vShield Endpoint Now Available to vSphere Customers!!

With the Introduction of vSphere 5.1, all the editions (essential plus or higher) of vSphere have the vShield Endpoint component bundled along with them. This basically means that you would no longer have to shell out dollars to use the functionality of Endpoint. This enables you to offload the Anti-Virus tasks to a service virtual machine, which runs on each ESXi server to ensure that all the malicious activities and data can be scanned on this service VM. This protects your virtual machines against virus attacks and other malicious activities. This will also avoid any Storage, CPU or RAM bottlenecks which might be seen in the environment due to traditional Anti-Virus Scans using an anti-virus agent inside each virtual machine.

As mentioned before, with the release of vSphere 5.1, Endpoint functionality is available at no extra cost to customers with valid SnS contract for Essentials Plus or higher. vSphere 5.1.x, 5.0.x and 4.0 U3 customers can download Endpoint from the respective vSphere download pages. No Endpoint license is needed.

Once you have the EndPoint service VM, you can use vShield Manager to configure this for all the ESXi servers in you data-center  Now, you would need to go to your anti-virus vendor and get to the version of antivirus which supports the Endpoint appliance. This will allow you to migrate from the primitive methodology of anti-virus scans and make your virtual infrastructure more robust, secured and efficient.

The diagram below gives you a visualization of how this works using Trend Micro Deep Security:-

Courtesy: Trend's Website

Below is the list of the popular Antivirus vendors who have already developed a solution around vShield Endpoint:-

> McAfee MOVE Antivirus

> Trend-Micro Deep Security

> BitDefender Security for Virtualized Environment

> Kaspersky Security for Virtualization

On the Roadmap (Source: Google Search)

> Symantec Endpoint

> F-Secure

> Sophos

> Lumension

and many more to come......

VMware KB - Downloading and enabling vShield Endpoint on supported vSphere platforms

I can see that most of the existing and new security vendors would develop around Virtualization as they all understand that their products need to adopt the Virtualization and Cloud agility as well. Looking at the benefits this is a more futuristic approach of providing endpoint security in a data-center. I can see this change taking us towards the era of, Anti-Virus as a Service (AVaaS) where-in Security vendors would provide customized endpoint products to data-centers and end users as a commodity service. 

Another contribution to the Cloud from VMware. Kudos!!


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Update to Article    Monday, December 3rd, 2012
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As per the latest market update, Symantec today announced availability of its first anti-malware software protection that supports VMware's security architecture known as vShield, becoming the latest anti-malware vendor to do so following similar moves by Trend Micro, Kaspersky Lab and McAfee, among others.
Symantec Endpoint Protection (SEP) 12.1.2 can be used to scan, detect, block and remediate against anti-malware....

More can be read here -

http://www.networkworld.com/news/2012/120312-symantec-vshield-264655.html

VMware vCloud Suite makes Software Defined Data-centers a Reality!!

In one of my previous posts I wrote about VMware vSphere 5.1 - What's new with this version?, however now it is time to talk about VMware's vCloud Suite which was launched at VMworld 2012, San Francisco. As you might have heard it was the most comprehensive release of VMware or for that matter any software vendor which enables Cloud Computing. However, this has just been beefed up further by VMware with the announcements made at VMworld 2012 Barcelona.

VMware with its innovative products around the Infrastructure, Application and End User layer has been helping the customers with creative solutions to take care of technology and business issues. However, with the birth of vCloud Suite, VMware has just solved the puzzle by bringing together all the pieces and create a complete picture of how a Comprehensive, Multi-Platform, Multi-Cloud Service Provisioning & Management solution should look like.

Pheww... that sounds a lot right? But yeah, its true... With all its acquisitions and new product developments,  VMware created some confusion in the market place. This confused state of mind was because of the fact that a few people and organizations could not really understand the vision of where VMware is going. This vision, however was much bigger, and way ahead of a lot of claiming competitors, as this really transforms the term cloud computing into a Software Defined Data-center. 

Without further a-do let me give you a high level overview of what VMware has to offer with its vCloud Suite and how it will change the dynamics of the Virtualization & Cloud Industry.

To begin with, lets see what all VMware vCloud Suite has to offer in its new Avatar..

vCloud Suite 5.1 (Announced at VMworld 2012, San Francisco)

A lot of VMware customers and partners looked at this suite and said WOW, this makes sense. And if all of this functionality comes together in a package then I would want it. However, there were questions around the future of this Suite as there was still a huge acquisition which did not show up on this suite. Yup, DYNAMIC OPS, if you are new to this affair then read the acquisition announcement on this link...

It was not too late before the Virtualization and Cloud community got the answer to this question. Not even 2 months and VMware unveiled a beefed up version of its vCloud Suite 5.1 yesterday at VMworld 2012 in Barcelona.

Yup, if the features which are mentioned in the picture above were not enough for you and you wanted more, then I can bet the next picture would "Sweep you off your Feet". Lets see what the vCloud Suite 5.1 looks like now. The Orange boxes in the image show the changes from the previous announcement.

vCloud Suite 5.1 (Re-Announced at VMworld 2012, Barcelona)

Well that Suite is certainly way more than what I expected. Talk about the the most enhanced hypervisor, a proven cloud framework, software defined networking/security, application provisioning, disaster recovery, management capabilities & to top it all a provisioning solution which allows you to provision on  multiple-clouds and  multiple-platforms. I am sure this will suffice the needs of most of the cloud service providers, enterprise customers and the small and medium businesses which are looking towards adopting the Cloud.

One last thing, lets have a look at a block diagram which completes this picture. I got this one from office of the VMware CTO - Steve Herrod.

So get ready to get your data-centers revamped with the all new vCloud Suite and take a giant step forward towards the cloud with confidence.With this, I would close this article and would look forward to blog more on each individual piece and how it makes your data-center agile, automated and managed.

I would leave you with a few more links which would provide you more information on each of these building blocks:-

- vCloud Suite Overview @VMware.com 

- VMware vCloud Suite 5.1 Licensing, Pricing and Packaging

- Updates to vCloud Suite Cloud Management Capabilities Announced at VMworld Barcelona

Applications you can Virtualize on VMware vSphere Platform

Everytime I jump into any consolidation project, the first question I face is usually about whether the applications which are currently running on a Physical Server can be Virtualized or not. In-fact  their have been situations when I have got a list of 800 applications from one of our Partners to know if they can be virtualized... 

Well I have written about my stand on such questions in one of my post "VMware vCenter Server - Physical vs. Virtual". Here is the extract from that article.....

"People often ask me this question not only for vCenter but for all the other applications which they want to Virtualize. My answer to them is usually this "PLEASE ASK THE APPLICATION VENDOR". The team and the organization who have developed the application know the best about the attributes of the application hence they should be able to tell you whether an application can be virtualized or not."

Well as mentioned, the application vendor is the best person to tell, however here is the link to Major global software vendors broadly support customers running their applications on VMware environments.

"3693 Applications and Counting - http://vmware-alliances.force.com/supportedapps

Currently there are 3600+ applications certified to run on vSphere and there are more adding this list. The good part is that if you do not find your application here, you can submit the name of the app on this page and VMware along with the ISV community would work on getting the name on the list after conducting the required tests... 

This list is the one which has been created with the help of VMware Alliances and though its comprehensive, it might not be complete. I appreciate this repository from VMware as this speaks about the confidence of VMware customers in Virtualizing the business and infrastructure applications running in their data-centers.

Hope this would help some taking decisions around Virtualizing those applications which you thought were not supported. 

VMware vCenter Server - Physical vs. Virtual

This post is coming straight out of discussions I had with a client about, "How a vCenter Server should be deployed?". Since vCenter manages a virtual infrastructure you can either install it on a physical x86 server or as a Virtual Machine.

vCenter is an important machine and I have written about the importance of Protecting the VMware vCenter Server in one of my articles - Providing Protection & High Availability to a VMware vCenter Server. I would recommend you read this in order to understand the importance of taking the decision of keeping your vCenter Physical or Virtual.

People often ask me this question not only for vCenter but for all the other applications which they want to Virtualize. My answer to them is usually this "PLEASE ASK THE APPLICATION VENDOR". The team and the organization who have developed the application know the best about the attributes of the application hence they should be able to tell you whether an application can be virtualized or not.

vCenter being a VMware application, let's see what VMware has to say about Virtualizing the vCenter Server. As per page number 2 on the following white paper, VMware says - "Users can run vCenter Server in a virtual machine or on a physical server. We recommend running vCenter inside a virtual machine."

Sweeeett.. I believe the recommendation is exactly inline with my thought process... If you cannot Virtualize your own application (the vCenter Server) which is CRITICAL for a Virtual Infrastructure, you cannot really ask the application owners to Virtualize their critical apps on the VMware vSphere platform... Hence this is a great point which IT today can take to their application owners and convince them to Virtualize whatever fits on a VMware virtual machine today (I guess everything with vSphere 5.1. Read What's New - 5.1 to know more...)

Great, apart from the story of "Eating your own Dogfood", let's look at some other reasons which would help us take this decision around virtualizing vCenter or NOT.....

Well the above points are just a snapshot of what I think and I believe these pointers give you good enough reasons to decide whether your vCenter should be Virtual or Physical. 

I remember someone asking me a question which was "What will happen if the Virtual Machine which is running the vCenter goes down due to an ESXi server failure??"

The answer is that VMware HA will still work since it does not require vCenter to be up and running.. So if you have a HA cluster, you can be sure that you will get back the control on your environment as soon as the vCenter Virtual Machine is up on any other host in the cluster with the help of HA. 

What will happen if your PHYSICAL vCenter Server goes down??? I will leave you with this thought for now... :-)

Yup, Virtual is Better for me....

Hope this helps you take a decision on what is best for your environment..... Do share your thoughts if any!!

Choosing the Platform for your Virtual Center. vCenter Server Appliance(vCSA-Linux) vs vCenter (Windows)!!

With the release of vSphere 5.0 in 2011, VMware just increased the options for its customers to chose between the traditional vCenter Server which was installed on a 64 bit Windows OS and the freshly baked, Linux Based - vCSA (vCenter Server Appliance).

Though the intention behind this does not look like going away from Microsoft dependency :-) for vCenter. I hear this a lot from a lot of people, however VMware's decision of a Linux based vCenter is more from a customer demand perspective. Customers who are not Windows Centric or in other words are Linux based shops would not want to install a Windows Based Application in there environment as this would increase the cost of acquiring Windows Licenses and most importantly a resource to manage this Windows server.

With this, let's quickly have a look at both the platforms and see which one is the best!!

I would say this is not a fight between which is a better platform, however the decision between selecting the platform depends upon what suits your environment the best.

I hope this will help you take a decision around which option is better suited for your environment.

I would recommend you go through my other articles about vCenter Server which would help you take important decisions around this application which provides you centralized controls and management of your VMware Virtual Infrastructure.

VMware vCenter Server - Physical vs. Virtual

Providing Protection & High Availability to a VMware vCenter Server

Share your thoughts, use the comment option to open  and discussion points.