A lot has happened since my last post in the run-up to VMworld San Francisco, especially from a management standpoint. Now with VMworld Barcelona in full swing, I wanted to circle back and show how VCE’s investments are delivering value for customers and partners. The new version of VCE™ Vision Intelligent Operations provides exciting functionalities for our customers, specifically around leveraging the integrated management experience that VCE and VMware have developed together.
The VCE Vblock System is the only converged infrastructure that delivers multi-vendor, API-driven, single point of visibility, inventory and reporting, but we aren’t stopping there. We’ve extended the Vblock System’s VMware vCenter Server plugin by coupling our “Intelligently Control” functionality with the “Intelligently Inform” functionality. Originally designed to verify the compliance of software and firmware versions, the updated plugin can now remediate any updates that need to be made from the same interface, providing full System Update Automation capabilities. Now, customers do not have to jump from siloed tool to siloed tool in order to update the storage, network, compute and virtualization components that are supporting their workloads – they can do it all from the one tool VCE customers use the most.
Next, we’ve extended that same compliance engine to include a new Security Compliance and Validation feature. Our investors have a long tradition with security hardening practices, as well as allowing customers to validate and report that hardening practices are in place as the infrastructure evolves. Now, customers can complete this task from the same vCenter Server interface – a unique and much-requested feature. If you read between the lines, you’ll see that the combination of a real-time inventory, a full-fledged Vblock Object Model and a compliance engine will provide many beneficial possibilities for Vblock customers in the future!
These features are the headliners of the new VCE Vision release, but certainly aren’t the only updates. We’ve also made updates to the API in the areas of Serviceability and Diagnostic Tools, giving customers more context in management data being generated by their Vblock Systems. Lastly, we’ve extended the roles-based access model to include more third-party management tools, allowing customers to better integrate their existing investments into the VCE Vision API.
The new features and roadmap are exciting, but the feedback from partners, analysts and customers is equally important. Make sure you watch our new video on VCE Vision, below. The video shows Trey Layton, VCE’s chief technology officer, describing VCE Vision’s new features, as well as proof points from Ramin Sayar, VMware’s senior vice president and general manager of virtualization and cloud management, Mark Bowker, ESG senior analyst, and Russell Temple, the director of the data center practice group at Insight.