On Monday September 15 VMware introduced the Virtual Datacenter OS (VDOS). Is it a new product? No it is not a product on itself, it is more like a concept which shows a roadmap where VMware is aiming at in the near future. It VMware’s new name for the Virtual Infrastructure formerly known as VI3 now called VDOS.

As reported earlier by VMware during VMworld Europe back in February of this year, VMware is aiming at the cloud computing concept. With the introduction of VDOS VMware made a big step into that direction. According to VMware the main properties of such a cloud computing environment should involve:

• hardware independency
• location independency
• a self-healing mechanism
• guaranteed service levels
• secure
• scalable
• manageability

If you look at the VDOS-concept as introduced by VMware it contains four main building blocks mainly populated with currently available features and topped off which a couple of new features. Let’s take a closer look.

I will start with a diagram VMware created which shows the components (building blocks) and their relation to each other.

The four components are:

1. Application vServices – Aimed at the application level, ensures the operation of those applications with availability features like vMotion, Storage vMotion, HA, DRS;
2. Infrastructure vServices – Aimed at the infrastructure ‘on-premise’ (CPU: vCompute, network: vNetwork, storage: vStorage)
3. Cloud vServices – Aimed at the infrastructure ‘off-premise’ (third party infrastructure interfacing)
4. Management vServices – Aimed at the manageability of the virtual infrastructure and the applications running on it.

Summary of new features announced in the roadmap’s (to be available in 2009):

Application vServices

• VMware Fault Tolerance (continuous availability)
• vCenter Data Recovery
• VMware VMsafe integrated products
• Hot add of CPU’s
• vApp – a standard way of describing applications in a way that it can operate as a self-managed entity it leverages the industry standard OVF (Open Virtual machine Format).
• VMware vStudio – an authoring and configuration tool, enables ISV’s and enterprises to construct Virtual Appliances and vApps

Infrastructure vServices

vCompute

• paravirtualized virtual storage device (200.000 I/O’s per second)
• VMDirect (to be able to directly access hardware)

vNetwork

• Distributed switches
• Network vMotion (movement of network statistics and history)
• third party virtual switches (CISCO?)

vStorage

• vStorage Thin Provisioning (virtual disks only allocate space when needed)
• vStorage Linked Clones
• vStorage API’s (to enable storage array software to manage individual VMware virtual machines)

Management vServices

Simplified Applications Management

• vCenter AppSpeed (better performance management)

Simplified Infrastructure Management

• vCenter Linked Mode (with multiple vCenter instances)
• Monitoring and automated remediation (compliance control for hosts)
• vCenter ConfigControl (compliance control for virtual instances)
• vCenter Orchestrator (customized workflow’s to automate operational tasks)
• vCenter CapacityIQ (capacity analyzer)
• vCenter Chargeback (charge back utility)

Simplify End-to-End Management Across Virtual and Physical Infrastructure

• VMware Ready (a management solution validation program)

Cloud vServices

This vService is introduced with VDOS. This enables companies to use capacity on-demand at external sites/third parties and for others it can be useful in a outsourcing strategy.