More about VMware Virtual Datacenter OS

Summary of the keynote given at VMWorld VMware conference sep 2008:

* Virtual Infrastructure 4.0 itself has not been announced, yet the major components have already been introduced:

* Virtual Datacenter OS [VDC OS] consists of the following:

o the hardware/interaction layer:
vCompute - platform that interacts with the hardware, with vCompute the hardware specifications have been adapted to:
# 8 virtual CPUS
# 256GB per VM
# 40 GB/s network throughput
# up to 64 nodes per cluster
# up to 4906 cores to manage
# full support for DPM
* vStorage - new features have also been announced on the level of storage. VMFS and storage vMotion will be extended with stroage thin provisioning and linked clones
* vNetwork - the network layer functionalities have been improved with virtual distributed networking and support for 3rd party solutions.

o the application layer:
# vAPP: gives applications priorities and SLA levels (hello legal disagreement with Microsoft?)
# VMware FT: high availability with 2 vMs in sync (like Marathon Technologies everrun VM)
# Security (shouldn’t that be vSecurity?): VMsafe APIs on the way

o The management layer
# Virtual Center - vCenter with chargeback, performance optimization, orchestration and many other modules
# vCenter server component will be available for Linux (as virtual appliance)

We have not yet received any confirmation on the general availability of VI4 (of which VDC-OS will be a big part), yet the solution seems to be in beta or beta 2.