VMware Explore 2024 in Las Vegas just finished, so here are the key take aways:

  • VMware Cloud Foundation 9
  • VMware Private AI Foundation with NVIDIA
  • VMware Tanzu Platform 10
  • Software-Defined Edge Innovations

Watch recordings of sessions I recommend:

You can check out the recordings of all the sessions here: https://www.vmware.com/explore/video-library/search

Outlook: VMware Explore 2024 Europe will be held as usual in Barcelona Nov. 4-7.

In the following sections, let’s go a bit more in the details of each of the headlines.

VMware Cloud Foundation 9

VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 9 focuses on improving cloud operations with unified management, optimized performance for data-intensive workloads, enhanced networking, and greater support for modern application development.

Unified Operations & Multi-Tenancy

VCF 9 is designed to streamline operations by offering a unified lifecycle management system. This approach simplifies the management of cloud resources, improving efficiency while reducing the operational burden of managing different environments. Multi-tenancy is another key feature, allowing organizations to securely and efficiently partition resources for different users, teams, or customers within a single infrastructure. This capability supports enterprises looking to offer more customized services to departments or external clients while maintaining security and resource isolation.

Performance Enhancements with Memory Tiering

Performance Enhancements with Memory Tiering: A highlight of VCF 9 is its introduction of memory tiering capabilities. Leveraging NVMe technology, VCF 9 optimizes the allocation and management of memory resources, leading to better performance for applications that require intensive data processing, such as artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) workloads. This enhancement allows enterprises to boost system responsiveness and overall performance without compromising efficiency.

AI Integration and Kubernetes Support

AI Integration and Kubernetes Support: VCF 9’s integration with NVIDIA AI frameworks is another step toward facilitating AI and ML workloads. The platform provides the infrastructure necessary to support the increasingly common AI-driven applications that enterprises use to gain insights from their data. The inclusion of Kubernetes also strengthens VCF 9’s support for modern application development, enabling organizations to manage containerized applications seamlessly alongside traditional workloads.

Improved Networking and Storage

In terms of storage, VCF 9 integrates even more with VMware’s vSAN technology, optimizing storage resources through new features like integrated vSAN global deduplication, Native vSAN-to-vSAN Data Protection with Deep Snapshots, and vSAN ESA Stretched Site Recovery. Additionally, VCF 9 brings significant networking improvements with enhancements to VMware’s NSX platform, which provides faster switching capabilities and simplifies VLAN-to-VPC migrations, making networking more efficient.

VMware Private AI Foundation with NVIDIA

Broadcom announced new capabilities coming to VMware Private AI Foundation with NVIDIA with the VCF 5.2.1 release coming later this year, after making the joint platform between Broadcom and NVIDIA generally available in May 2024.
New capabilities to be released with VCF 5.2.1 are:

  • Model Store enables MLOps teams and data scientists to curate and provide secure LLMs with integrated access control (RBAC).
  • Guided Deployment streamlines the workload domain creation workflow and deployment of other components of VMware Private AI Foundation with NVIDIA.
  • NVIDIA NIM Agent Blueprints are reference AI workflows for specific use cases that enable enterprises to build their own generative AI flywheels.
  • NVIDIA NIM is a set of easy-to-use microservices designed for secure, reliable deployment of high-performance AI model inferencing across public and private clouds, and workstations.

VMware Tanzu Platform 10

Broadcom introduced VMware Tanzu Platform version 10, which builds on Cloud Foundry’s approach to accelerating application delivery with standardized golden paths to production for developers and platform engineers. Tanzu Platform 10 also automates both application and platform management tasks such as patching vulnerabilities, performing rolling upgrades, and enforcing policies with broad visibility and AI-powered insights.

It includes features like:

  • A Cloud-Foundry-like developer experience for Kubernetes.
  • Enhanced contextual app-to-platform visibility across Cloud Foundry foundations or Kubernetes clusters across availability zones.
  • A “built-in” service binding to connect apps to middleware and databases, and automatically manage credentials and connection strings.
  • Spring application security, compliance audits, policy enforcement, and automated CVE remediation with new Application Advisor.
  • Significantly faster start-up times for Spring applications with enhanced Java buildpacks in Tanzu Spring, commercial Spring features built into Tanzu Platform.
  • Elevated compliance enforcement and vulnerability management with Tanzu Salt. 
  • Auto-provisioned and hardened OSS databases and messaging.

Tanzu Platform now includes Tanzu AI Solutions, which enables rapid, safe development of generative AI-powered applications. Tanzu AI Solutions also delivers GenAI observability and monitoring to address accuracy and performance with root cause analysis for apps and large language models (LLMs).

Furthermore, Tanzu Platform 10 provides the following new capabilities:

  • Air-gapped environment support for off-network, self-managed, private cloud environments.
  • Global Server Load Balancing and Advanced Networking.
  • Hardened VM and OSS images available through the Tanzu Application Catalog are now integrated directly into Tanzu Platform hub.

Software-Defined Edge Innovations

Broadcom has announced initial integration of VeloCloud SD-WAN points of presence (PoPs) with Symantec PoPs. This integration will further automate cloud access without compromising performance and security. VeloCloud SASE, secured by Symantec customers will also benefit from higher bandwidth and availability, lower latency, and global reach to major cloud and SaaS providers.