VMware Tackles Management Challenges In Hybrid Cloud

VMware unveiled a free plug-in Tuesday called vCloud Connector, which lets customers deploy and manage virtual machines in private and public VMware clouds through a single management interface. vCloud Connector gives administrators a list of all vSphere and vCenter instances and allows them to see and manage all virtual machines running in the cloud, as well as templates and vApps.

vCloud Connector works with vSphere private clouds and vCloud-Powered public clouds, simplifying matters for administrators that previously were forced to use two different tools to manage these environments, said Mathew Lodge, senior director of product marketing in VMware's vCloud services team.

"It's a way to see and manage virtual machines on your own infrastructure and in the cloud, and to also copy virtual machines between the two," Lodge said in an interview.

Meanwhile, VMware also revealed that BlueLock, Colt and Verizon are the first partners to begin selling vCloud Datacenter Services, a set of offerings architected and certified by VMware that blend elements of private and public cloud infrastructure. SingTel and Terremark, which was acquired last month by Verizon for $1.4 billion, are also developing vCloud Datacenter services.

vCloud Datacenter Services are aimed at enterprises that are still on the cloud computing sidelines due to lingering concerns over security and reliability, quality of service and application portability. "Security and control over information are two of the main obstacles to the public cloud," Lodge said.

VMware's Cloud Data Center Services use a set of controls that service providers have agreed to implement, and VMware also provides a mechanism for synchronizing Active Directory with authentication for the cloud, Lodge said. He likened the concept behind vCloud Datacenter Services to mobile phone roaming, which works because of a commonly agreed upon set of technologies and services between different carriers.

Lodge said VMware decided early on that it would be best for partners to handle deployment and delivery of these services. "Most of our competitors have decided to build cloud services in the data center and have turned themselves into service providers," he said. "We decided that an ecosystem of partners delivering these services in a local fashion would be better."

vCoud Data Center Services differs from cloud infrastructure providers like Amazon and Rackspace in that new applications must be written in a specific way in order to run well on these clouds, while VMware can take existing applications and run them without any modification, Lodge said.