vCloud Design Patterns Weds 10:30

- Packed session - mostly architects in the audience.
- vCloud Director is several integrated products aimed at bridging private and public clouds - you may need further 3rd party tools until VMware plug any gaps.
- Virtualization of the infrastructure continues to be the basis - vCloud is an additional layer - aim is for consumer not to know what's going on "under the hood"
- vCloud Director includes the vCloud API
- vCenter Chargeback and vShield Edge (virtual appliance) and Manager (one per vCenter) are critical components to bring protection and billing
- vRequest Manager brings the workflow piece
- One vCloud Director database supports multiple vCloud Director instances
- vCloud Director needs Oracle which, due to licencing, may exclude the use of a VM for vCloud Director!
- Best practice is to separate the management of clusters of resources from vCloud reource management
- Create your VM clusters based on service qualities.  Create VDCs around consumer organisations.  So a VDC may use resources from across the VM clusters
- The VM clusters have networks to external resources, organisations have networks and vApps have networks between them
- No longer need to create resource pools in the VM clusters - vCloud director becomes the manager of resources
(Comment - there are 3 presenters and they are clearly feeling their way through this stuff as they "clarify" each others' presentation.  Lots of use of the term "we're trying to" which doesn't come across as completely confident)
- Organisations are the security boundaries
- An Organization vDC maps 1:1 for a provider vDC service offering - So Org A Gold, Org A Silver, Org B Gold, Org B Silver etc.
- vApps allow templates of VMs - e.g. 3 tier apps as one package - installed, configured and then booted in the correct order.
- vShield can apply at vApp network to Organisation network and/or from Organisation network to External network
- Some use cases being demonstrated
- Cloud resource group restrictions - no FT, no SRM - need to discuss back up solutions with storage suppliers if they are using vStorage API.  A bit fuzzy on who needs to recover from back ups - looks like its not the consumer
- Organisation vDCs can use a number of different resource allocations and aligned chargeback models, including metered pay as you go

Looks like it would be good to try this for dev and test environments where we can tie down SLA and resource allocations to dev groups and charge appropriately - they can then deploy and destroy vApp stacks as they wish within the organisation.

Bella Hall A Tuesday 09:50 Steve Herrod - Tech Innovation & Demos

- vSphere will aggregate across all the infrastructure - internal and external services
- Automate through policy
- Drive to be open and interoperable (comment - but is this really open or is it a vision of VMware being omni-present?)
- Talking about the new features in vSphere 4.1
- Pushing vMotion improvements and I/O QoS
- Pushing vSphere Essentials for small companies
- Announcing vCenter client to the iPad and available in the iTunes store later in October
- Have purchased Integrien for collating events and systems performance
- Making comparisons between ease of use of apps and services at home and the rigidity and lack of agility at work
- Strap line is IT as a Service - Optimizing IT Production for Business Consumption
- App store is equivalent to a service catalogue - use directory services to define who can have access to what apps
- Matching service offerings to business requirements should be visible to the consumers along with pay per use pricing - where the app runs should not be visible to the consumer
- vShield re-launched in support of the virtual data centres - partnering with McAfee and others
- vShield Endpoint protects each VM from the hypervisor
- vShield App is a logical firewall
- vShield edge - boundary protection
- Using vShield internally and in your cloud provider enables secure hybrid cloud
- more than 2,000 ISPs are now offering VMware vCloud services and many of them are adding vCloud Director and vShield - eg Colt, Verizon, Terremark

Eddie Durnell on stage - going to demo vCloud
- service catalogue
- hooks up VMs into a service with a simple diagram
- consumers see a virtual datacenter of services available to them, but they have no idea of where those services are being provided
- aggregates vCenters and datastores internally and ISP provider data centres - same look and feel

VMware vFabric
- New "open" apps fabrics - framework for developer, common platform services - includes vmforce and Google App Engine - will allow apps to move across clouds. Spring now but will add Ruby on Rails, PHP etc.
- Making open, but propose more value if run on VMware products

End User Computing
- Optimizing Windows via View 4.5- offline support (and sync back), Mac OS, Win 7, vShield Endpoint compatible
- Claiming sub $500 virtual desktop costs
- Promoting a move from device-centric to user-centric (comment - still, no suprise here)

Noah joings the stage to demo project Horizon (!)
- allows matching of SaaS apps to users and which devices they can use for each app - permits single sign ons via integration with AD (so federated security then)
- VMware View Client is coming for the iPad
- Horizon is re-formatting the app to suit the device, including screen size and integrated sign on
Audience applause is loudest so far - they must be impressed