VMware enhances vRealize Cloud Management

VMware has announced a series of updates to its portfolio of vRealize Cloud Management tools, with the new features aimed at improving infrastructure automation, bolstering security and improving the overall performance of hybrid and multi-cloud environments.

One of the most significant enhancements included in the new roll-out is the availability of vRealize Automation 8.3. This includes self-service multi-clouds, network automation and greater security. The new capabilities and features include:

• Property groups – providing the ability to create, update, read and delete property groups with predefined data, helping customers to work more efficiently by reusing groups of properties, tracking resource usage and storing metadata.
• Security properties – allowing the creation of a secure variable in Cloud Assembly and applying it to a cloud template or ABX action, which in turn enables customers to secure sensitive data in encrypted form.

Security is also a strong focus of the update and a range of new features are available through vRealize Operations, using AI and predictive analytics to deliver improved security capabilities. These include continuous performance, capacity and cost optimisation, proactive planning, intelligent remediation and integrated compliance.

Improved security features in vRealize Operations 8.3 and vRealize Operations Cloud include adherence to data security standards and the availability of Cloud Configuration Maximums, which provides customers with better visibility into their VMware Cloud limits and their consumption relative to those limits.

On the networking front, VMware has announced vRealize Network Insight 6.1. When combined with vRealize Network Insight Cloud, this enhances machine learning across the virtual and physical infrastructure to give an end-to-end network view. The new features here include:

• Multi-cloud - VMware Cloud on AWS edge router interface statistics for improved network troubleshooting
• NSX-T integrations - data from NSX Intelligence can now be integrated for more application-centric network operations and troubleshooting visibility
• VMware SD-WAN - new analytics capabilities providing better service level agreement (SLA) monitoring and visibility with SD-WAN link utilisation and metering

And finally there’s a new version of Skyline, the company’s proactive support service. This provides customers with expanded visibility into vulnerabilities, whilst also including 31 new proactive findings and recommendations.

Purnima Padmanabhan, senior vice president and general manager in the Cloud Management Business Unit at VMware emphasised the overall importance of the new features, saying: “As more businesses pursue cloud as an agility strategy, vRealize Cloud Management helps customers run their applications anywhere while maintaining consistent operations and common governance across all environments”.