their DR or extended services.

AWS is more focused on public cloud offerings and does not offer its cloud management software offsite to achieve common operating environments for both worlds. AWS leverages a direct connect service that bridges the customer's data center with a virtual private cloud (VPC) resource to get a hybrid solution. AWS has the best of the best resources and expertise to manage the hosted side of a hybrid cloud, but they don't have a roadmap for on-premises private clouds, although they are one of the best public cloud providers. Direct connect is a specific connection from a VMware or Microsoft private cloud, but is not a universal connector to integrate with other cloud providers.

The AWS GovCloud program is a hybrid cloud offering that uses AWS for on-site private clouds for the US government. AWS doesn't have this option for private customers.

AWS customers need a solution for private cloud management, and have a dependency on third-party offerings which increases Opex.

IBM Cloud for VMware solutions

IBM Cloud for VMware Solutions help customers to improve the cost per application, reduce Opex, and have the agility to extend applications/services to the IBM Cloud. You can benefit from both cloud models by expanding or migrating workloads/services using secure and seamless networking capabilities that work in heterogeneous environments, powered by VMware NSX. IBM Bluemix bare metal servers on IBM Cloud will provide you with all these services by maintaining full control and compliance.

IBM Cloud gives access to the VMware solution by managing resources as you are doing your data center. You can consume VMware software based on a pay-as-you-use model. IBM Cloud for VMware can help you with uniform management and regulatory governance for your hybrid cloud setup with a common networking and security operating model.

Solution features

The features listed are as follows:

• Uniform management: Self service provisioning portal, seamless access, and monitors and manages a hybrid cloud with the VMware tools and skill sets you already have
• Pay-as-you-go-model: Cost-effective CPU-based pricing of VMware software and pricing is per resource consumption
• Global data centers: IBM Cloud data centers have a footprint across North America, Europe, and Asia so you can get cloud resources in most of the places you require them
• Network virtualization: IBM Cloud data centers are built with robust networking infrastructure and virtualization software having the best bandwidth pipe and connectivity, which enables your applications to have the highest speed and reliability

Reference architecture

IBM Cloud for VMware Solutions is based on Cloud Foundation technology and it helps with deployment, migration, and management of these SDDC components in the IBM public cloud. You can partially deploy SDDC now to the IBM Cloud in an automated way rather than doing it manually. Deployment and configuration, which used to take several weeks, can be possible within a few hours.

This easy and simple deployment helps you to focus on other innovative works rather than putting your man hours and money into building your own environment. As you are able to create different setups on demand within a few hours, you have options to build both hybrid cloud solutions, expanding your private cloud and the IBM public cloud, as well as cloud-native solutions in the IBM public cloud. You will get disaster recovery or high-availability capabilities for your applications with the multi-cloud deployment model. The following image shows the versatile Hybrid Cloud platform:

VMware SDDC on IBM Cloud

The VMware components in IBM Cloudware are:

	VMware Cloud Foundation on IBM Cloud	The Cloud Foundation will automate your VMware software deployment. The VMware SDDC solution combines IBM Bluemix infrastructure with vSphere, .Virtual SAN, NSX, and SDDC Manager for a seamless hybrid cloud setup. You are able to use the same management tool to manage this setup without re-investing in resources or skill set.
	VMware vCenter Server on IBM Cloud	vCenter Server on IBM Cloud helps you in on-demand, automated deployments with integrated backup, which combines IBM Bluemix bare metal servers with vSphere and vCenter solution to create, deploy, and manage your virtual machines with scale up or scale out architecture as per customer requirements.
	IBM Bluemix Infrastructure with VMware software	You can optimize, expand or migrate your virtual machines to high-performance, global cloud resources. You can customize your deployment in a cloud infrastructure to extend your footprint around the world on demand, and manage it all with a management control that you are already familiar with.
	Cloud Professional Services	The Cloud Professional Services team helps you to plan, design, deploy, and configure VMware solutions on bare metal servers. They will help with integration, virtual machine migration, or application portability.

Choose your IBM Cloud and VMware Solution

IBM Cloud's data centers have a presence across North America, Europe, and Asia, which helps you to scale globally and also retain complete control and automation of your operations, both on-premises and in the public cloud.

IBM Cloud for VMware solutions

We will discuss high-level architecture of cloud deployment. The basic factors to start with cloud architecture and its deployment strategy are as follows:

• Cloud interfaces and formats must follow industry standards
• Information is needed to perform specific functions
• End-to-end monitoring of all resource usage by both the cloud consumer and provider
• Guarantee of reliability, availability, security, and performance
• Availability should be guaranteed at each and every layer
• Compliant identity separation to avoid leakage of data to other customers
• Full visibility and control
• Enhance productivity and rapid growth with transformation of IT setup
• Guaranteed data protection with full compliance and regulations
• Minimize manual operations with automated operations

Conceptual view

The conceptual view has three key roles—the Service Provider, Consumer, and the Cloud Broker, as depicted here:

Cloud Conceptual view

The cloud provider role is the most critical among all three of them. We can't define scale for a cloud infrastructure and its specific requirements easily. You have to plan and design cloud deployment and consider all SLAs while maintaining all regulatory governance and compliance.

Cloud providers manage the costs of all factors including the cost of space, building, cooling, utilities, and rack spaces. They have to define TCO/ROI per application for specific periods of time.

Logical view

Access layers comprise two functionalities: interfaces and network, as shown here. The cloud has different interfaces to interact with the underlying services and its management capabilities. The access layer has end-user facing interfaces along with operator defined capabilities. The following figure shows natively stack with compute, storage and network pools:

Cloud logical view

You can get the management capabilities for all types of services from a common cloud management layer. You get a holistic view and end-to-end visibility of the infrastructure through a unified management layer. The management layer is capable of supporting build time and runtime services.

Deployment view

Cloud deployment depends on the scale of deployment and the type of services. Private cloud implementations are very different compared to large scale public cloud infrastructures that support hundreds of customers.

Most public cloud deployments are big in scale and need to design mission critical infrastructure to achieve performance, availability, security, flexibility, and SLA goals.