VMware Joins OPEN-O Project

VMware Inc. (VMW), based in Palo Alto, Calif., Today announced that it has joined the Open-O project, an open source project organized by the Linux Foundation.

OPEN-O, focused on network virtualization (SDN) and network virtualization functions (NFV), is part of a larger initiative represents a global and technological effort to advance network operations. (See also: Facebook Open Compute supports Cisco).

Strengthening the position with service providers

OPEN-O is intended to provide telecom operators, cable and end-to-end cloud orchestration in the NFV, SDN and legacy networks. As a new "platinum" member, VMware will assist the Board and technical management and marketing committees to stimulate the wave of innovation in orchestration and open standards-based.

VMware hopes that by joining OPEN-O, it will remain at the forefront of technology to provide support for the transformation of 400 communications service providers (CSPs) and telecommunication companies around the world for accelerated innovation and service Starts faster, easier and cheaper than before.

These CSP telecommunications operators and are able to benefit from a converged network and application services platform that combine network architectures, cloud, mobility and IT. VMware joins many other network providers as well as some of the largest operators in the world, including China Mobile, Hong Kong Telecom (HKT) and China Telecom in the OPEN-O project.

"The implementation of NFV NFV requires a robust infrastructure and agility that offers the kind of complete NFV orchestration and multi-cloud project that Open-O is committed to deliver," said Gabriele Di Piazza, vice president of telecommunications solutions NFV VMware Group. "Customers will ultimately choose the path that will help them achieve their goals of the best digital transformation."

By joining OPEN-O, VMware is expanding its position as a major player in defining the evolution and adoption of NFV by Telecommunications operators.

VMware removes hard-coded root access key from vSphere Data Protection

VMware has released a patch for vSphere Data Protection (VDP) to modify a hardcode SSH key that could allow remote attackers to gain root access to the virtual device.

VDP is a backup product and restore disk that works as an open virtual device (OVA). It integrates with VMware vCenter Server and provides centralized management of backup tasks for up to 100 virtual machines.

According to the VMware support article, the vSphere Data Protection Device (VDP) contains a static SSH private key with a known password. This key enables interoperability with EMC Avamar deduplication solution backup and recovery software, and is preconfigured in the VDP as AuthorizedKey.

"An attacker with access to the internal network can take advantage of this to access the device with root privileges and more to complete a complete transaction," VMware said.

The Company believes that this is critical and the development of a solution that can be copied and executed on the device to change the default SSH key and set a new password.

Developing devices with access to encrypted information that users can not change is a serious security weakness. Unfortunately, it was a common practice in the past and vendors have tried cleaning up such errors from their devices for years.

Tuesday, VMware has also fixed a cross-site scripting vulnerability stored in its vSphere Hypervisor (ESXi) product. The fault is considered important.

"The problem can be introduced by an attacker who has permission to manage virtual machines through ESX host or client to trick the vSphere administrator to import a designed virtual machine," the company said in a statement. "The problem can be activated on the system from which ESXi client host is used to manage the designed virtual machine."

VMware has released security patches for ESXi 5.5 and 6.0 to address this issue and advises users not to import virtual machines from untrusted sources.

How Amadeus Leveraged The Cloud And VMware To Help The Travel Industry

Travelers want to spend less money when they make arrangements, and they rely more and more on apps and websites to keep costs low.

It's high-pressure work to keep these digital services running at optimum performance at a reasonable cost, said Wolfgang Krips, executive vice president, Global Operations and General Manager, Amadeus IT.

"And on top of that, you have to build your innovation, which means new business services," he said.

Amadeus, a multinational IT service provider, fire 3 billion a year to provide the global travel industry with what it needs. But more.

For two years, Amadeus has decided to modernize its infrastructure. Amadeus leaders have considered a variety of options, including cloud service providers and utilities.

He chose to build a private cloud business in partnership with Red Hat, VMware and other service companies and software needed for the private cloud he wanted.

Amadeus has been operated by VMware's integrated OpenStack, which manages cloud resources through interconnected components that control the processing, storage, and network equipment. NSX VMware has provided Amadeo with virtual networking and security software.

Watch this video to learn more about how VMware NSX network virtualization solutions had a positive impact on Amadeus.

Krips said the upgrade of its base aligns with the fundamental objectives of Amadeus customers.

"What I can implement virtualisation of container applications (simple), VM (virtual machines) or bare metal, or if I use OpenStack, everything is a means to an end," said Krips. "Ultimately, what the customer expects is capacity, agility, and ongoing cost reductions, and that's what we have to offer."

Dynamism and automation were - and still are - essential, according to Dietmar Fauser, Amadeus vice president of Research and Development.

"That's why we use this technology, and why we use quality industrial partners," said Fauser.

OpenStack is not at the same time public, has said that, although it believes that will be the case.

The choice of an OpenStack Amadeus approach made by VMware, which according to Fauser, has a solid understanding of virtualization.

VMware aims to simplify cross-cloud challenges

Customers face enormous challenges when moving to the cloud; According to Guido Appenzeller, Head of Technology Strategy, Network / Business Security Unit, at VMware, AWS, Azure, Google and IBM Public Clouds, as well as a data center in the field. The question is how to connect them all together?

Appenzeller stated that VMware's Cross-Cloud services, currently under development, are intended to provide consistent deployment models, security policies, visibility and governance for all applications, whether they are executed on-site or off and independent of the underlying cloud or hypervisor.

Appenzeller, VMware's Cloud Services Services leader, recently joined John Furrier (@furrier), co-host of theCUBE (* disclosure below) of the SiliconANGLE Media team. VMware is a leading provider of VMware, VMware, and VMware.

Why customers want multiple clouds

"I think what we are seeing is that customers use different clouds for their specificities, or the best properties of the breed," Appenzeller said. For example, AWS has by far the largest catalog; Google has cheap storage; And Microsoft is very aggressive about licensing its own products over Azure, "he explained. A client can choose one of them - or all - to get their individual benefits.

In the cloud, the network is the hardest problem, including the configuration of a firewall, said Appenzeller. This is where VMware has found an opportunity because its NSX network virtualization platform already allows a user to extend a network through heterogeneous hardware in the data center. It can take a Cisco or Arista switch and create a virtual network, so why can not it do the same in the cloud, Appenzeller asked?

Appenzeller explained that NSX really shines by not moving around workloads, but rather by giving IT teams powerful tools so they can handle these workloads across the clouds in the same way.

The future of managing inter-cloud architectures

Over the next five years, Appenzeller predicted that the majority of workloads will still be on-site, but will increase the shift to the cloud. When companies move in the cloud, they have to decide how to scale it in the future, "he explained. Thus, companies will begin to understand the complexity of managing the cloud or clouds.

"This entire transition from VMware to the provision of SaaS services for the public cloud; this, for me, is the future, and I am very excited about it," said Appenzeller.

Watch the full video interview with VMware 2016 by SiliconANGLE and the CUBE. (* Disclosure: VMware Inc. and other companies are sponsoring certain segments of VMware 2016 on theCUBE of SiliconANGLE Media

VMware aims to deliver quality and value in vSphere 6.5

A few months before VMworld 2016, we produced a wish list for the features of vSphere 6.5. Now that VMware has officially announced vSphere 6.5, does it meet expectations?

In June I wrote about the features I wanted to see in vSphere 6.5 in the hope that a new version of the flagship VMware software would be announced at VMworld 2016 US Unfortunately, Of vSphere to VMworld 2016 Europe, and with it, a number of new features. So, did VMware deliver the things asked for?

In my original article, I asked for the scale-out vCenter; VMware gave us a vCenter failover function. I also requested a cluster of vCenter servers that would distribute the servers between the servers, and I wanted the cluster to provide instant failover if a node encountered a problem. It was a fairly large request, so I'm not entirely surprised that I did not get what I wanted. What we got is a two-node failover cluster for vCenter Server Appliance (vCSA) in which one node is active while the other node is in standby. If the active node has an abnormality, the queued node takes its identity and starts the vCenter Services. According to VMware, the failover will take a few minutes, approximately the same amount of time as the cluster vSphere High Availability (HA) would take to recover the failing VM. This two-node failover cluster is essentially the replacement for the old vCenter Server Heartbeat product, as far as I know, nothing more. This is a beginning, but not exactly what I wanted in the new version.

I wanted to integrate VMware Update Manager (VUM) into vCSA and, in this case, VMware delivered. This means that you do not need an additional Windows server and database; Everything is built into one device. This feature is long been late, one that we have been expecting since it was released for the first time. The delay only made it more welcome in vSphere 6.5. The new integrated vCSA HA and VUM are signs that VMware is committed to vCSA and that company is very serious about moving clients out of vCSA from Windows to vCSA.

When writing my vSphere 6.5 wish list, I asked for a better product. Of course we will not be able to judge the quality of vSphere 6.5 until it has been in the hands of users for a few months. At present, there is no commitment to a ship date for any of the products advertised to VMworld in the US or Europe. VMware will likely deliver the new version of vSphere in the coming months.

VCP550D Exam Question No 59

Question No 59:

A vSphere administrator has created a Virtual SAN Cluster with Automatic Mode Disk Groups. The cluster includes three ESXi hosts contributing one SSD and six SAS disks each. The administrator has four new ESXi hosts that boot from a fiber channel array and have no local disks attached. These four new hosts need additional shared storage but there is insufficient space on the fiber channel array. The hardware budget is limited. What can the administrator do to provide the needed storage for the lowest cost?

A. Add the four new hosts to the Virtual SAN Cluster and use the existing storage in the cluster.
B. Add an SAS RAID controller to each of the new hosts. Attach one SSD and six SAS disks to each RAID controller and then add the four hosts to the Virtual SAN cluster.
C. Add the four new hosts to the Virtual SAN Cluster and contribute the fiber channel disks to the Virtual SAN.
D. Add the four new hosts to the Virtual SAN Cluster and change to Manual Mode Disk Groups.

Answer: A

VMware boss Pat Gelsinger tackles life after Dell buyout

Pat Gelsinger is not your usual CEO of Silicon Valley. A committed Christian who almost entered the church rather than technology, is given 40pc of their salary, praying and singing hymns on travel from his office in California at the airport early and resolved not to read his newspaper Read the Bible.

At this point, everything that everyone wants to hear is like the CEO of VMware, the technology group US $ 32 billion (US $ 26.2 billion) capitalization, says Michael Dell.

Portable eponyms maker Dell just paid $ 67 billion for EMC, the US group that owns 80pc of VMware, and 10,000 followed during the conference VMworld Europe in Barcelona this month were interested in the way the duo gel .

Gelsinger, after all, is a technocrat who has worked for 30 years at Intel, becoming director of technology, while Dell, Business, founded the company PC at his home in Austin, Texas.

"We get along very well," insists Gelsinger, 54 years old. "We just had our first board meeting with Michael as the new chairman of my board and I would say, in general, so it's early and I do 'T that one of us would think it was, however, all the signs are encouraging.

"We are committed to creating synergies of one billion, then we have to start building organizations to materialize." This warning is typical minimum Gelsinger approach. More Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, which is grounded, nice and polite.

What are your impressions of your new boss so far? He is pleased that Dell has declared its support for the distribution of VMware partner ecosystem even more important for the company for the VMworld Las Vegas.

He thinks Dell was impressed by the crowd of 25,000 spectators at the event - more than double the participants in the annual shindigs EMC or Dell. There are many things to do for Dell. EMC was an unusual company with a portfolio strategy entities owned power companies, such as VMware and Pivotal, jointly owned with Microsoft, General Electric and Ford and directed by Paul Maritz, formerly divided Microsoft and VMware.

"Michael has quite acquired that strategy," Gelsinger said. "Certainly, it includes a software company like VMware is a different society, a different culture.

"People in the software are different people who make up the team and the supply chain. There is no advantage in a company from another software. This is a key aspect of managing a company like ours, and we consider a very successful business.

"This gives us the space and support to go out and execute what we have to do. And it has a lot to do by the merger of Dell and EMC. There are 140 000 people to be there, large product lines to merge and organizations that are .

The name is synonymous with VMware technology "virtual machine software" that essentially allows companies to package their data much smaller number of server computers. The company recently made important alliances with the head of cloud computing Amazon and IBM. Retains its listing after shooting.

"I am pleased to see shareholders every 90 days," Gelsinger smiles. However, VMware's shares have halved from $ 80 to a minimum of $ 43 after the announcement of the agreement. "It was a very painful process," he said.

"Clearly there is concern about whether Dell could make a successful software company." There were questions about values track that was part of the takeover and the implications of that. As with any large acquisition, there were also concerns about whether the deal would be done. "


There were also questions about the activities of VMware because the advice he gave in profits last year were lower than Wall Street expected. However, the share price has increased as companies were close to an agreement.

"We have been able to establish that the market ecosystem and VMware continue to independence and that some of the new product areas and cloud strategy we put in place have helped to solve some of the problems," Gelsinger said.

"With stocks now around £ 77, yet we are negotiating in multiple software we should have, so we are not completely through the fog. But we have come a long way and I think it is a big mouth."

Gelsinger, who chairs the Bay Transformation with Christ, a group for "spiritual and social" in the San Francisco area changes, clearly managed by VMware with the same kind of missionary zeal.

He speaks of the "digital transformation" and how some of the world leading companies simplify their IT infrastructure to innovate at a faster pace. With mechanical devices designed to overcome the efforts focused on humans for the year 2019, it is estimated that many companies are still not at all prepared for the imminent explosion of the Internet of things.

He also argues that the technology sector is still in its "adolescence", with huge tensions between control and freedom. Half of the largest technology companies in the US has been in ten years, because of these and other difficulties, he believes.

Nokia, BlackBerry and Yahoo are three brands of computers whose star has fallen considerably since predicted the main industry of killing in The Daily Telegraph three years ago, when the British designer of computer chips and of course ARM EMC has taken summer.

VMware, however, has been an excellent investment for EMC. Founded by Diane Greene and Mendel Rosenblum her husband with his colleagues in California in 1998, was bought by EMC, six years after £ 625m.

In 2007, EMC launched the company on the New York Stock Exchange, which retains a 80pc. Maritz replaced as CEO Greene, quadrupling its revenue to $ 4.5 billion. Gelsinger then the left Maritz EMC to succeed in 2012.

VMware now has 400,000 customers, 19,000 employees, 2015 revenues of $ 6.6 billion and 120 locations worldwide, including its headquarters in the UK in Frimley, Surrey. Gelsinger grew up on a farm in Pennsylvania.

His father was one of nine children, while his mother was from a family of 11 and jumped the last year of high school at age 17 to take a scholarship to study electronics in the technical Lincoln Institute in his home state.

His faith increasing clarity. a weekly Bible study at home headed for 16 years and served as a Sunday school teacher, while his philanthropy supports medical aid organizations, church planting, educational work and an orphanage he and Linda woman helped build in Nairobi.

At Intel, he joined the Institute, who often worked 80 hours a week, prompting complaints from the payroll was working too much overtime.

To solve this, he and Linda have designed a system which would score two points if he returned home before 17h, a time before 18:15 and after a zero point less to be absent in weekends.

He even wrote about it in a book entitled Balancing family, faith and work. "I wrote three books and now I'm working in my room," smiled Gelsinger. This is one of those works of love. "As is the fusion of course. Watch this space.