Lead Image © ucadp, 123RF.com

VMware vRealize management suite for hybrid clouds

Interlocked

Article from ADMIN 60/2020

By Martin Loschwitz

VMware positions its vRealize management suite to make hybrid cloud/on-premises setups palatable to customers.

VMware has provided classic on-premises datacenter solutions with solid performance and support through ESXi, vSphere, and vCenter. With the rise of public clouds, to keep up with the times, VMware added products such as VMware NSX, an Open vSwitch extension, and the OpenStack compatibility layer.

About a decade ago, VMware also added a whole suite of tools under the vRealize label that enables the operation of hybrid workloads in public clouds and private virtualization environments. Since its debut, vRealize Suite [1] has matured, and version 8.1 was released in 2019. In this article, I discuss the components of vRealize and question their usefulness for you in everyday life.

VMware Before the Cloud

VMware has been making a name for itself in IT for decades as a provider of comprehensive virtualization solutions. Although VMware products often come with lavish price tags, the vendor delivers solid products for the cost. Anyone who has ever worked with ESXi and vSphere or vCenter knows that a well-designed interface provides the most frequently used functions in the context of classic virtualization, such as migrating a system from one host to another.

VMware is in complete command of these actions: live migration, high availability, and fully automated failover when a server goes down. None of these tasks present a major hurdle for VMware. Reliability is one of the reasons many administrators hardly bother looking at products by other vendors during their entire IT career. True to the saying, "Nobody ever got fired for buying VMware," you buy what you know and are happy that it works.