I have had so many conversations around this topic, I wanted to capture my thought process here, and avoid injecting operational or performance risk, as we take our first steps with VCF.

So, let鈥檚 dive into the current offerings from Broadcom. We are only going to be discussing their primary offering鈥�.VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF).

VCF, which is what Broadcom leads with, and鈥VF (VMware vSphere Foundation), which exists, but is not the topic of this post.

We are not talking about every single SKU or offering they have, as there are quite a few additional 鈥渁dd-on鈥� licenses that exist for VCF. None of these add-on licenses are being discussed in the post, in any way.
BUT, you SHOULD discuss 鈥渁dd-ons鈥� as you may want/need some.

And don’t forget. vSphere 8 End of Support is October 2027. That鈥檚 only 19 months away鈥�.start planning your approach now! The only way to vSphere 9 is VCF (and potentially VVF).

For the purposes of this post, we are going to sit in the role of an enterprise architect, who has to size new hardware required for a new application stack for the business that drives the business, same as if we are having this discussion about rolling out SAP, Oracle E-Business Suite, or PeopleSoft. We wouldn鈥檛 want to introduce unnecessary risk for those applications, right?

What is VCF?

So let鈥檚 start with what VCF is, and what it takes to deploy and run VCF. VCF is a private-cloud platform. You do not get to pick and choose the individual components.

Just like when you go to buy a car鈥�.if you want a moonroof, and it is only available in the 鈥渢ouring edition鈥� package of the car, you get the touring edition. Don鈥檛 want the heated steering wheel or seats? Well, they came with the touring edition, so you can either use them or not鈥�.but they came with the touring edition.

You don鈥檛 have to use EVERYTHING that came with the touring edition, but I鈥檒l bet you appreciate those heated seats on nights when its 7掳F.

What Does VCF (The Private Cloud Platform) Give Me?

Essentially, all the same capabilities you get (and expect) of a public cloud provider (AWS, Azure, GCP鈥ny of the hyperscalers). It is a platform to run VMs, containers, K8s, workloads, VPC networking constructs, monitoring, troubleshooting tools, and automation/self-service you can build. Also included is logging capabilities, insights into your network traffic flows, workload mobility, SSO, etc.

What Makes Up The VCF 鈥淎pplication鈥�?

Let鈥檚 list this out (you鈥檒l see VCF in front of a bunch of the products that you might remember as vRealize, which got rebranded to Aria, which is now prefixed with VCF). Here are the 14 鈥渃omponents鈥� that comprise VCF:

• VCF Operations
• VCF Operations Collector
• VCF Operations Fleet Management
• VCF Operations for Logs (used to be Log Insight)
• VCF Operations for Networks (used to be Network Insight, or vRNI)
• VCF Operations HCX
• VCF Operations Orchestrator
• VCF Automation
• VCF Identity Broker (provides SSO capability)
• vSphere Replication
• VMware ESX
• VMware NSX
• VMware vCenter
• VMware vSAN

聽to where you see all of these components if you try to download from VCF 9.0 from the Broadcom Support Portal. I know I鈥檓 linking to 9.0.0.0, the GA release, but let鈥檚 see the forest through the trees for this discussion (login required to get to this page!).

This sounds like a lot, and it is, when we (like many) compare it to what we have known for years as vSphere (which is just ESXi and vCenter).

How Do You Get This Deployed?

That might be another post, or better yet, take a 1-day workshop with us here at WEI, and we can show you HOW it gets deployed. About a week (or two, depending on the size of the committee) of planning. About a week of deployment & configuration (to do it right). A few days (to five) to polish up the rest of your new 鈥渙n-prem private cloud鈥�. So, for the time being, we will just say it gets deployed鈥�.

Management Domain

This initial deployment for VCF is what is called the 鈥淢anagement Domain鈥�. The Management Domain runs all those products we listed out above and will then be the location where the management VMs for 鈥淲orkload Domains鈥� are expected to run…more on that later.

Does it seem like you need a lot of resources to run this full VCF stack in the Management Domain? Well, that depends on what you consider as 鈥渁 lot of resources鈥濃��

• Total vCPUs allocated: 234 vCPU
• Total RAM allocated: 825-GB RAM
• Total Storage allocated: 15.5-TB
• Total Storage consumed: 4-TB

鈥nd this is with the smallest deployable VM sizing available via VCF-Installer process. Ask us for the RV tools export of a newly deployed VCF environment.

What else might your run in the 鈥淢anagement Domain鈥�? Forgetting that running Windows Server and/or Red Hat VMs requires licensing鈥�

• Domain Controllers
• IdP connectors
• Backup Servers
• Security workloads

鈥nd other backend functions鈥ut don鈥檛 overdo it. This Management Domain will have other things to run.

This Management Domain is running 25 new VMs to start. You see the resources (listed above) those VMs will require. You see all the different components listed earlier that are integrated together鈥nd we want to do it right the first time, because if you can鈥檛 do it right to the first time, when will you find the time to fix it later? My advice:

• Start with 4 x new ESXi servers running vSAN ESA (requires NVMe drives).
• Brand new, or (very modern) repurposed vSAN ESA Ready Nodes, but they WILL be wiped as part of this process.
• We will deploy VCF together on those new servers and create the Management Domain.
• Could you use FC (not FCoE) or NFS? Sure, but given the small cost of a few NVMe drives to run vSAN ESA, we can isolate this 鈥淰CF Application鈥� and guarantee the resources required to run our enterprise application, VCF. Plus, it is recommended by the vendor, VMware, to use vSAN for the Management Domain. We will repurpose your external storage when we get to the Workload Domains.

After the Management Domain is configured, we can then import your existing vCenter Servers and the clusters that they manage (and more importantly, the VMs that they run). More on that in a bit.

Taking a step back, we realize that to run VCF in a risk averse implementation, we need a new VMware Cluster of 4 x ESXi hosts running vSAN ESA to get everything deployed.

Sizing the Management Domain

As there are quite a few components deployed for VCF with 3 x VMs in a cluster, and the expectation is to have HA (High Availability) for the VMs running, you need a minimum of 4 hosts. To be redundant myself, that is a 3+1 cluster (the +1 is for the HA event, or more practically, to do maintenance without effecting production workloads).

OK fine, we can agree with 4 nodes configured as a 3+1 cluster. What about the CPU, RAM, storage & network connectivity needed?

CPU: For CPU, let鈥檚 focus on the number of vCPUs required. Do you want to oversubscribe the management cluster? You can, but remember, this is what manages your VCF stack, so heavy oversubscription is not the answer.

Should you do a 1:1 VM CPU, for each physical CPU core? I would love to see that happen, but our pocketbooks our not infinite.

OK, so do we go 2:1, or 5:1, or 10:1? For this Management Domain, I鈥檓 happy to agree to a 2:1 CPU oversubscription.

• Let鈥檚 work with sizing based on a CPU, with 32-cores per socket.
• Put 2 x CPUs in each ESXi host (64 cores).
• Go with the 4-node cluster (technically 3+1 cluster) just discussed.
• That gives me 256 total cores for the raw total鈥echnically, that鈥檚 192 cores (3 nodes + 1 for HA) usable.
• The total vCPUs allocated to the VMs for VCF to get started is 234 vCPUs鈥�
• We are already at 1.22:1 CPU oversubscription (234 / 192), and we haven鈥檛 added any other workloads or VCF functions yet.

RAM: Let鈥檚 start with 512-GB per node (I鈥檇 really prefer 1-TB per node, but let鈥檚 start here, just for the math). That gives you 2-TB of RAM for the raw total. But technically its 1.5-TB of RAM (3 nodes + 1 for HA again). And we are using 0.8-TB just to get started, and we haven鈥檛 added any other workloads or VCF functions yet.

What about memory oversubscription? I’m not a fan of that (most of us can agree that swapping RAM is a bad idea), but there is another way to get more useable RAM, and that is with NVMe Memory Tiering (add a NVMe drive to increase your 鈥淩AM鈥� installed in the host). Add in NVMe Memory Tiering, and 512-GB per ESXi host isn鈥檛 a terrible starting point.

I would recommend 1-TB per host to get started.

vSAN ESA Storage: It鈥檚 ~16-TB allocated (thank goodness for thin provisioning in vSAN!) That鈥檚 before any growth, and data ingestion, any logs, or any other snapshots or data retention, or even VM templates considered鈥o let鈥檚 add 50% of that to start…24-TB. That鈥檚 24-TB of USEABLE storage, not RAW capacity. 24-TB of RAID-1 is 48-TB RAW.

But vSAN ESA has some great storage efficiency (writes via RAID 1, and depending on the number of ESXi hosts in the cluster鈥�.cold data at RAID 5 or 6) and global deduplication is coming soon as well.

So, 48-TB of raw capacity can get you a minimum of 24-TB useable capacity. That means each ESXi host needs to contribute 12-TB of RAW disk capacity. That鈥檚 3 x 4-TB drives.

Yes, you can add more storage to each node in the future (be sure to select hardware ready to do that).
鈥nd don鈥檛 forget to add another NVMe drive for Memory Tiering鈥�(typically a different part number than the ones used for vSAN).

Networking (physical NICs): Pretty easy for most of us. We want redundant networking that meets the minimum requirements set forth by our application vendor. 2 x 25-GB NICs.

25-GbE has been around since 2016, and affordable as a ToR (Top of Rack) solution since 2019. Nearly every server today ships with 10/25-GbE NICs onboard. Plus, it is recommended by our VCF 鈥淎pplication鈥� vendor, so we follow their recommendations, given that the absolute minimum is 10-GbE. Latency must also be < 1ms. 聽is here.

Can you use more than 2 NICs per host? Yes, and you might do that to separate storage or NSX network traffic. We can discuss it, of course, though I hedge my bets for the Management Domain to have a pair of 25-GbE for most folks.

Summary of Management Domain Sizing

You need 4 x ESXi servers ready for vSAN ESA, each configured with:

• 2 x 32-core CPUs
• 1-TB RAM
• 3 x 4-TB NVMe drives (for vSAN ESA)
• OS boot Drive (Another NVMe, only needs 128-GB minimum)
• 2 x 25-GbE NICs

Optional, but highly recommended: 1 x 4-TB NVMe for Memory Tiering. This is what is needed to run the VCF 鈥渁pplication鈥�, while minimizing risk, delivering an acceptable SLA for performance & recovery, and providing the ability to scale out or up.

But Aren鈥檛 There Minimal Deployments?

Yes, there are. I suggest you access the . Quoted right from the documentation linked above鈥�

鈥淭his Design Blueprint can be used as a full end-to-end design for a VMware Cloud Foundation platform or as a starting point and adjusted to suit your specific objectives by substituting any of the design selections listed below with alternative models.鈥�

This is a great starting point to build a lab or demo environment in getting yourself familiar with VCF capacities and features. However, it is not a recommended way to implement something that is delivering mission critical capabilities for the business.

And you still need about 45% of the resource we discussed earlier when we discussed the Management Domain. You are not deploying everything that you have purchased to help you run a private-cloud.

Let鈥檚 say we do this minimum deployment…we are adding risk, with high impact scenarios that can play out in production. Well, what if we add the availability after the fact? I鈥檒l bring up that quote again ,鈥溾�f you don鈥檛 have time to do it right, when will you have time to fix it?鈥�

This design has the application VMs (VCF Automation, VCF Operations, and NSX) that are typically spread out as 3 x VMs, now running as a single VM each. While they do function, they are not truly available and add many single points of failures to the applications they serve, which essentially adds risk to your VCF created private cloud. Yes, they benefit from vSphere HA (which we have had since 2006 with Virtual Infrastructure 3), but that is not the way these applications were designed to run.

This minimal deployment design uses a cluster that is shared for Management Domain functions as well as any VM workloads that you see fit to mix with the Management Domain. We will call it a Consolidated Domain model (the language used in VCF release prior to 9.0). This will work, yes, but it is not what we expect from any of our applications that drive the business. Minimizing risk is a one of the things I have focused on in my 30+ years of working in IT.

鈥ut the design docs you just linked to say it can be used that way! That is true, but it does not explain that you now need to take outages, additional work, and have limited options when you do updates, patches, or upgrades in the future鈥�.all things that are required in the lifecycle of IT any infrastructure component or solution.

Imagine us having this discussion if rolling out SAP, Oracle E-Business Suite, or PeopleSoft. We wouldn鈥檛 want to introduce unnecessary risk for those applications, right?

Reuse Existing vSphere Environment

ABSOLUTELY!鈥ust not for the Management Domain. We still need to run the VMs that are running on our existing vSphere environments, right? That environment isn鈥檛 going away anytime soon. We will end up running each of your existing vCenter Servers as a 鈥淲orkload Domain鈥� (explanation coming soon, I promise).

So long as the server hardware is supported to run ESXi 8.x or 9.x. (vSphere 7 support ended October 2025).

Do I have to use vSAN? No, but you can use vSAN if you would like (or need) to. You can use your existing NFS, FC, FCoE, or iSCSI SANs without issue. If you are using vVols, be aware that in vSphere 9, support is deprecated and vVols will be going away soon, so I would prefer to help you migrate off vVols at this time, rather than later.

What about my vCenter Server(s)? While possible to use vCenter 8, we would recommend upgrading that to vCenter 9. Yes, if vCenter is at version 9, you can still manage ESXi 8.x hosts. We will bring in those existing environments and make them part of your new VCF application.

Then we can take advantage of all the capabilities that VCF brings, most importantly, rightsizing your environment (as licensing CPU cores for no reason can be expensive). That means sizing your VMs as well as your physical servers running ESXi, so that we can optimize your resources so that they better align with the business outcomes defined and needed by your organization.

Workload Domains

While there is only going to be (in nearly all cases) a single Management Domain that is focused on providing VCF functions, management, and capabilities, Workload Domains are very different, but instantly familiar to us.

Essentially, a Workload Domain is very similar to what we are used to, if we think about any of our vSphere environments (any that are version 8 or earlier). It is a vCenter, and an NSX implementation, that runs the VMs that power the applications that our business needs.

Any Workload Domain is going to run the VMs that are currently running. THIS聽is where we can repurpose existing ESXi hosts and existing storage you have.

That鈥檚 it! Workload Domains are very flexible in how we create or import them. We can use storage other than vSAN (though you can still use vSAN here if you鈥檇 like).

What鈥檚 the difference between deploying a new Workload Domain, or importing an existing vCenter into VCF as a Workload Domain? The process to deploy versus import. That鈥檚 it.

So why the separation of duties like this? That鈥檚 just how Broadcom created VCF to work, so I just play by the rules provided me. Now, I like the separation of Management from Workload. Matter of fact, I鈥檝e been doing that in my designs since 2009, and many designs of those designs in their 4th or 5th generation now, all well before the Broadcom acquisition and what is now VCF 9.

Since the 鈥淢anagement鈥� of your Workload Domain is vCenter and the 3 x NSX Control VMs鈥uess where they run? The Management Domain! Yes, even if we import the existing vCenter that is running on your existing cluster, that鈥檚 where we should migrate it to.

Are there no other VMs needed to support the Workload Domain? Yes, there are, but they are all already running in the Management Domain.

So, creating (or importing) a Workload Domain requires additional resources in the Management Domain:

• Total vCPUs allocated: 44 vCPU
• Total RAM allocated: 174-GB RAM
• Total Storage allocated: 2-TB
• Total Storage consumed: 0.5-TB

Sizing the Workload Domain: Well, what about the sizing? There are expectation to have HA (High Availability) for the VMs running鈥ou need a minimum of 3 hosts. To be redundant myself (again,鈥unny!)鈥�.that is a 2+1 cluster (the +1 is for the HA event, or more practically, to do maintenance without effecting production workloads).

What about sizing the CPU, RAM, and Storage (3-tiered or vSAN ESA)? That will vary with each Workload Domain鈥檚 Cluster. That鈥檚 right, every Workload Domain can have up to 400 x VMware Clusters, each up to 64 ESXi hosts. That鈥檚 a lot of resources being managed by just 1 vCenter Server.

Sizing a VMware Cluster

We have all been sizing VMware vSphere Clusters since 2006. The sizing exercise we went through earlier for the Management Domain happens in almost environmen, but quite often I see the following situation play out.

Time to refresh the VMware Infrastructure, so let鈥檚 size it to run the current workload and 25% additional growth for the next 3 years. Five years later, we realize we are running 400% of the planned workload, and wondering why performance of our most critical app is suffering. Good thing we will have the tools available to us to help us with that moving forward鈥�

How do you break out each VMware Cluster, or better said, size each VMware Cluster? I would take the same approach I took above for sizing the Management Domain.

What Design Qualities are most important for THAT SPECIFIC workload? Availability, Manageability, Performance, Recoverability, Scalability, or Security? How do we prioritize those Design Qualities for THAT VMware Cluster?

鈥nd we will do that for each of the components that make up your VMware Cluster:
Compute, Storage, Networking, Management, Workloads, Analytics, Chargeback, Reporting, and of course, Compliance.

Just like building a VMware Cluster dedicated to MS SQL or Oracle, you plan your workload requirements, size accordingly, and run it. Extra capacity? Let鈥檚 put other VMs on that VMware Cluster for Oracle…NOPE! That was designed a specific way for a specific purpose. That extra capacity is there for a reason, not to be consumed on a whim by something that is not running Oracle.

Questions? or fill out the Contact Us form here at wei.com.

The post What Does it Take to Run VCF 9? appeared first on IT 疯情AV Provider - IT Consulting - Technology 疯情AV.

Enterprise IT leaders continue to invest in private cloud platforms to regain control over infrastructure, security, and workload placement. VMware Cloud Foundation is frequently selected because it brings compute, storage, networking, automation, and operations together into a single private cloud operating model for modern cloud operations management. Still, many organizations discover that progress slows significantly after the initial deployment. Instead of advancing toward higher private cloud maturity, teams often fall back on familiar tools and manual processes. For many enterprises, the real challenge is not deploying VCF, but operationalizing it in a way that delivers measurable efficiency, consistency, and security.

This stall is rarely caused by product limitations. More often, organizations deploy the platform but do not adopt the operating model that comes with it. When cloud operations management, automation, and NSX networking are not fully activated, the platform delivers only a portion of its intended value.

Why VMware Cloud Foundation Adoption Stalls After Initial Deployment

A common pattern emerges across enterprises. VMware Cloud Foundation is implemented to satisfy licensing changes, hardware refresh cycles, or consolidation initiatives, but daily operations continue largely unchanged. Teams still perform most administrative work through legacy interfaces and treat the platform as an infrastructure upgrade rather than a new way of delivering services.

Without a deliberate shift in operational approach, cloud operations management capabilities remain underutilized. Automation initiatives stay in planning phases, and networking continues to be managed inconsistently. As a result, organizations struggle to progress along the private cloud maturity curve and fail to realize the business outcomes expected from a private cloud investment.

Common Gaps in VCF Operations, Automation, and NSX

One of the most common gaps appears in operations. VCF Operations is designed to to serve as the central administrative control plane, supporting licensing, lifecycle management, workload domain creation, and fleet management. However, many teams hesitate to transition daily tasks into this interface, slowing adoption and limiting operational consistency.

Automation represents a second major gap. Although automation tooling is included in VMware Cloud Foundation, many teams still view it as an  optional or future capability. Provisioning continues to rely on tickets, manual approvals, and custom scripts owned by individual administrators. This approach increases operational friction and makes it difficult to scale standardized services, directly constraining cloud operations management effectiveness.

Networking is the third gap. NSX is deployed because it is required, but not fully leveraged. Without adopting overlay networking, application aware segmentation, and software defined constructs, network behavior varies across environments. This inconsistency complicates security enforcement and limits progress toward higher private cloud maturity.

Using VCF Automation to Standardize Provisioning

VCF Automation enables organizations to define repeatable blueprints for virtual machines, application stacks, and container based workloads. These blueprints establish consistent configurations, integrate approval workflows, and align infrastructure delivery with business intent.

When automation becomes the default provisioning mechanism, manual toil decreases and outcomes become predictable. This strengthens cloud operations management by enforcing standards through automation rather than documentation. Over time, automation shifts IT teams away from repetitive fulfillment work and toward higher value initiatives, accelerating overall private cloud maturity.

Automation also supports advanced initiatives such as AI. Organizations working with an AI infrastructure partner or pursuing AI infrastructure consulting for enterprises can use automation to consistently provision GPU enabled environments and supporting services. This approach helps enterprises accelerate AI time to value while maintaining governance across private cloud environments.

Using NSX in VMware Cloud Foundation for Cloud Operations Management

NSX enables VMware Cloud Foundation to deliver cloud-like networking capabilities inside the private data center. Once the physical underlay is established, application networks can be created, secured, and managed entirely through software.

By using application flow awareness and software defined security policies, teams can design controls that align with how applications actually communicate. This creates consistent network behavior across workload domains and strengthens security by embedding controls directly into the infrastructure layer by reducing reliance on perimeter based defenses.

When fully adopted, NSX becomes a foundational element of cloud operations management and a key driver of private cloud maturity, supporting standardized networking and security practices across the enterprise.

Final Thoughts

Organizations that move beyond initial deployment and fully adopt VMware Cloud Foundation position themselves to operate their private cloud as a true service platform. Success depends on activating operations as the control plane, using automation as the default provisioning method, and leveraging NSX to enforce consistent network and security policies.

WEI brings deep expertise across VCF operations, automation frameworks, and NSX adoption. As a trusted AI infrastructure partner delivering ultimate enterprise AI integration services, WEI helps organizations translate platform capabilities into measurable outcomes. To accelerate AI time to value and fully realize your private cloud investment, contact WEI to begin your next phase of private cloud adoption.

Next Steps: VMware by Broadcom鈥檚 bundled entitlements, such as VCF and VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF), offer advanced capabilities that extend well beyond virtualization. But activating the full value of these bundles requires more than implementation. It requires a clear roadmap.

Download our tech brief, , to better understand how to move from entitlement to enablement in 4鈥�8 weeks. WEI can set you on the fast track. 

The post How to Strengthen VMware Cloud Foundation Through Cloud Operations Management appeared first on IT 疯情AV Provider - IT Consulting - Technology 疯情AV.

For enterprises investing in VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF), the promise is clear: a unified platform for private and hybrid cloud that delivers consistent operations across compute, storage, networking, and security. However, many IT leaders find deployment alone does not automatically yield the business outcomes they expect. Why?

Because too often, organizations underestimate what it takes to operationalize VCF. They focus on standing up the platform but neglect the essential layers of governance, monitoring, and lifecycle automation that turn a powerful infrastructure into a reliable business enabler.

At WEI, we have seen this story unfold many times. Our experience supporting complex VMware environments, combined with our structured optimization frameworks, helps clients avoid common VCF deployment missteps and unlock the full potential of their VMware investment.

VCF Deployment Missteps: Thinking Implementation Is the Finish Line

VCF is not a plug-and-play solution. It is a foundation for transformation, not the transformation itself. The technology stack is robust and feature-rich, but without strategic planning and operational maturity, it often becomes underutilized or fragmented.

Three key areas are frequently underestimated:

1. Governance: Lack of policy enforcement and compliance oversight leads to configuration drift and security gaps.
   
2. Monitoring: Without integrated observability, teams struggle to pinpoint root causes, which slows response times and hurts SLAs.
   
3. Lifecycle Automation: Manual processes around provisioning, patching, and resource allocation waste time and introduce risk.

These are the types of VCF deployment missteps we help customers avoid from the beginning. Organizations that do not prioritize governance, monitoring, and automation are left managing a complex system without the tools or processes to run it effectively.

Build VCF Governance Into Your Foundation from Day One

Strong governance is about maintaining control. Through VCF governance capabilities and WEI鈥檚 VMware Optimization Assessment (VOA) offering, enterprises can audit compliance posture, detect configuration drift, and automate remediation of out-of-policy environments. This proactive approach not only reduces risk but builds confidence across IT, security, and compliance teams.

For regulated industries, this is even more critical. WEI tailors VCF governance assessments for verticals like healthcare and financial services by mapping compliance to frameworks such as HIPAA, PCI-DSS, ISO 27001, and NIST. Automated checks, encryption validation, and workload isolation strategies ensure that controls are measurable, actionable, and tied to your business requirements.

When organizations align their infrastructure with VCF governance best practices from day one, they build a foundation that supports long-term success while reducing compliance risk.

Turning Alerts into Action with Intelligent Monitoring

IT teams are often overwhelmed by alerts from various monitoring systems, but without context, these alerts create confusion instead of clarity. What VCF customers need is real-time insight across applications, infrastructure, and workloads combined with AI-powered diagnostics.

VMware Aria Operations addresses this gap with full-stack observability and AI-driven troubleshooting. From detecting performance anomalies to predicting potential failures, the platform enables IT to be predictive instead of reactive. It correlates logs, metrics, and events across the stack to deliver clear, actionable insights.

For example, City Mart, a leading retail chain with more than 180 locations, used Aria Operations and Aria Operations for Logs to eliminate system downtime and improve performance. The result was a 90 percent increase in operational effectiveness.

These improvements are only possible when monitoring is deeply integrated into daily operations and informed by intelligent platforms like VCF governance.

Automate Lifecycle Management to Reduce Downtime and Free Up Talent

One of the most overlooked elements of a VCF deployment is automation, especially beyond the initial setup. While many teams focus on provisioning, they often neglect ongoing operations like patching, rightsizing, and resource reclamation.

Through WEI鈥檚 Future State Architecture (FSA) engagements, clients integrate automation into every phase of the lifecycle. VCF Automation supports infrastructure-as-code, developer-ready self-service portals, and policy-based provisioning that aligns with business and security priorities.

Unlock VCF Networking Integration and Modern Networking Capabilities

Many VCF customers already have access to VCF Networking powered by NSX through bundled entitlements. Recently rebranded under the VCF Networking powered by NSX umbrella, it offers powerful tools for microsegmentation, network segmentation, and zero-trust security policies. Yet many organizations leave these capabilities unused.

Through WEI鈥檚 Networking Assessment, enterprises gain insight into how VCF Networking Integration can be deployed to reduce risk and improve security posture. Teams gain better troubleshooting capabilities and more consistent policy enforcement across environments.

When implemented strategically, VCF Networking Integration improves not just security but organizational agility. It allows hybrid and multi-cloud environments to operate with consistent controls and enforceable network policy. As a VMware partner, WEI brings deep hands-on experience with NSX that goes beyond licensing to real-world outcomes.

Why Maturity Matters in Your Private Cloud Strategy

You cannot improve what you do not measure. That is why WEI utilizes the Private Cloud Maturity Model (PCMM), a framework to benchmark cloud operations across six essential areas:

• Infrastructure readiness
• Security and compliance
• End-user service delivery
• Business alignment
• Leadership and enablement
• Automation and tooling

The result is a comprehensive gap analysis that helps prioritize actions and identify where improvements are needed. This approach builds momentum and internal alignment across IT, security, finance, and executive leadership. Many clients use it as the basis for a 12 to 18-month strategic roadmap.

For any organization struggling with fragmented operations or underutilized entitlements, the maturity model helps identify where governance, automation, or networking can close operational gaps. As a VMware partner, WEI also supports roadmap execution with lifecycle services that ensure results are implemented and measured.

A Trusted VMware Partner for Strategic Transformation

At WEI, we go beyond product deployment to activate your VMware investment with structured assessments, real-world use cases, and engineering support that ties technical capability to measurable business outcomes.

What makes our VMware Optimization Framework effective:

• Modular assessments delivered in 4 to 8 weeks
• Industry-specific compliance support
• Day-one to Day-two lifecycle planning
• Customized KPIs and dashboard reporting
• Direct OEM escalation and live engineering support

WEI provides a clear path to improved operations that align with your business priorities. As a longstanding VMware partner, we help enterprises realize the full potential of their entitlements while avoiding common VCF deployment missteps.

Final Thoughts

VMware Cloud Foundation offers significant strategic value. But that value is only realized when VCF governance, monitoring, integrating VCF Networking powered by NSX, and automation are prioritized from the start.

Organizations that treat VCF as a destination rather than a foundation often find themselves reacting to problems instead of driving outcomes. WEI鈥檚 approach is designed to close that gap with structured, expert-led assessments and long-term operational support. Let鈥檚 talk about what鈥檚 next for your VMware environment. Whether your goals are cost savings, compliance assurance, or a roadmap for transformation, WEI is the VMware partner ready to help.

Next Steps: As a Broadcom-certified VMware partner with deep expertise across regulated, hybrid, and enterprise environments, WEI helps IT leaders translate bundled capabilities into real business outcomes quickly and measurably. Understand how to move from entitlement to enablement in 4鈥�8 weeks.

 to learn how WEI can set you on the fast track! 

The post How to Operate VMware Cloud Foundation for Better Results and Business Value appeared first on IT 疯情AV Provider - IT Consulting - Technology 疯情AV.

Modern IT operations require innovative solutions to keep up with application modernization, enhanced security, and the seamless management of multi-cloud environments. Enterprises are increasingly adopting hybrid cloud strategies, combining the reliability of virtualized environments with the efficiency of containerized applications. VMware鈥檚 vSphere with Tanzu leads the way in this transition, and WEI is ready to assist you in creating a forward-thinking IT infrastructure.

This blog discusses the advantages of vSphere with Tanzu and shows how our team at WEI facilitates a smooth transition to a modern, innovation-driven data center infrastructure.

Exploring The Full Potential Of VMware Tanzu

For businesses looking to optimize their IT infrastructure, VMware Tanzu offers a range of possibilities that go beyond simplifying application development and deployment. This platform provides a comprehensive framework to enhance collaboration between IT and DevOps teams.

With Tanzu鈥檚 extensive capabilities, organizations can benefit in several key areas:

• Unified IT and DevOps processes: Use a shared platform for deployment and monitoring, which promotes alignment between teams and developers.
• Enhanced visibility and control: Gain valuable insights into Kubernetes clusters, enabling proactive issue resolution.
• Automated security policies: Protect the entire container supply chain and maintain compliance across all stages of the CI/CD pipeline.

Starting Your Kubernetes Journey

Embarking on a Kubernetes journey is an essential step for organizations aiming to modernize their infrastructure. At WEI, we take a structured and personalized approach that ensures your business objectives align with industry standards like those set by the .

The process begins with an initial assessment, where WEI thoroughly evaluates your private cloud environment. This review highlights areas of improvement and lays the groundwork for a tailored strategy. By incorporating best practices and addressing specific business needs, we design a compliant and optimized cloud-native infrastructure.

As part of this journey, WEI deploys Tanzu Kubernetes Grid (TKG) clusters to establish a strong foundation for Kubernetes operations. These clusters are key to achieving consistency and reliability in workload management. Additionally, we provide critical support services, including:

• RBAC for secure, streamlined user management.
• Patching and upgrades to keep systems up-to-date and resilient.
• Backup and disaster recovery solutions for business continuity.

WEI ensures that your Kubernetes ecosystem is operational and positioned for long-term success. This strong foundation naturally transitions into implementing infrastructure automation and DevOps services, the next step in building a future-ready IT strategy.

WEI鈥檚 Integrated IT 疯情AV: Automation, DevOps, And Expertise

Automation and DevOps services and solutions are key to achieving efficiency and consistency. WEI integrates IaC and automation strategies to modernize deployments, allowing enterprises to focus on innovation rather than routine tasks.

By automating provisioning dynamically, organizations can align resources with demand, reducing waste and optimizing operations. This approach also minimizes manual errors and speeds up incident response through repeatable and tested deployment scripts. At WEI, we build compliant DevOps frameworks that support seamless operations, enabling businesses to adopt modern workflows while maintaining high security across their IT infrastructure.

The measurable benefits of VMware Tanzu and vSphere transform data center IT infrastructure. With over 35 years of experience, WEI provides:

• Industry-leading certifications: Our team includes Certified Kubernetes Administrators (CKA), Application Developers (CKAD), VMware Cloud Native Master Specialists, and VMware Certified Design Experts (VCDX).
• Tailored solutions: Partnering with WEI means gaining access to specialists who design custom architecture aligned with your goals, ensure smooth migration to modern environments, and provide lifecycle management services.
• Proven excellence: WEI is a three-time winner of the CRN Triple Crown Award, a testament to our commitment to customer satisfaction and technical expertise.

Final Thoughts

Transitioning to a modern IT infrastructure with vSphere and Tanzu unlocks opportunities for innovation and growth. With advanced automation and DevOps services, WEI equips your business to handle both current and future challenges to enhance productivity and create a solid foundation for growth.

Contact us today to learn how our team can help you achieve your Kubernetes goals with custom DevOps services.

Next Steps: As Cloud Native Master Specialists, the WEI team works with customers to gain a deeper understanding of what your biggest application modernization challenges are so we can develop a complete cloud agnostic Kubernetes solution. With help from WEI, vSphere with Tanzu allows your enterprise to focus on the development, maintenance, and delivery of the best cloud technologies in the world. 

to discover the vSphere with Tanzu services that WEI offers as well as an understanding of our deep certification portfolio.

The post Transform Your Enterprise With Expert Guidance And Advanced DevOps 疯情AV appeared first on IT 疯情AV Provider - IT Consulting - Technology 疯情AV.

Organizations face significant challenges in optimizing their infrastructure to meet growing operational demands while managing costs. One of the key areas of concern is the imbalance between memory and CPU utilization, which highlights the need for innovative solutions like memory tiering and data storage optimization. Without addressing these inefficiencies, organizations face increased total cost of ownership (TCO) and underutilized processing power, resulting in wasted resources, including software licenses, power, and cooling.

In this article, we will dive into strategies that address these issues and help improve overall infrastructure performance.

The Problem Of Underutilized CPUs

A common issue for IT teams is that servers equipped with powerful CPUs often don’t operate at full capacity. In fact, CPU utilization frequently hovers below 50%, mainly because the systems are memory-starved. When there isn’t enough memory available to feed data to the CPU, even high-performance processors can’t deliver their full potential.

The consequences of memory-starved CPUs are significant:

• Power, cooling, and rack space are consumed by servers that aren’t delivering maximum performance.
• Locked-up software licenses, underperforming systems, and maintenance overheads all add to operational expenses. This leads to wasted TCO.

Organizations often react to this problem in two primary ways:

1. Adding more DRAM: While increasing memory may seem like a logical solution, DRAM is costly, often accounting for 50% to 90% of the total server cost. Simply adding more memory is not a sustainable long-term fix.
2. Adding more servers: Another common reaction is to increase server counts. However, this approach leads to a chain reaction of additional costs, including the need for more software licenses, more rack space, higher power consumption, and increased cooling requirements, all of which further inflate operational expenses.

As these traditional solutions continue to drive up infrastructure costs, the need for more innovative and efficient strategies becomes evident. This is where memory tiering comes into play, offering a more intelligent and cost-effective way to address the memory-CPU imbalance. Organizations can optimize their existing infrastructure without continuously adding more expensive hardware or increasing operational expenses.

Memory Tiering And NVMe-Based Memory Tiering

VMware addresses the critical challenges of underutilized CPUs and unbalanced memory-to-CPU ratios through innovative solutions like memory tiering and data storage optimization. These enhancements, included in the latest , aim to improve performance and reduce costs for organizations managing resource-intensive workloads such as databases and VDI.

Memory tiering is a technique that enhances VMware memory management by intelligently classifying memory pages based on their usage patterns. With this approach, frequently accessed data remains in high-speed DRAM, while less critical or infrequently accessed data is moved to a lower-cost tiered memory architecture, utilizing NVMe devices. This innovative page classification method ensures optimal use of memory resources, preventing CPUs from becoming memory-starved, which would otherwise hinder overall performance.

A standout feature in this release is the tech preview of NVMe-based memory tiering in , which leverages NVMe devices as a second tier of memory to balance memory resources and unlock greater CPU efficiency. This introduces a significant improvement by allowing IT teams to offload less critical data from DRAM to NVMe, freeing up expensive DRAM for high-priority tasks. By doing so, organizations can experience multiple benefits, such as:

• Optimized CPU utilization: By addressing memory bottlenecks, CPUs can now perform at higher efficiency, unlocking additional computing power.
• Reduced DRAM dependency: Offloading less frequently accessed data to NVMe reduces the need for costly DRAM, lowering server costs.
• TCO savings: Organizations can reduce their TCO by up to 45%, thanks to fewer servers, reduced power and cooling demands, and lower ongoing maintenance costs.

For instance, in environments like databases and VDI where memory resources are critical, NVMe-based memory tiering provides a scalable solution with only a minimal 4% loss in performance. This small trade-off is far outweighed by the significant cost savings and enhanced resource efficiency – making memory tiering an excellent choice for organizations looking to optimize infrastructure without sacrificing performance.

Future-Proofing Your Data Center Infrastructure

The ability to optimize memory and CPU utilization becomes more critical as organizations continue to scale their operations. The implementation of memory tiering and data storage optimization offers a forward-thinking approach to addressing these challenges. By balancing memory resources through a tiered memory architecture, IT teams can avoid costly over-provisioning while improving overall infrastructure efficiency.

Final Thoughts

With the growing demands of modern workloads, optimizing infrastructure performance is crucial. The introduction of memory tiering and data storage optimization ensures a balanced tiered memory architecture that supports high-performance environments while reducing the need for additional hardware.

To unlock the full potential of VMware memory management and memory tiering technologies, it’s important to work with experts who understand the intricacies of these solutions. WEI is a trusted IT solutions provider, with a VCDX-certified expert on board to help you navigate these innovations.

Contact WEI today to learn how memory tiering and other advanced technologies can transform your infrastructure, improve efficiency, and lower costs.

The post Three Benefits Of Memory Tiering For Enhancing CPU Efficiency appeared first on IT 疯情AV Provider - IT Consulting - Technology 疯情AV.

Managing server hardware costs is a constant challenge for organizations. Take memory, for example: it is essential for virtualized environments, but often comes with a high price tag. This issue is especially pronounced for Tier 2 and Tier 3 cluster deployments, where budget constraints can hinder performance optimization.

VMware by Broadcom recently introduced its innovative Advanced Memory Tiering solution to address this issue and enhance data storage optimization. This breakthrough explores the potential of tiered memory architecture and its implications for IT purchasing and management strategies. Let’s discuss how this solution fits into the modern IT landscape and why it’s particularly advantageous for Tier 2 and Tier 3 cluster environments.

But First… What Is Memory Tiering?

Memory tiering is a data storage optimization technique that enhances memory usage by categorizing data into different tiers based on access patterns. Frequently accessed data is stored in high-speed memory, while less frequently accessed data is allocated to lower-speed, larger, and more cost-effective memory. This approach utilizes a tiered memory architecture, which creates an expanded memory pool to accommodate varying performance needs.

One key component of memory tiering is the integration of non-volatile memory express (NVMe) devices, known for their high-speed and low-latency performance. These devices serve as a secondary layer to traditional dynamic random-access memory (DRAM). plays a critical role in this process, as the ESXi hypervisor intelligently allocates memory. It places frequently accessed data in the faster DRAM, while less frequently used pages reside in the NVMe tier.

This strategy optimizes data storage and minimizes reliance on expensive DRAM, ultimately reducing the total cost of ownership (TCO) by up to 45%. Given that memory is one of the most costly components of IT infrastructure, it is no longer practical for organizations to depend solely on high-cost, high-performance memory for all workloads.

Memory tiering enables IT teams to effectively balance performance requirements with cost considerations, making it a crucial solution in today’s data-driven landscape.

Why This Matters

Organizations often encounter a diverse range of workloads, including databases and virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) – each requiring different levels of memory access. At , the introduction of marked a significant breakthrough in data storage optimization. By integrating NVMe into VMware’s memory management strategies, organizations can enhance their tiered memory architecture and reduce TCO for server hardware.

Advanced Memory Tiering leverages NVMe’s capabilities to dynamically adapt to varying workload demands. This intelligent memory tiering approach ensures that organizations can maximize their memory resources while meeting the performance needs of their diverse workloads.

The benefits of Advanced Memory Tiering with NVMe are significant, such as:

1. Cost efficiency: Traditional memory solutions such as DRAM often require significant investments in high-performance memory. However, not all data needs the same access speed. Memory tiering enables organizations to offload less critical data to more cost-effective storage, all while reserving high-performance memory for frequently accessed information.
2. Improved CPU utilization: One major challenge for IT leaders is the imbalance between memory and CPU resources, which can result in idle CPUs due to memory bottlenecks. Memory tiering alleviates this issue by facilitating more efficient data access to ensure better CPU utilization. This balanced approach enhances overall system performance and optimizes resource allocation.
3. Flexibility in cluster environments: is particularly beneficial for Tier 2 and Tier 3 clusters, where performance demands remain high but budget constraints are more pronounced. IT teams can then allocate resources more intelligently with a tiered memory architecture. This ensures that mission-critical applications receive high-speed memory while less critical workloads benefit from cost-effective storage solutions.

Addressing IT Pain Points

VMware recognizes the complex challenges IT leaders face: rising hardware costs, underutilized CPUs, and unbalanced memory-to-CPU ratios. Memory tiering addresses these issues by intelligently allocating resources, allowing organizations to maximize the value of their existing hardware.

The power of has become increasingly evident. Beyond mere cost reduction, memory tiering offers significant benefits:

1. Improved Resource Utilization: Underutilized CPUs are a thing of the past. Memory tiering ensures that CPUs have the necessary resources at the right time, significantly increasing efficiency.
2. Balanced Memory-to-CPU Ratios: The struggle to match memory with specific workloads is eliminated. Memory tiering creates a flexible resource pool, allowing for seamless accommodation of diverse memory requirements across various applications.
3. Optimized Performance: VMware’s memory management expertise, particularly through technologies like VMware vMotion, underpins this robust memory tiering solution. It is designed to minimize hardware investments without compromising on performance.

A recent performance analysis across various workloads demonstrated the impressive capabilities of memory tiering. With a minimal performance loss of just 4%, this technology achieved substantial TCO savings of up to 45%.

The Future Of Memory Technologies

The future of memory management is poised for transformation, particularly at VMware. The company focuses on memory tiering as a crucial element in its long-term strategy for accelerator-based memory solutions. This approach addresses immediate performance challenges and lays the groundwork for sustainable advancements in memory technologies.

VMware’s vision centers around tiered memory architecture, which integrates various memory types to optimize data storage and processing efficiency. By expanding memory tiering capabilities and incorporating additional accelerator technologies, VMware aims to enhance memory performance significantly.

Final Thoughts

Is memory tiering with NVMe right for you? The answer is likely yes. It offers a compelling solution for businesses seeking to optimize data storage, maximize resource utilization, and achieve significant cost savings. This technology enables organizations to manage data placement and access intelligently. For organizations focusing on Tier 2 and Tier 3 clusters, memory tiering provides a clear pathway to improved system performance and reduced expenses. 

As a long-standing VMware by Broadcom partner with VCDX-certified engineering support, WEI can deliver custom memory tiering solutions for your organization. Our expertise in VMware technology enables us to optimize your infrastructure for peak performance. Contact us today for a consultation and discover how memory tiering can transform your operations.

Next Steps: As Cloud Native Master Specialists, the WEI team works with customers to gain a deeper understanding of what your biggest application modernization challenges are so we can develop a complete cloud agnostic Kubernetes solution. With help from WEI, vSphere with Tanzu allows your enterprise to focus on the development, maintenance, and delivery of the best cloud technologies in the world. 

Download our free solution brief to discover the vSphere with Tanzu services that WEI offers as well as an understanding of our deep certification portfolio.

The post How Memory Tiering 疯情AV Change The VM Game appeared first on IT 疯情AV Provider - IT Consulting - Technology 疯情AV.

Let’s face it: keeping up with data center demands can feel like a constant uphill battle. IT teams are under pressure to deliver top-notch performance, iron-clad security, and smooth operations – often on a downsized budget. Sound familiar?

A comprehensive data center optimization strategy is the key to ensuring your IT infrastructure stays agile, adaptable, and secure. This strategy focuses on critical areas like operational efficiency, workload performance, security, and integration with DevOps practices.

We will dive into the key elements of successful infrastructure optimization and transformation. By implementing these, you can achieve a smoother workflow, enhanced performance, and improved security for your data center.

Why Do You Need A Strategy?

Data centers are critical in powering our digital landscape. They house the essential IT equipment that runs everything from complex enterprise applications to common social media platforms (have you yet?). However, data centers, like any engine, can become inefficient over time. This inefficiency can manifest as excessive resource consumption and struggling to keep pace with evolving demands.

A data center optimization strategy is your proactive approach to achieving peak performance. There are several compelling reasons to prioritize data center optimization:

• Reduce Costs: An optimization strategy can identify areas for improvement, such as consolidating underutilized servers or implementing more energy-efficient cooling systems. These steps can lead to substantial cost reductions over time.
• Enhance Efficiency: Streamline operations and resource allocation by eliminating redundancies and optimizing server utilization. As a result, your IT infrastructure functions at peak efficiency, delivering more processing power while relying on fewer resources.
• Boost Performance And Scalability: A well-optimized data center can handle increasing workloads more effectively. Optimization techniques like server virtualization allow you to dynamically allocate resources to meet fluctuating demands, ensuring smooth application performance and paving the way for future scalability.
• Improve Sustainability: The of data centers is a growing concern, especially as IT sustainability efforts are proving to save bottom-line dollars. Implementing a data center optimization strategy that prioritizes energy efficiency can demonstrably reduce your environmental footprint. This proactive approach also enhances your company’s brand reputation for sustainability – something consumers are beginning to keep at the top of minds.
• Minimize Downtime: Unplanned data center outages significantly threaten business operations. Organizations can identify and mitigate potential issues before they arise, ensuring the continued availability of critical applications for users.
• Support Innovation: Streamline operations and achieve efficient resource allocation. This frees up your IT team’s valuable time, allowing them to focus on strategic initiatives and develop new technologies.

From Optimization To Transformation

Optimizing data center performance is a critical objective for businesses of all sizes. VMware, a recognized leader in virtualization solutions, offers a powerful new tool designed to address this very need called VMware . This comprehensive enterprise workload platform empowers IT teams to achieve a fundamental transformation in their data centers.

VVF goes beyond basic management, streamlining operations, enhancing workload performance, and fostering innovation – all to position IT as a true business enabler. This solution addresses four key pillars of data center optimization:

1. Boost Operational Efficiency

VVF delivers predictive and proactive operations management:

• Intelligent automation and streamlined workflow by deploying pre-configured management packs for agentless monitoring.
• Identifies and resolves potential issues using machine learning to understand application boundaries, and collect performance data from all endpoints.
• Facilitates proactive maintenance through AI-driven proactive troubleshooting and streamlined remediation.

VVF empowers IT teams by providing comprehensive visibility and faster return-to-operations across their entire environment, from applications to storage. This simplifies management and maximizes resource utilization.

2. Supercharge Workload Performance

Have you noticed if lagging applications are slowing down overall business operations? If you haven’t, ask your end users. Application performance directly affects both user experience and overall productivity.

vSphere Foundation tackles this problem head-on with intelligent resource allocation and dynamic workload balancing. This powerful combination, achieved through DRS (Distributed Resource Scheduler), ensures your applications consistently run at peak performance. DRS automatically distributes workloads across available resources, eliminating bottlenecks and preventing performance slowdowns before they happen.

VVF also boasts significant improvements for larger, more demanding workloads:

• Enhanced GPU Support: You can now add up to 32 GPUs in pass-through mode, a 4x improvement over the previous limit of 8. This allows you to tackle more complex AI models by providing significantly more processing power.
• Scalable Virtual GPUs: For those who don’t require the raw power of dedicated GPUs, vSphere Foundation now supports up to 16 virtual GPUs per virtual machine. This offers a more scalable and cost-effective way to leverage GPU resources for a broader range of workloads.

VVF keeps your hybrid cloud running smoothly and cost-efficiently. Powered by operational and business insights, real-time predictive analytics, and AI, the platform automatically balances workloads and proactively avoids resource contention. This ensures seamless workload placement and balancing across VMware Cloud Foundation, vSAN, or VMware Cloud on AWS.

Additionally, vMotion allows for seamless live migration of virtual machines between physical hosts. This means you can perform maintenance or upgrades on your physical machines without disrupting service delivery.

3. Accelerate Innovation for DevOps

vSphere Foundation seamlessly integrates with leading DevOps services and solutions, enabling developers to provision virtual machines in minutes, deploy code efficiently, and easily roll back changes if necessary. This streamlined process empowers DevOps teams to focus on innovation and accelerate development cycles, ultimately leading to faster time-to-market for new features and services.

4. Elevate Security

vSphere Foundation prioritizes data security by laying a strong foundation for a comprehensive security posture. It achieves this through a combination of built-in features:

• Role-based access control (RBAC) and multi-factor authentication (MFA): These features ensure that only authorized users can access specific resources. RBAC grants access based on a user’s role, while MFA adds an extra layer of security by requiring a second verification factor beyond just a password.
• Modern identity federation and secure multi-factor authentication: vSphere Foundation allows you to leverage existing identity management systems, simplifying user access and strengthening authentication with multi-factor requirements.
• Governance and compliance with industry standards: vSphere Foundation helps organizations meet strict security regulations by providing tools and features that align with industry compliance standards, including meeting sustainability and ESG commitments.
• Data-at-rest encryption for workloads: This crucial feature encrypts data stored on virtual machines, protecting sensitive information even if unauthorized access occurs.

Additionally, vSphere Foundation integrates seamlessly with leading security solutions, enabling organizations to leverage a multi-layered defense strategy to protect their data and applications from evolving cyber threats.

Final Thoughts

Optimizing your data center goes beyond just hardware upgrades. It’s about creating a strategic framework that drives efficiency, performance, security, and innovation. By focusing on the four pillars of vSphere Foundation, organizations can build agile, adaptable, and secure data centers empowering them to achieve their digital transformation goals.

WEI, with its VCDX-certified professionals, can assist in your IT transformation journey, validate your business objectives, and ensure alignment with your technical strategy. Contact us to get started.

Next Steps: discover the vSphere with Tanzu services that WEI offers as well as an understanding of our deep certification portfolio. When you work with WEI, you get more than an innovative solution. You get a team of dedicated strategic partners and advisors who stay connected to ensure your long-term satisfaction and success.

The post These Four Key Elements Support Your IT Infrastructure Goals appeared first on IT 疯情AV Provider - IT Consulting - Technology 疯情AV.

Businesses constantly seek to optimize their infrastructure, improve operational efficiency, and ensure business continuity. Knowing this, virtualization has emerged as a powerful solution to achieve these general objectives, as it is the sole foundation of cloud computing. It better enables organizations to create virtual representations of their IT environment including servers, storage, virtual machines, and networks, among others.

At WEI, we understand the benefits of virtualization, which essentially allows IT teams to improve their resource efficiency, simplifies device management with a software-defined VMs, minimizes downtime, and fast tracks provisioning into existing workflows. Ultimately, our VCDX certification allows our network and virtualization experts to empower customers, across all industries, to better realize the full potential of their VMware enterprise environment and take ownership of their hardware. Being one of just a handful of value-added resellers based in New England that hold this certification, our VCDX capability is a major differentiator as we serve customers across the globe.

So, what exactly is the VCDX certification, and why is it a critical resource for the enterprise? We recently spoke with our VCDX-certified Senior Architect and Virtualization Ambassador, , to find out. Mark earned his VCDX nearly 15 years ago and was one of the first non-VMware employees to earn the certification. Notably, he achieved this without today’s architectural guidance and mentors to lean on, although Mark proudly makes himself available as a mentor to today’s aspiring candidates.

Tech Talk: Identifying Proper Cluster Design For The Enterprise

Understanding The VCDX Certification

VMware Certified Design Expert stands as the highest credential offered by our longtime partner, VMware. It validates an individual’s in-depth knowledge, skills, and experience in designing and implementing complex VMware environments. In doing so, the expert must show they can articulate what an environment’s requirements are, identify what the customer’s desired outcomes are, identify constraints, and then identify risks for the business. During the certification process, the candidate must create detailed, logical documentation, effectively present and defend their design choices in front of a panel, and have a thorough understanding of all design aspects.

While the VCDX itself does not require passing a written exam, there are two mid-tier exams that must be passed before moving on to VCDX. These prerequisites include:

1. Obtaining the VMware Certified Professional (VCP) credential.
2. Securing both the VCAP-Design and VCAP-Administration certifications within a specific track.

“The certification process involves a comprehensive written exam, a detailed design submission, and a grueling defense of the design in front of a panel of VMware experts,” Gabryjelski shares. Earning these credentials demonstrates proficiency in both designing and administering VMware solutions. While VCDX-DCV focuses on advanced data center design expertise, VMware offers a comprehensive range of certification tracks beyond DCV, as follows:

• Cloud Management and Automation (CMA) Track
• Security (SEC) Track
• Network Virtualization (NV) Track
• End-User Computing (EUC) Track
• Application Modernization (AM) Track

These tracks cater to both beginners and experienced professionals, validating the essential skills needed to integrate and manage the technologies that deliver your desired business outcomes. Covering a wide range of technology areas, these tracks provide the flexibility to choose the path that best aligns with your virtualization career goals.

Why VCDX Certification Matters Today

As businesses embrace virtualization to drive agility, scalability, and cost-efficiency, the demand for highly skilled virtualization professionals is increasing. Here’s how the VCDX certification empowers WEI to address this growing need for customers:

1. Unmatched Expertise: As indicated above, VCDX-certified engineers can design, deploy, and manage complex virtualized environments with exceptional efficiency and precision. This means asking the right questions and making the best IT decisions the long-term ramifications in mind.
2. Strategic Design: A VCDX-certified engineer can suggest and design virtualized solutions that align perfectly with your organization’s specific needs and future goals. They can consider scalability, security, performance, and compliance factors to ensure your virtual infrastructure is properly future-proofed.
3. Problem-Solving Prowess: The VCDX program equips professionals with the ability to scope a VMware environment through an advanced lens that is focused on grasping the specific requirements for the customer’s IT systems, desired business outcomes, and identifying the limitations that must be considered when designing solutions.
   
   WEI Tech Talk: vSphere Upgrade and Why Infrastructure Testing Is Important
   
   

Beyond Certification: The Commitment To Empower Clients

Gabryelski also underscores WEI’s commitment to enabling customers through . This investment in customer enablement sets WEI apart, allowing clients to take ownership of their hardware and maximize its value while knowing they can rely on WEI for support and expertise. In a regularly scheduled workshop program, Gabryjelski leads workshops based on the following solutions, all designed to put customers in a better position to own and operate their environment:

• vSphere
• Disaster recovery workflows
• Backup and recovery strategy
• Introduction to PowerShell
• Introduction to Kubernetes

“I think that’s a huge differentiator, because it enables our customers,” says Gabryjelski. “What we end up doing is training our customers. They put themselves in a great position to own and operate, and they know they can come back to us for some assistance if they need it, or even another set of eyes, as they’re planning their next update or upgrade or migration activities.”

Partnering For Success

Choosing the right solutions provider can significantly impact your organization’s success. Under WEI’s VCDX guidance, our network and virtualization team can help you optimize your VMware enterprise deployment. Here, we can effectively collect and assess customer requirements to develop an architectural design that includes virtual infrastructure, configuration suggestions, and deployment validation methods. This also includes producing well-organized documentation, presenting and justifying solution choices, and comprehensively understanding all aspects of the design.

Drawing from his experience, Gabryelski shares how having direct access to a VCDX at WEI has accelerated a customer’s tech stack. He recounts a scenario where a longstanding customer with a sizable ESX infrastructure (80-90 ESX hosts) sought guidance on hardware replacement as the hardware was approaching unsupported status.

Through collaborative discussions, Gabryelski’s careful evaluation of the situation revealed deviations from best practices, which, although minor, provided an opportunity to make improvements. The customer initially requested a straightforward hardware swap, but an opportunity arose to guide them towards a more future-proof strategy. As vSphere’s next version approaches, it will introduce a new patching strategy. Recognizing this, the approach shifted to not only replacing old hardware but also rethinking the cluster’s structure to align with future requirements. This proactive strategy aims to minimize the need for further adjustments and additional projects in the coming years as the new hardware is integrated into the system.

Final Thoughts

We understand that your VMware environment is a major component to your overall IT infrastructure. To achieve your business goals, you deserve a reliable and experienced IT solution provider and partner to design, implement, and manage your virtualized data center with confidence.

Contact WEI today to learn how we can support you through strategic designs and innovative solutions to transform your infrastructure and help your business thrive in today’s dynamic digital landscape.

Next Steps: In this episode, the WEI Tech Talk Podcast welcomes WEI Senior Architect and Virtualization Ambassador Mark Gabryjelski. Mark has been practicing VMware since 2000 and is VCDX #23. Known as “Gabs” around the industry, he is one of the first non-VMware employees to have earned the certification.

Today’s episode will explain what the VCDX certification is and why it elevates WEI as an IT solutions provider. Mark also explains what his journey was like in earning his certification and how the program has evolved over the past several years. The content for this episode was recorded in January 2024.

The post The VCDX Advantage: Redefining IT 疯情AV With Virtualization Expertise appeared first on IT 疯情AV Provider - IT Consulting - Technology 疯情AV.

Picture this: You’ve just been involved in a minor car accident. Thankfully, you have car insurance, and while you hoped to never use it, it sits available at a moment’s notice. In the business world, that’s the essence of (DRaaS). It’s like insurance for your critical data and applications: it might seem unnecessary at first, but when disaster strikes, you’ll be grateful for the investment.

DRaaS is currently one of the leading managed services due to its unparalleled benefits, customizability, and alignment with specific business objectives. In this article, we will explore its rising popularity and the significant value it offers to enterprises.

The DR Revolution

Let’s quickly begin with the origins of the 3-2-1 rule, which can be traced back to the 1960s. It was during this period that early iterations of the computer entered our everyday world. With the 3-2-1 rule, a third copy of an organization’s most critical data would be stored off-site for disaster recovery purposes. This could be due to a natural disaster or a data breach. Though not in the form of cassette tapes or CDs, this 3-2-1 practice is still very popular today, give or take a few nuances.

Before the days of virtualization, businesses were required to uphold a second data center, which meant investing in extra servers and infrastructure. Moreover, keeping everything synchronized and managing replication across various locations was a burdensome task, particularly with physical hosts. All these factors led to the doubling of infrastructure and expenses associated with DR, making it less feasible for organizations with limited IT agility.

However, the emergence of virtual machines (VMs) and the public cloud marked a shift in the DR landscape. With the introduction of orchestration tools, workflows and recovery processes are now automated – including IP and network changes. This automation simplifies the DR process and makes it more manageable and cost-effective for businesses, allowing them to achieve resilience without the burden of excessive expenses.

As technology advanced, public cloud providers teamed up with VMs to offer , enabling businesses to run VMs in the cloud. This breakthrough led to the introduction of DRaaS to deliver flexibility and stability to workloads.

The era of hybrid cloud and the advent of modern and natural threats paved the way for newer DRaaS platforms so it is important that businesses keep their disaster recovery plans up to speed. says, “The value WEI brings to the table is the expertise in running these newer DR-as-a-Service solutions across various public cloud providers like AWS, Azure, and GCP (Google Cloud Platform).”

This specialized skill set of understanding networking, security, and other ancillary services from various cloud providers enables WEI to deliver tailored solutions that meet various business requirements.

3 Reasons To Embrace DRaaS

DRaaS comes in different forms, and provides a host of benefits for any type of business, including:

• Scalability: Whether an enterprise runs 1 or 500 VMs, has 20 servers or 100 servers, understanding the business requirements allows for tailored DRaaS tiers that align with existing VM design and needs. , a network virtualization software, plays a vital role in making the service flexible by enabling multiple networks with the same IP range. This streamlines the DR process and ensures a smoother and more forecasted recovery experience for different customers with overlapping IP ranges. Of course, understanding the business requirements of DR-as-a-Service opens up new avenues of discussion where we can really get into the costing model and determine the importance of applications. The need to be recovered at all, versus the need to be recovered in a day, four hours or even a week. The quicker the recovery time, the more expensive the end solution.
• Cost-effectiveness: Moving to an operational expense model eliminates the need for a license to run it and to own and maintain physical equipment, making DRaaS a more affordable option.
• Efficiency in operations: Opting for the as-a-Service option for DR streamlines manpower allocation compared to maintaining a second data center or working through unnecessary IT personnel skill gaps The security and recoverability features of a public cloud also eliminate the need for physical site maintenance.

DRaaS is an attractive solution, but it’s not one-size-fits-all. It should always align with a business’s specific needs and requirements. The key is defining what applications need in terms of availability and recoverability.

What’s Next For DRaaS?

DRaaS is not going anywhere, and IT leaders should take note. Many WEI customers have experienced pain points that could have been prevented with a reliable and tested DRaaS plan. A robust DRaaS plan plays a critical role in minimizing the impacts of disasters, ensuring business resilience, and preparing for the future.

Business leaders should explore possible scenarios when planning to employ DRaaS. highlights these questions to start the conversation around DR:

• What am I planning for?
• How am I planning to recover my workloads should the worst thing happen?

As DR solutions have advanced to become more accessible and cost-effective, he emphasizes DRaaS’ significance as an “insurance policy” for protecting critical data and applications.

The integration of virtual machines (VMs) and personalized DRaaS in the public cloud environment provides businesses with reliable protection and peace of mind amid the ever-growing threats of ransomware, phishing, malware, and growing natural disasters such as tornadoes and hurricanes.

Final Thoughts

At WEI, we understand that each business is unique, and with increasingly escalating cyber threats, DRaaS is becoming a top priority for companies aiming to establish robust IT infrastructures. Having this service in place is something every business will be grateful for, as it provides the assurance of enhanced resilience and protection against potential disruptions.

Whether you choose VMware on-premises or in the cloud, our dedicated professionals can offer expert advice on managing your workloads to meet your objectives and ensure you’re ready for any unforeseen circumstances.

Next steps: WEI’s Mark Gabryjelski, who has been practicing VMware since 2000, and ESX since 2002, explains in the video below why it is wise to regularly perform an optimization assessment on an enterprise’s cluster infrastructure.

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As the leader in the virtualization landscape, VMware introduced in April 2023. With its impressive improvements in security, automation, and storage, the new update prioritizes stability and expands on the groundwork of . This means customers can expect a seamless approach to VM management and improved cluster design that will not require new license keys. After a recent conversation with VMware expert , we identify and summarize our findings of Update 1

Key Features Of vSphere 8 Update 1

Although most customers typically wait for the first major patch before upgrading, there are three key features in this latest update that have already proven to drive efficiency and unlock new potential for enterprise VMs. After all, it is the best of the vSphere releases to date for running cloud-native and on-premises workloads.

1. Simplified Lifecycle Management

Prior to vSphere 8 Update 1, vSphere Lifecycle Manager (vLCM) only supported standalone ESXi hosts through by vCenter using vSphere APIs. Now, with Update 1, standalone ESXi hosts don’t just have the full vSphere Client support, but users can compose a desired image, remediate, check compliance, and more. All these functions make it possible to perform all vLCM functions on standalone hosts that were limited to the vSphere clusters mentioned above.

2. Improved Security And Identity Management

Update 1 allows administrators to define custom image depots for standalone ESXi hosts, addressing potential remediation issues caused by high-latency connections between hosts and vCenter. With these improvements, vSphere 8.1 provides the same level of control and efficiency as managing vSphere clusters.

To further enhance the security and compliance features of vSphere 8, the new update now incorporates Okta identity federation support for vCenter and improvements to ESXi Quick Boot. With this support, enterprises benefit from modern cloud-based identity management and multifactor authentication through the safekeeping of user credentials separate from vSphere.

3. Empowering Workloads With AI And ML

While not all businesses utilize artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), emphasizes the importance of accommodating critical on-premise workloads. Fortunately, vSphere 8 Update 1 is equipped with more capabilities such as improved GPU assignment and workload scalability. These upgrades enable businesses to efficiently manage larger workloads as needed and leverage the potential of AI and ML technologies.

It’s important to note the availability of these capabilities depends on if your enterprise is using a public cloud and if the vendor offers these options. While most public cloud vendors are transitioning to vSphere 8.1, the inclusion of physical GPUs in the public cloud will vary based on the hardware offerings of each provider. Therefore, enterprises should ensure their cloud provider supports the necessary hardware capabilities.

Integrating vSphere 8 Update 1 To Your Existing Cluster Design

From the perspective of a vSphere software administrator, Update Manager has been renamed to vSphere Lifecycle Manager. However, from the VMware perspective, they are still maintaining two separate products: vSphere Lifecycle Manager and Update Manager. This is important because there is the belief that there will no longer be Update Manager available in vSphere 9. This changes the way admins add and maintain hardware that belong to the same vSphere cluster. Challenges could occur when scaling and maintaining hardware within the same cluster due to firmware differences.

To adapt to these changes, Mark Gabryjelski recommends maintaining homogeneous clusters with identical hosts and resources by using the following best practices:

• Plan out your VMware clusters and membership. Different generation clusters cannot use the same driver. While purchasing equipment is important, you must also consider the hidden soft costs associated with maintaining the environment.
• Instead of replacing old hardware, acquire new clusters and migrate workloads. This may alter infrastructure management but ensures compliance with the new rules, designs, and physical characteristics

Fortunately, vSphere 8 Update 1 streamlines updates for administrators, especially those still using vSphere 6 or having just transitioned to vSphere 7. When it’s time to upgrade to vSphere 8 and future versions, like vSphere 9, these approaches will better support the best practice of homogeneous clusters with identical hosts and resources.

Final Thoughts

Staying current with the latest vSphere releases guarantees businesses will leverage the full potential of their VM environments. VMware’s vSphere 8 Update 1 marks a major milestone in simplified management, enhanced security, and advanced workload capabilities to meet customer needs and improve operations.

If you are looking to upgrade and scale your VMs and workloads, WEI recommends embracing this new update to stay competitive and achieve greater business efficiency. As always, it is important to seek guidance from a reliable IT solutions provider to carefully plan and implement such upgrades to ensure a smooth transition and maximize the benefits of vSphere 8 Update 1.

Next Steps: WEI’s Mark Gabryjelski, who has been practicing VMware since 2000, and ESX since 2002, explains in the video below why it is wise to regularly perform an optimization assessment on an enterprise’s cluster infrastructure.

The post Boosting Your VM Environment: A Comprehensive Look at vSphere 8 Update 1 appeared first on IT 疯情AV Provider - IT Consulting - Technology 疯情AV.

Has your on-prem virtual host environment become saturated? Many organizations don’t want to admit to this, so here’s a good truth indicator to help answer the question: If your IT team is forced to perform basic maintenance on your virtual host infrastructure during evening, night, or weekend hours because there is no capacity to bring down infrastructure components during normal business operations, your answer is probably yes.

Virtual Cluster Saturation

Virtual host saturation inevitably happens over time. A primary culprit is mission creep, which is where the goals, objectives, or scope of a project gradually expand over time. In professional sports, we see the reality of salary creep for athletes. In 2000, the average NFL quarterback made $1.9 million. Twenty years later, the average salary stood at $10.5 million for a 450% increase! But this salary rise is made possible through expansive league growth, rising team values, control over media markets, and the importance of finding a franchise quarterback to lead a team for the next several seasons.

This brings us back to the virtual cluster, and the mission creep is virtual machine (VM). Either the number of VMs increases over time or VMs are overprovisioned. There will come a day when an IT leader realizes that the virtual cluster that performed so well in 2016 will no longer suffice. That’s not because the original cluster design failed to meet the initial requirements seven years ago. Rather, as time rolls on, business needs have changed, and workloads have expanded. The SQL report that took one hour to create in 2016 now takes twice as long in 2023.

Do You Take Your On-prem Virtual Cluster For Granted?

It’s easy to take your virtual cluster for granted. It quietly does its job in the background. Outside of the system admins that support it, the virtual cluster ends up being largely forgotten. The cloud isn’t like that. Cloud customers are reminded every month of their growing workloads when they see the bill come in. A slight uptick is instantly felt in the pocketbook while your on-prem VM cluster was paid for years ago.

However, while the growing saturation in your datacenter may not be fiscally expensive, it is costly in lost performance and missed opportunities. What’s more, your business leadership may be oblivious to the saturated state due to the workarounds that your experienced system admins miraculously perform regularly. One day, there will be a reckoning in which a disruptive event occurs for which there is no available work around.

Is Your Virtual Cluster Designed for Perfection?

If your virtual cluster was professionally designed and implemented, it had slack built into it at one point. It contained vacant capacity that allowed system admins to perform firmware updates on a host server during business hours. Most hardware failures also did not disrupt business workflows because the cluster design was resilient thanks to excess capacity.

Unfortunately, now that your cluster hosts twice as many VMs than it did originally, your cluster is unintentionally built for perfection in the same way that an airliner overbooks its flights. In the case of the airline, the overprovisioning of customers on every plane often plays out fine in the end as there are usually a small number of passengers who never make their flight due to one reason or another. But then, occasionally, everyone does show up and that is when things get strained. Some customers must be enticed to give up their seat, which either costs money or causes customer dissatisfaction. Similarly, you might get away with the practice of overprovisioned resources on your virtual cluster, but eventually you get burned.

Other Reasons for Virtual Cluster Saturation.

VM creep isn’t the only cause of virtual cluster saturation. Other reasons include:

• Poor capacity planning due to unrealistic assumptions concerning workload growth.
• Misconfigurations of component settings.
• Persistent hardware failures due to aged equipment.
• Insufficient resource allocation to service expanding workloads.

The Importance of an Optimization Assessment

A monthly bill isn’t required to alert you of the oversaturation of a VM environment. You need an optimization assessment performed by a team of virtualization experts. WEI has a team of experts that can properly analyze your virtual environment to assess its ability to meet the workloads of your business. We can identify any discovered shortcomings and advise how to address them. Understand that assessment recommendations don’t have to include new purchases. Often, a cluster simply needs a retuning as its original configurations cannot accommodate the modified workloads it must handle now.

In the same way that your vehicle requires scheduled maintenance, you should have an optimization assessment performed on a quarterly basis. This is even more critical today due to the highly dynamic nature of business today. Your business depends on your virtual cluster, so give it the respect and attention it deserves. Contact WEI today about an optimization assessment today. It is as easy as sending us an email and including optimization assessment in the subject to ensure prioritization.

Next Steps: WEI’s Mark Gabryjelski, who has been practicing VMware since 2000, and ESX since 2002, explains in the video below why it is wise to regularly perform an optimization assessment on an enterprise’s cluster infrastructure.

The post Here’s Why A quarterly Assessment Of Your Virtual Cluster Is Recommended appeared first on IT 疯情AV Provider - IT Consulting - Technology 疯情AV.

In today’s highly competitive service industry, one of the most common issues IT professionals encounter originates from clients who fail to anticipate future needs. Fortunately, has developed a solution: optimized cluster design. This feature maximizes performance and ensures IT professionals can successfully meet rising customer expectations and overcome fluctuating demand.聽

For example, your IT team might design a solution for a client to run 100 (VMs), but after several years the customer upscales to running 400 VMs which results in lagging performance. While most organizations build a buffer for additional growth, many overlook the need to revisit the hardware supporting their workloads. For this reason, it is crucial to build a scalable solution that meets evolving needs for both the present and future. This is where an effective cluster design comes in.

Five Reasons Cluster Design Is Essential for Enterprises

1. Enhanced Security

When businesses distribute workloads across multiple systems, they can increase their resilience to unexpected and unauthorized access. At WEI, we understand the criticality of security and offer tailored solutions to streamline cluster design implementation. Our expert team has extensive experience in designing, deploying, and managing clusters across diverse environments, from small businesses to large enterprises.

Partnering with WEI enables your organization to protect your data while benefiting from the performance advantages of a clustered environment. We offer comprehensive training programs to upskill your team in system maintenance and management, along with ongoing support services to ensure optimal performance.

2. Increased Scalability

Cluster design is a highly effective solution for enterprises seeking improved scalability. This architecture utilizes distributed servers, allowing multiple nodes to work together to enhance system performance and capabilities.

This approach enables businesses to achieve greater scalability without major system changes, which facilitates the attainment of business objectives even in the event of individual component failure.

3. Redundancy

High availability and redundancy are critical considerations for enterprise systems, and leveraging cluster design can significantly improve reliability. This means that if one computer fails, the other nodes can take over its duties without service interruption.

Cluster designs are imperative for businesses with mission-critical operations that depend on uninterrupted system availability. Replicating data across multiple machines in this setup significantly reduces the risk of data loss resulting from hardware failure.

4. Improved Performance

Effective cluster design involves leveraging multiple physical servers to manage complex tasks, distributed computing needs, workloads, and applications. Improved performance is a key benefit, allowing businesses to adapt to changing application requirements and increase efficiency.

For businesses looking to grow or update their hardware, regular optimization assessments are crucial. These assessments provide valuable information within a week and real data on historical trends after 30 days. Regardless of the data center’s lifecycle stage, WEI recommends conducting regular reviews – ideally quarterly – especially if there’s a six-month forecast on hardware workload. This approach ensures the right cadence for business continuity, minimizes risks and prevents resource overgrowth to ensure alignment with your company’s objectives.

5. Reduced Costs

Enterprises can maximize their cost-efficiency with a well-thought-out cluster design, which provides superior performance at lower costs by curbing unnecessary hardware and software expenses.

As a longtime expert on VMware’s solution, WEI provides the services and solutions necessary for businesses to make clustering easy to implement and manage. Ultimately ideal for testing, development, and production environments, clustering dynamically allocates resources based on demand to ensure efficient resource utilization. Compared to non-clustered systems, properly clustered ones offer higher fault tolerance as they mitigate costly downtime.

Final Thoughts

Virtual environments are critical for work-from-anywhere business models. Whether it be hospitals, financial institutions, or a college campus, virtual environments are critical to end-user operability. In cases where workloads exceed intended capacity, leaders and system administrators must communicate effectively to guarantee efficient cluster design for VMs.

Administrators can leverage tools like WEI’s assessment to overcome common challenges and recommend solutions. We offer optimization and VM right-sizing services that enable our clients to evaluate their current workloads and hardware capacity. Tuning your current environment not only enhances resilience and efficiency, but also provides leaders with the necessary insights to make informed decisions, maximize hardware investments, and achieve business objectives.

Contact us today and allow WEI to provide you with the tools and metrics you need to make informed decisions and improve your business operations.

Next steps: WEI’s Mark Gabryjelski, who has been practicing VMware since 2000, and ESX since 2002, explains why it is wise to regularly perform an optimization assessment on an enterprise’s cluster infrastructure. Listen to Mark identify why IT leaders are oversubscribing the resources they have for non-forecasted workloads and what he recommends to prevent this scenario. 

The post The Top 5 Reasons To Optimize Cluster Design for Your Enterprise appeared first on IT 疯情AV Provider - IT Consulting - Technology 疯情AV.

As enterprises strive to meet business goals while using increasingly varied IT applications, a growing need eventually emerges to validate and upgrade the underlying infrastructures to keep up with business demand. Infrastructure testing is a vital step in staying ahead of the ever-increasing IT complexities, but is your business doing this frequently and effectively enough?聽

Four Reasons To Perform Infrastructure Testing

The infrastructure-testing process has a wealth of operational and security benefits for enterprises. Making sure your IT infrastructure is up to date facilitates a more stable, reliable, and secure system that end-users and internal processes can depend on. Here are several primary benefits of infrastructure testing.

1. Testing allows your enterprise to confirm that vulnerabilities are identified and corrected before a cyberattack hits, protecting your organization from fiscal and reputational damage. This benefit carries extra weight due to the annual increase of ransomware incidents.
2. A successful infrastructure testing process also helps reduce the number of production failures, leading to less downtime and financial loss. This reduction includes the cost of lost business during the time systems are offline and the expenses created by identifying and fixing the issue.
3. Infrastructure testing also presents an opportunity for IT administrators to review what legacy items still exist in their environment. With support ending for VMware vSphere 6.5 and 6.7 in October 2022 and being released soon, enterprises that have delayed an upgrade for the past two years are now staring at a hurried process to upgrade their legacy hardware and software. This is a common pain point that WEI assists its customers with.聽
4. Hardware virtualization platforms like are known by many system administrators for improved stability, performance, and usability. By having a more reliable environment, your company can also give end-users and developers confidence in your system, which allows for simpler scalability. This also means reduced times for development cycles, which helps organizations react quicker to a changing environment.

In order to meet the demands of high-performance apps, you need to regularly conduct infrastructure testing. In general, you should consider running these any time there are infrastructure-related changes to a system such as the development of new patches, updates to your operating system, or security fixes.

VMware vSphere 7.3 Supports Your Infrastructure

With VMware vSphere, you can rest assured that your enterprise’s infrastructure is supported so you can meet your business goals. With vSphere 7.3 you have:

• vSphere Memory Monitoring and Remediation with added support for snapshots of Persistent Memory (PMem) virtual machines (VMs).
• The ability to use vSphere Lifecycle Manager images to manage a vSAN stretched cluster and its witness host.
• The ability for admins to configure vCLS virtual machines to run on specific datastores by configuring the vCLS VM datastore preference per cluster.
• Improved interoperability between vCenter Server and ESXi versions.
• Zero downtime and zero data loss for mission critical VMs in case of Machine Check Exception (MCE) hardware failure.

Coming October 2022: vSphere 8.0

VMware announced that vSphere 8.0 is on its way and is scheduled to be generally available in October 2022. Administrators who have yet to upgrade from vSphere 6.5/6.7 are probably wondering if they should upgrade directly to 8.0. They can, but it will likely prove costly due to existing legacy hardware and software items. Remember, vSphere 6.5 was released in 2018 and is part of a virtualization platform that is almost 10 years old. So, in short, an incremental upgrade to 7.3 is anticipated for most. 

Conclusion 

If you use hardware virtualization platforms like VMware vSphere, it’s always vital to make sure you upgrade to the latest updated version. Administrators who run unsupported legacy platforms increase their risk of security breaches and high expenses. Devoting time and resources early to an effective infrastructure testing system can ensure all company networks are safe and able to cope with constant changes.

WEI can assist you in mapping out a long term strategy for system upgrades if you don’t have the time or resources. We can assess your environment, understand its vulnerabilities, and work with your team on a custom-tailored approach that best fits your business priorities. Contact us to get started today.

Next Steps : Learn more about what WEI Senior Architect and Virtualization Ambassador Mark Gabryjelski has to say about VMware vSphere along with the importance of infrastructure testing in our tech talk, available below.

The post Stay Ahead Of IT Complexities With Infrastructure Testing appeared first on IT 疯情AV Provider - IT Consulting - Technology 疯情AV.

To advance business growth and forward-thinking digital strategy, organizations consistently invest in IT infrastructures. As businesses across all industries strive to meet their goals for increasingly varied applications in a demanding market, a growing need emerges to validate and upgrade the underlying infrastructures. Testing only your applications will not be enough to defend your infrastructure from a variety of risks. Infrastructure testing is a vital step in staying ahead of the ever-increasing IT complexities, but is your business doing this frequently and effectively enough? Read on to learn about the importance of infrastructure testing and why our team recommends it.

What Is Infrastructure Testing?

tells us: “Every software requires an infrastructure to perform its actions. Infrastructure testing is the testing process that covers hardware, software, and networks. It involves testing any code that reads configuration values from different things in the IT framework and compares them to intended results.” Even more, this critical process can help prevent failures in your interconnected systems that may lead to downtime or data breaches. Ultimately, it ensures that every part of your process is acting as intended.

Another way infrastructure testing can be used is to confirm an organization is complying with necessary security policies while also avoiding vulnerabilities and hacking techniques that can exploit networks or steal data.

The Benefits Of Infrastructure Testing

The infrastructure testing process can bring numerous operational and security benefits. When you confirm that any vulnerabilities are identified and corrected before a cyberattack hits, you can be protected from fiscal and reputational damage. Making sure your IT infrastructure is up to date facilitates a more stable and reliable system that end-users and internal processes can and will benefit from.

A successful infrastructure testing process also helps reduce the number of production failures, leading to less downtime and financial loss. This reduction includes the cost of lost business during the time systems are offline and the expenses created by identifying and fixing the issue.

Infrastructure testing also presents an opportunity for IT administrators to review what legacy items still exist in their environment. For example, support for VMware vSphere 6.7 is ending in October 2022 and enterprises who delayed an upgrade the past two years are now staring at a hurried upgrade process. Hardware virtualization platforms like (now vSphere 7.0.3 as of this writing) is known by many system administrators for its improved stability, performance, and usability. By having a more reliable environment, your company can also give end-users and developers confidence in your system, which allows for simpler scalability. This also means reduced times for development cycles, which helps organizations react quicker to a changing environment.

, WEI’s influential tech expert practicing for 22 years, shares his thoughts on the benefits of infrastructure testing:

“The ultimate perfect environment is for you to buy some servers (in an infrastructure scenario) and put them into use. Then you would buy the same make and model and build a test environment. You can go through the validation of your organization yourself and do these upgrades in an environment that does not run production workloads. That can provide your organization with validation that the processes are correct, and that the software operates the way you expect it to operate during and after the upgrades.”

How Often Should You Run Infrastructure Testing?

In order to meet the demands of high-performance apps, you need to regularly conduct infrastructure testing. In general, you should consider running these any time there are infrastructure-related changes to a system such as the development of new patches, updates to your operating system, or security fixes.

We once again turn to Mark, who has experience with hundreds of implementations and integrations, to share this example:

“Just because you buy and implement the system doesn’t mean you should leave it alone for three years and then upgrade it once in a great while. Imagine if we had done this with our cars. Four years later after buying my car, I show up at the dealership and tell them that something is wrong with it, and they look at me and say, “藴Well you’ve driven 100,000 miles, how many times have you changed the oil? How many times did you do a tire rotation?’ If we treated our automobiles the way we treat some of the infrastructures I’ve seen, it would just be absolutely horrible for those who own the vehicles. We need to treat our IT infrastructures and maintain them the same way we would maintain something like our automobiles.”

Conclusion

If you use hardware virtualization platforms like VMware vSphere, it’s vital to make sure you upgrade to the latest updated version (7.0.3). Administrators who run unsupported legacy platforms increase their risk of security breaches and high expenses. Devoting time and resources early to an effective infrastructure testing system can ensure all company networks are safe and able to cope with constant changes.

WEI can assist you in system upgrades if you don’t have the time or resources. Contact us to get started today.

Next Steps: Learn more about what Mark has to say about VMware vSphere 7.0.3 along with the importance of infrastructure testing in his recent interview below:

The post Is Infrastructure Testing In Your IT Strategy? appeared first on IT 疯情AV Provider - IT Consulting - Technology 疯情AV.

As enterprises push forward with digital transformation initiatives in the face of the continuing COVID-19 pandemic, it’s apparent that modernization of application and software development is a critical part of a holistic approach. In fact, according to a recent survey of 5,000 executive-level respondents:

• 88% believe enterprises with software-minded leaders are more successful.
• 79% state organizations will not be able to deliver a best-in-class end-user experience without successfully modernizing application development processes.

If you’re still unsure about modernizing application development for your enterprise, let’s look at three reasons why it’s critical for your digital transformation journey.

3 Reasons To Modernize Application Development

1. Legacy infrastructure is costly. Maintaining and replacing legacy applications, which are overly dependent on platform infrastructures and internal monolithic architectures, account for a large portion of IT budgets each year. Additionally, the time and money required to train new employees on legacy IT applications can also prove costly and time-consuming. Application modernization needs to be a business-centric, multiplatform, and continuous process. Enterprises that understand the value in modernizing applications can:

• Innovate faster and win a greater market share
• Quickly release software to keep up with demand
• Take advantage of cloud elasticity

Just as workers today must continuously update their skills, applications must also be updated to truly benefit from new computing approaches, languages, frameworks, and infrastructure platforms.

2. Free Your Apps. Modernizing application development for your enterprise will free them to be used from anywhere within your multi-cloud hybrid architectures through containerization. By the end of this year, estimates are that 90% of new enterprise applications will be delivered using cloud-native approaches, with around 500 million applications by 2025.

Kubernetes, the other piece of the application modernization puzzle, is a portable, extensible open-source platform used to manage containerized workloads and servers. It increases agility, accelerates software delivery, and simplifies the work of both developers and operators. With Kubernetes, applications are now free from underlying infrastructures and platforms. By releasing applications and removing their complex dependencies, you provide the space developers need to do what they do best: build great apps.

3. The Power of Kubernetes. Kubernetes is the leading container management platform because of the agility it offers modernized applications. Kubernetes clusters can host them independently as well as encompass multiple machines and environments. That means that a single cluster can span multiple clouds, virtual machines, and operating systems. What’s more, you can even run applications on-premise and in the cloud simultaneously, moving workloads in between them. Modernized applications with Kubernetes give your enterprise the flexibility and ability to use what you need when you need it.

Further, Kubernetes will help ensure new applications are properly aligned with your enterprise’s needs and goals. With greater collaboration between stakeholders and influencers such as the development teams, IT support teams, and application owners, new applications can be created that provide value immediately.

While legacy applications had their time to shine, these three reasons show why modernizing application development is a must as you take on the process of digitally transforming your enterprise.

Modernize Application Development Using VMWare

While there are multiple Kubernetes offerings on the market today that will assist you on the path to application modernization, VMWare is among the top. VMware Tanzu allows users to run multiple Kubernetes clusters and microservices across both public and private clouds in an automated fashion. With the suite of products offered by Tanzu, you can run all your clusters from a single command center and proactively manage policies to optimize and securely protect them. According to customer , results have shown:

• Provisioning time reduction of 90%
• Developers spend 37% more time coding
• New features released 61% faster

Are you sold on modernizing application development with VMWare Tanzu? Contact WEI today to find out how we can help you every step of the way.

Next Steps: Download WEI’s executive brief titled, “” to learn more about the importance of modernizing application development.

The post 3 Reasons Why It’s Critical To Modernize Application Development appeared first on IT 疯情AV Provider - IT Consulting - Technology 疯情AV.

In today’s multi-cloud era, desktop virtualization is at the top of the list of IT priorities for organizations of all sizes. Business leaders wish to deliver virtual desktops and applications that offer the flexibility to respond to rapidly changing demands without the complexities associated with managing on-premises infrastructure.

VMware Cloud on Dell EMC is delivered as-a-service to your data center and edge locations. This allows business leaders to offload infrastructure management tasks and focus more on high-priority IT initiatives.

In the article below, we break down the top five desktop virtualization challenges in today’s multi-cloud environment and how VMware Cloud is helping to solve these challenges.

1. Selecting The Right Infrastructure

The public cloud operating model provides numerous advantages including increased business agility and economic benefits. This has led many organizations to shift away from on-premises infrastructures. Enterprises have sought solutions that enable migrating or extending the capabilities of their virtual desktop and application environments. However, a do-it-yourself approach can result in a less than ideal infrastructure that delivers inconsistent performance and places limitations on scaling.

for both traditional and modern applications. For customers that need to remain on-premises, VMware Cloud on Dell EMC simplifies your VDI deployment by delivering a best-in-class solution that enables organizations to take full advantage of the efficiencies of the public cloud operating system while eliminating the need to reskill staff or refactor applications.

2. Interoperability Between Deployments

As business leaders’ top priorities have become cloud adoption and desktop virtualization, environments have become increasingly heterogeneous. This has allowed organizations to take advantage of differentiated services, however it has also created a management challenge. To mitigate this challenge, enterprises need a platform that delivers unified infrastructure and operations, providing consistency across deployments.

VMware Cloud on Dell EMC brings a compelling value proposition to customers looking to extend capacity for VDI deployments. Applications teams can utilize existing tools, removing the friction of migrating desktops and applications to a new infrastructure.

3. Personalizing And Managing Your VDI Deployment

Enterprises face a pressing need to rapidly deliver a great user experience to remote workforces. For large scale deployments, balancing the need to deliver a seamless customized experience while ensuring security of applications and data presents tremendous challenges.

With on Dell EMC, customers can leverage the same enterprise-grade capabilities and tools used in their on-premises deployments. Business leaders can utilize the Just-in-time Management Platform (JMP) to deliver personalized, non-persistent desktops and applications in seconds.

4. Scaling To Meet Increased Demands

Capacity issues and resource constraints can result in costly consequences for any enterprise. The inability to respond to business needs and support rapid onboarding of new users negatively impacts productivity and profitability.

VMware Cloud on Dell EMC has the ability to support long-term growth and scale IT resources to meet increasing demands on business leaders. The portal also allows customers to add hosts as needed and offers sophisticated sizing tools to meet current requirements and anticipated needs.

5. Ensuring Security Of Desktops and Applications

Desktop virtualization can mitigate threats at endpoint, end-users error, and use sophisticated tactics against cybercriminals. Having the capability to modernize VDI infrastructures to defend against threats can be unmanageable and the reuse of established procedures and security protocols can be troublesome.

The on VMware Cloud on Dell EMC delivers consistent security features with full lifecycle management. Business leaders will no longer need to monitor for potential vulnerabilities in VDI deployments. Automatic testing and rollout of security patches eliminate the requirements to maintain numerous testing and staging environments. This reduced downtime saves business leaders time and money.

Interested In VMware Cloud On Dell EMC Solution?

Running virtual desktops and applications on-premises requires a significant investment in time and resources. VMware Cloud on Dell EMC provides an enterprise-grade, fully managed infrastructure-as-a-service solution that meets every challenge associated with managing on-premises VDI deployments.

NEXT STEPS: Get a full 360-degree view of VMware’s hybrid cloud solution in our white paper below.

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Every enterprise has its own library of applications and many of these libraries include a core set of applications that, while older, still play an incredibly important part in the day-to-day operations of your enterprise. However, as enterprises prioritize digital transformation these legacy applications may start lagging behind and integration complexity grows. That’s where application modernization comes in.

Through application modernization enterprises can protect their investments and refresh their software portfolios to take advantage of new advances in technology, without creating large disruptions for the rest of the digital environment.

Once an enterprise understands the value of undertaking an application modernization project, the next question is which applications should we prioritize, and how do we get started? has been a leading answer for countless enterprise organizations, and it could be the right answer for your business as well. Keep reading to find out why.

What Is VMware Tanzu?

The suite of products offers enterprises the tools they need to tackle the modernization of application and infrastructure, and in doing so, these tools provide a number of benefits to the business, a key one being improved productivity. Through VMware Tanzu enterprises can take full advantage of cloud native infrastructure throughout their application portfolio.

How Does VMware Tanzu Support Enterprises Through Application Modernization?

Beyond the technical aspects of VMware Tanzu, it’s important to understand ‘s philosophy for application modernization. In their own words, the following are four tenants to a successful application modernization initiative:

1. Start small – Regardless of the size of your entire application portfolio, it’s important to start small and choose one business unit or group with just a handful of applications.
2. Automate everything – Reduce manual processes however you can with IT automation, whether that’s test-drive development, continuous integration or continuous deployment.
3. Learn by doing – Take your mistakes and learn from them. Keep your successes and losses in mind and use them to inform your strategy and build new skills and playbooks as you go.
4. Break things down – Take a larger problem and break it down to its component pieces. In other words, “Iterate quickly and continually on thin slices of complex systems.”

Additionally, before beginning an application modernization project, there are few prerequisites that VMware recommends every enterprise have:

1. A list of viable application candidates
   Start your application modernization journey by selecting a set of custom apps that have relevance to your current business model and are actively being used.
2. Organizational commitment
   Ensure that the business unit or group selected at the start of the project is committed to cloud computing and can invest the time and resources required for transformation.
3. The right people
   Select your team carefully. Pick people that understand the application domains. It’s also important to ensure the application modernization team are allowed to focus entirely on this project.

Which VMWare Tanzu Edition Is Right For You?

Once enterprises decide to move forward with VMware Tanzu for their application modernization needs, they must decide is the right fit for their business goals.

All editions share several common principles, including multicloud enabled, open source-aligned, and tools that allow enterprises to facilitate a environment.

That’s where the similarities end. In choosing the right VMware Tanzu edition for your enterprise, you must consider which specific challenges you’re looking to address and the resources you have at your disposal.

VMware Tanzu is available in the following formats:

• Tanzu Basic. This edition offers the tools enterprises need to handle simple, containerized off-the-shelf workloads and is also the most affordable and accessible of the four editions.
• Tanzu Standard. This version caters to enterprises that need to manage at scale on public cloud or across multiple clouds.
• Tanzu Advanced. Tanzu Advanced builds off the previous versions and offers additional functionality to enable enterprises to full embrace a DevOps practice, even stretching towards DevSecOps.
• Tanzu Enterprise. The last and most powerful in the lineup is Tanzu Enterprise. This edition is perfect if you need to address important objects for operators and developers, such as more efficiency and control, and more speed and freedom.

Regardless of the edition you choose, VMware Tanzu can help your enterprise throughout your application modernization journey.

Partner with WEI for Application Modernization

VMware offers enterprises solutions that will help them manage and run consistent infrastructure, across on-premises data centers and public clouds, improving user experience and overall business operations. Their innovative approach to cloud offers architecture that is easy to deploy and manage, increasing enterprise agility and flexibility.

Now, couple industry leading VMware technology solutions with the virtualization, infrastructure, cloud and modern apps experience WEI provides. Our team’s collective expertise is light years ahead of other VARs. In fact, WEI holds four VMware master services competencies and employs an early VCDX recipient. If you’re wondering how to get started with application modernization, or you’re hitting roadblocks on your journey, . We’re here to help!

Next steps: Get insights from our experts about getting started with containers in our eBook, IT Leader’s Guide to Preparing for Containers, by clicking below.

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After being popularized and exploding onto the IT scene almost a decade ago, the usage and management of containers is still evolving as new and more efficient organization strategies and tools are developed.

is one such tool. It was released in 2014 and over the last several years, has grown to be one of the most frequently utilized container management platforms.

That said, its popularity does nothing to simplify its core concepts and for executives, even those with an IT background, it can be hard to understand just how important and useful Kubernetes really is.

To make the conversation easier, we’ve pulled the top four things enterprise leadership should know about Kubernetes from ‘s Kubernetes for Executives report and other sources, and shared them in the article below.

1. What is Kubernetes?

The first step to understanding the benefits of Kubernetes (Koo-burr-NET-eez) is to actually learn what it is. This is typically the part that creates the most confusion for non-technical members of leadership teams.

As described on , “Kubernetes is a portable, extensible, open-source platform for managing containerized workloads and services, that facilitates both declarative configuration and automation.”

Depending on your own technical knowledge, that explanation might seem pretty simple or it may require further explanation. To start with, what is a container and what are they used for?

In VMware’s words, “ encapsulate applications and make them portable.” Essentially, containers provide a way to keep software running under identical conditions when it is moved from one computing environment to another. As an example, this might be migrating an application from a test environment into production.

For today’s enterprises, containers offer a sort of “plug and play” method for administration, development, and distribution of applications and their relevant dependencies.

Kubernetes goes one step further and offers scalable, automatic management and administration for distributed systems at the container level and serves as a starting platform for developers, while also preserving user choice and flexibility.

2. What are the benefits?

At its core, Kubernetes is an API-based, scalable and extensible solution, supported in all major public clouds and with a growing community of open-source solutions that complement its essential features.

Among its other benefits, Kubernetes offers the following, :

• Service discovery and load balancing
• Storage orchestration
• Automated rollouts and rollbacks
• Automatic bin packing
• Self-healing
• Secret and configuration management

For a non-technical audience, Kubernetes can best be described as an automated system that eliminates many of the manual provisioning and other tasks required for container management.

Its components, which are easily replaceable to allow the system to be extended to new requirements and environments, work together to coordinate activities and react to events.

3. Why Your Enterprise Needs Kubernetes

As shared by VMware, Kubernetes benefits the enterprise at multiple levels, from the IT teams that administer the digital environment, to application developers, and all the way up to CIOs.

The bottom line is:

• Kubernetes reduces the amount of time administrators need to spend on container management, allowing them to focus on more complex and beneficial tasks.
• It allows enterprises to deliver new software and products more quickly.
• Kubernetes improves infrastructure and application availability, resulting in increased productivity at every level of the enterprise.
• It improves security by allowing application developers to play an active role in designing securable application.

4. How To Get Started With Kubernetes

Starting your journey to Kubernetes adoption can seem daunting, especially for those enterprises that have yet to fully embrace cloud computing technologies. However, the rewards of taking the leap are undeniable, especially for those enterprises the prioritize software development.

If you aren’t sure where to get started, VMware and can help you pave your way forward.

Are Your Looking For A Partner On Your Journey To Kubernetes?

VMware offers enterprises solutions that will help them manage and run consistent infrastructure, across on-premises data centers and public clouds, improving user experience and overall business operations. Their innovative approach to container orchestration offers architecture that is easy to deploy and manage, increasing enterprise agility and flexibility.

NEXT STEPS: Is your organization using containers?

Click below to grab your copy of our FREE EBOOK, “The IT Leader’s Guide to Using Containers in Today’s Digital World.”

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As technology changes, so do priorities. For today’s enterprises, the most important pieces of the IT equation are speed, flexibility and agility. However, IT is often overwhelmed with lifecycle management and infrastructure delivery. To keep up with business demands and improve efficiency, IT teams need to make use of automation to accelerate operations.

With the right solution, enterprises will be able to automate every step of the application delivery process, including networking and security. VMware solutions, including and the vRealize Suite, work in tandem to offer enterprises the key pieces they need to automate infrastructure and multi-cloud operations.

VMware Cloud Foundation, built on a software-defined HCI architecture, offers a consistent operational model applicable to any enterprise need.

VMware Reduces Human Error

Over time, enterprises have grown increasingly complex, often combining multiple generations of technology to provide quick solutions to short-term problems. However, in the long-term, these solutions often create environments that require significant time and energy to manage manually.

Unfortunately, manual processes are often rife with opportunities for human error. Monotonous configuration and provisioning tasks are especially prone to errors, leading to costly reworks and wasted time. By implementing VMware Cloud Foundation, enterprises can deploy lifecycle automation across their hybrid cloud environments. For even more benefit, enterprises can also leverage , which offers automation of deployment and configuration tasks.

When it comes to applications, automation allows enterprises to take a policy-based approach that only requires minor intervention from IT.

By automating configuration and provisioning tasks, VMware frees IT from the shackles of these slow, repetitive tasks, which reduces the possibility for human error at the same time.

Automate Standard Processes

In addition to configuration and provisioning tasks, other common, repeatable processes are a perfect opportunity for automation. provides enterprises with a way to automate and standardize repeatable processes, which has the added benefit of increasing the reliability of the IT environment. By automating these processes, IT can speed up application delivery and reduce the need for rework or downtime events.

Automation can also be applied to the provisioning and maintenance of various business processes, such as training provisioning or internal certifications. This allows employees from various areas of your enterprise to refocus on more high-level projects instead of manual, repetitive tasks.

Reduce Project Turnaround

IT is on the frontline of every business initiative, and if IT gets bogged down with the challenges that come from traditional data center infrastructures, the rest of a business will suffer. By implementing with integrated cloud management, enterprises can automate important infrastructure and app services with self-service capabilities, reducing the burden on IT and empowering employees. Additionally, VMware Cloud Foundation supports performance optimization, proactive capacity management and more, which offers enterprises improved efficiency and will accelerated service delivery.

VMware Makes Designing New Processes Easy

If your enterprise has needs that are not included in VMware’s out-of-the-box capabilities, the vRealize Suite has you covered. It’s Anything as a Service (XaaS) tool, which offers a wizard-driven approach, gives IT a way to design end-to-end processes. Application and infrastructure offerings can be found in the vRealize Automation catalog.

Are You Ready For VMware for Automation?

VMware offers enterprises solutions that will help them manage and run consistent infrastructure, across on-premises data centers and public clouds, improving user experience and overall business operations. Their innovative approach to cloud offers architecture that is easy to deploy and manage, increasing enterprise agility and flexibility.

NEXT STEPS: Learn more about VMware vRealize with a full 360-degree view of VMware’s hybrid cloud solution in our white paper below.

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The landscape of today’s modern offices look nothing like they used to. Gone are the days of employees working from a single location on a single computer, accessing a single operating system – now they frequently switch between devices, is king, and applications are just as likely to be Windows-based as not.

Providing this anytime, anywhere, any device access can cause serious security and management challenges for IT teams. That’s where VDI as part of a comprehensive digital workspace strategy comes in.

What does a digital workspace look like?

Today’s employees regularly log in and out of legacy, desktop, mobile, SaaS, and web applications from a variety of devices, and expect to be able to do it without complications.

A modern model is needed that defines the following:

• How users leverage applications, information, and resources across devices
• How IT organizations deliver, manage, and secure these applications and services
• How businesses can capitalize on these new capabilities and styles of work to drive better business results

Just as the desktop computer was the dominant, defining model of end-user computing during the client-server era, so too will the digital workspace define the model for moving forward from today.

A digital workspace has the following requirements:

• End users want access to the applications they need, when they need them, and on the devices they choose to use.
• Lines of business are interested in delivering apps on whatever devices employees use in order to enhance productivity and improve customer engagement and collaboration.
• IT teams need to centralize policy management, maintain control, and service the organization across device types.

How does a digital workspace change IT priorities?

The digital workspace shifts the focus of IT away from managing things like phones, laptops and tablets, and towards delivering application and content experiences to employees. This outcomes-based approach to IT services decouples data and applications from the device and supporting platforms, so that any application can be accessed from any device. Untethering applications from devices delivers the ultimate experience in portability and gives users flexibility in how they access the applications and services they need.

By focusing on outcomes, the digital workspace also promotes efficient IT operations in three ways.

1. Simplifying access management

Today’s leading IT organizations are user-centric. IT must equip end users with quick and easy access to business-critical published apps, SaaS apps, and mobile apps, and create a flexible and efficient workflow by allowing simple access with barrier-free authentication across devices. This user-centric approach empowers users to choose the ways they work best, and facilitates delivery of a highly specific set of end-user services.

2. Delivering true application portability

Today’s users expect to access Windows applications alongside non-Windows-based applications, and demand the freedom to work anywhere, and on the devices and apps they choose.

To get the maximum benefit of a digital workspace, applications should be built for all popular operating systems, or otherwise abstracted from the endpoint to make them truly portable. For most organizations, this means many of the applications in their inventory.

3. Enabling unified endpoint management (UEM)

Migrating from device-based asset management to the digital workspace presents the perfect opportunity to rethink end-user-computing processes. Manual provisioning processes can be transferred to virtualized desktops and apps, with tremendous improvements in efficiency and compliance. With UEM, IT teams can also deploy and manage desktops, laptops, and devices, including OS deployment, configuration, user preferences, and software, from a central location.

The role of VDI in the digital workspace

Virtualization is a key component to providing a fast, flexible, user-friendly digital workspace environment while properly managing risk. When desktops or apps are virtualized, they run in secure data centers on-premises or in the cloud. In both scenarios, only the rendering of the user interface is transmitted beyond the firewall.

There are two primary methods for abstracting apps from their endpoints:

• Virtualizing the app itself with Microsoft Server Remote Desktop Session Host (RDSH)
• Virtualizing an entire desktop environment with VDI

To rise to the challenge of today’s sophisticated workforce, IT teams are now embracing desktop, application, and network virtualization as part of an integrated approach to security. Virtualizing network functions – such as switching, routing, firewall rules, load balancing, and VPN – provides security for east-west traffic inside the data center and enables IT to quickly respond to data breaches, minimizing their risk and impact.

(HCI) solutions offer a modular approach to building a VDI environment, which simplifies the planning, design, and rollout of virtual desktops and applications. These solutions should include compute, storage, network, hypervisor, and management resources all in a single appliance which is tuned and pre-tested for specific workloads.

VMware delivers on the promise of a digital workspace

is a digital workspace platform that simply and securely delivers and manages any app on any device by integrating access control, application management, and multi-platform endpoint management. It is available either as a cloud service or for on-premises deployment.

Workspace ONE automates traditional onboarding and laptop and mobile device configuration, and provides real-time application lifecycle management that bridges the gap between legacy enterprise client-server apps and the mobile cloud era.

With Workspace ONE, organizations can:

• Benefit from seamless integration across all end-user applications and services
• Provision a new corporate laptop out of the box, anywhere in the world, from the cloud within minutes
• Set and enforce access and data policies across all apps, devices, and locations in one place

Talk with WEI about building your digital workspace with VMware

In the age of mobile and cloud, the need to access any app from any device at any time is shaping how businesses drive digital transformation. VMware supports employee engagement by delivering a digital workspace solution that is both simple to use and secure. Contact WEI today to talk about beginning your transformation today.

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