vSphere 7 Core Storage

vSphere 7, there are some exciting new storage features and interoperability. Under  core storage, we’ve added external connectivity to NVMe device with NVMeoF, shared VMDKs for Microsoft WSFC, and in VMFS, optimized first writes for thin-provisioned disks. On the vVols front, many products our customers use were not supported. Many of our engineering groups have been hard at work, adding support for vVols. SRM, CNS, and vRops now support vVols! 

Support for NVMeoF

vSphere now supports NVMe over Fabrics allowing connectivity to external NVMe arrays using either FC or RDMA (RoCE v2). As NVMe continues to grow and become the preferred storage, being able to connect to external NVMe arrays is critical. With this first iteration partner and customers will be able to evaluate NVMeoF.

Shared VMDKs

No one really likes RDMs, but in many cases, they are required for clustered applications. In this release, we have added another avenue to migrate off RDMs. VMFS6 with vSphere 7 now supports SCSI-3 Persistent Reservations. Now you can migrate your Microsoft WSFC to VMFS using FC connectivity.

Affinity 2.0

Thick or Thin provisioned disks has, and continues to be, a topic of discussion with each having its pros and cons. The most common con of thin provisioning is the overhead of the first write to unused space. With the new Affinity Manager, that impact has been reduced by creating a Region Map of available resources, thus avoiding the back and forth between the file system and Resource Manager to find available space.

vVols Interoperability

vVols’ increasing growth and adoption has customers asking for support in many of VMware's other solutions. In vSphere 7, there has been a significant advancement in getting vVols supported by other products.

SRM support for vVols

As one of the biggest asks, vVols support in Site Recovery Manager which has been in development for about a year. We showed tech previews at VMworld last year, and there was quite a bit of interest. Numerous customers have been waiting for SRM support before moving to vVols. The wait is over, and it is finally official; SRM 8.3 now supports vVols! For more information, here's the link to SRM.

vROps support for vVols

Another popular request was the support of vVols in vRealize Operations (vROps). The question often arose, “Why can’t we see vVols datastores in vROps, it’s just another datastore?” Well, with the release of vROps 8.1, vVols datastores are now supported.

CNS support for vVols

Kubernetes is quickly becoming the standard for deploying new applications. With its modular and scalable functionality, it allows organizations to quickly ramp and adapt their applications. In vSphere 7, we have added support for vVols as persistent storage in CNS, allowing the use of an SPBM policy to map to a Storage Class. This allows for simplified management of your CNS infrastructure while utilizing the benefits of vVols. With this release, vVols snapshots and replication are not be supported.

VCF

VMware Cloud Foundation allows organizations to deploy and manage their private and public clouds. VCF currently supports vSAN, VMFS, and NFS for principle storage. Customers are asking for support of vVols as principle storage; while the VCF team continues to evaluate and develop that option, it is not available. In the meantime, vVols may be used as supplemental storage after the Workload Domain build has completed. Support for vVols as supplemental storage is a partner supported option.
 
I hope this has been informative and thank you for reading!

VMware Cloud Foundation 4 (VCF)

VMware announced VMware Cloud Foundation 4 during the App Modernization in a Multi-Cloud World online launch event.  VMware Cloud Foundation 4 brings together the latest innovations in VMware vSphere 7, VMware vSAN 7, VMware NSX-T, and VMware vRealize Suite 2019, along with new capabilities from VMware Tanzu to support Kubernetes, cloud native architectures and app transformation in your business.

VMware Cloud Foundation has already been shown to reduce TCO for organizations who build their hybrid cloud on the VMware Cloud Foundation platform.  By delivering enterprise agility, reliability, and efficiency from initial deployment through Day 2 operations, Cloud Foundation helps you to deploy the full HCI stack as the foundation of your private cloud.

Complexity of Modern AppsWe know that modern applications are rapidly evolving.  They are being deployed more often and are needed faster to meet line of business objectives.  Modern apps can be built using a combination of VMs, containers, microservices and serverless functions.  As such, a hybrid cloud platform that only supports virtual machines is insufficient to meet the needs of today’s applications.

VMware Cloud Foundation 4 brings full-stack integration of the HCI infrastructure layer together with native Kubernetes capabilities built into the stack to provide an automated, turnkey hybrid cloud solution that will help you manage complex Kubernetes environments, deliver a developer experience that greatly reduces risk and increases IT operational efficiency.

By consolidating Kubernetes clusters & VM workloads on the Cloud Foundation platform – managed with existing vSphere tools, processes and skillsets – customers will recognize improved economics.  That same platform can extend across the Hybrid Cloud to deliver the portability of vSphere-based workloads to modern apps.

VMware Cloud Foundation 4 adds a new component to the full HCI stack – VMware Tanzu Kubernetes Grid.  With Tanzu Kubernetes Grid, developers can manage consistent, compliant and conformant Kubernetes clusters running on vSphere through Kubernetes tools and restful APIs.  At the same time, vSphere 7 with Kubernetes (previously known as ‘Project Pacific’) will deliver hybrid infrastructure services, all accessible through Kubernetes and RESTful APIs, including:

• vSphere Pod Service extends Kubernetes with the ability to run pods directly on the hypervisor. When developers deploy containers using the vSphere Pod service, they get the same level of security isolation, performance guarantees and management capabilities that VMs enjoy.
• Registry Service allows developers to store, manage and better secure Docker and OCI images using Harbor.
• Network Service allows developers to manage Virtual Routers, Load Balancers and Firewall Rules.
• Storage Service allows developers to manage persistent disks for use with container, Kubernetes and virtual machines.

Together with vSAN 7, NSX-T and vRealize Suite 2019, Tanzu Kubernetes Grid and vSphere 7 with Kubernetes deliver a new level of consistency in infrastructure and operations across hybrid clouds.

I hope this has been informative and thank you for reading!