VMWare Goes Crazy For The Cloud With vSphere 5

Virtualization giant VMware has launched a new version of its vSphere platform and a new cloud infrastructure suite that should help SMBs build cloud-based solutions. At a media event in San Francisco, Stephen Herrod, VMware’s CTO, said that this is VMware’s "largest coordinatedrelease of software we’ve ever done."

VMware CEO Paul Maritz spoke at the Tuesday morning event at length about how virtualization and the cloud are changing the way users interact with information, and "we’re taking the next step in the journey to this more coordinated world." Maritz also prefaced the introduction of the company’s new cloud infrastructure suite by pointing out that for the cloud to grow, cloud computing needs to "become easier to manage" and "less costly to operate."

Additionally, VMware representatives spoke about the hybrid cloud model, where the new technology will give customers the flexibility to take apps from the internal private cloud and push them out to a public cloud, and vice versa, when switching between cloud service providers.

Along with vSphere 5, VMWare has introduced a new cloud infrastructure suite that adds several layers to the new generation of vSphere. These new layers include the company’s vCenter SRM and Operations product, which provides advanced monitoring and management of the infrastructure. A notable enhancement is the vCenter Site Recovery Manager, which enables users to replicate data from the primary site to secondary sites, providing better localized performance, as well as support for business continuity or disaster recovery requirements.

For those leveraging the new cloud layers, vCloud Director will prove to be a valuable ally. It combines cloud visibility with management into a portal application, which offers a simplified way for users to customize their cloud experiences. It serves as an eye into the suite and as a mechanism with which users can modify their cloud experiences. VMware said it incorporated a "much requested" function into this layer called vCloud Director 1.5 with Linked Clones, which reduces the virtualization provisioning time to as few as 5 seconds and saves storage space up to 60%.vSphere 5, which replaces version 4, is an evolution of vSphere, and adds some 200 new and enhanced features that are designed to improve management of the platform and performance of business-critical applications stored in the cloud.

Primary enhancements to vSphere include: