IBM Cloud VMware Service
Transcript
(upbeat music) >> Hey, how's it going? Is Keith Townsend, principal and the CTO advisor, we're at VMware Explore 2023. In the background somewhere is Melissa producing all of this for us. So we had a really great debate early on. Is this our tenth VMware, or is this, VMware explorer, VMware world, or is this our tenth year of going to VMware world, VMware explorer? You know, either way, we've done this a lot, brought a lot of great content, and this year is no exception.
We're here at the beautiful, beautiful Venetian and Las Vegas in Nevada, and then this sponsored CTO advisors studio interview, we have Brian Buckland, CTO of IBM Cloud VMware Solutions, and I say solutions with a "s", Brian. So let's get that off the top. I remember, maybe it was a four or five VMworlds ago, IBM, the premier's partner for VMware cloud. How has this evolved into solutions with a "s"? >> So in IBM Cloud we have multiple solutions available to you. So you can go from a roll your own customer where they order their own bare metals and build their own VMware stack, to an automated deployment that is customer managed.
And this year, the big announcement for us is that we now have a managed service. So we now have VMware as a service. It is on a single tenant and a multi-tenant approach, so it can meet all the customer requirements. So it really allows us to provide the most flexible cloud and we can really customize to whatever the customer needs are. >> So this is in contrast, if I remember correctly, I used to have all the knobs to the VMware service in the original service.
This is different. So if I don't want to manage the individual, the more of the underlay. >> Correct. Yeah. So customers are moving more towards a managed offering now. So they don't want to manage the VMware environment. So you know, IBM Cloud can manage, you know, patching, maintaining security, patching, disk replacement, all that sort of management up to the hypervisor is something that now IBM Cloud can provide. >> Now is this available in all regions that... >> It's currently available in Dallas and Frankfurt and we're expanding out to other geo locations around the world as we move forward.
>> And who's the target customer? >> So we've got both sides. So we've got the enterprise customers who really like that single tenant, they want the isolation. And then we have, you know multi-tenant customers who may be smaller or they have like, you know dev test workloads or more dynamic bursting reduction. So it's more of a consumption model. So customers who want to consume VMware based resources on a consumption basis. So you know, you're charged by the CPU, or the memory allocation that you're actually utilizing.
>> Well you're throwing me for a little bit of a loop there. >> Sure. >> Because when I think about traditional VMware cloud solutions, I buy the entire server or I rent the entire server. So consumption based, yeah it's consumption based in the sense that I get an entire bell metal server for the month and if I want to turn down a service next month maybe you know, I, I'll drop consumption based but I'm not getting like individual VM based utilization. >> You are on the multi-tenant solution.
So it's a per VM, it's on a per hour basis and yeah it's really back to the cloud consumption. >> Wow. So this is, this is quite different. >> Very different to our legacy, not legacy, but yeah, we've got our what we call our vCenter server offering, which was the automated deployment that customers would self-manage. It was bare metal, it was on the monthly rate. This is the new consumption being the one year or hour, based on an hourly billing.
>> So you, you hit a key part of that, vCenter based consumption. Because when I think about consuming VMware cloud services I think about a vCenter centric consumption model. And I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around how do I consume VMs using [indistinct] >> Yep. Sorry, I missed that point. Yeah, so we're running a vCloud director offering. So vCloud Director is provides you a user interface that allows the consumption of VMware based resources a lot easier. Everything's moved up.
So you know, you don't need to understand how to work with NSXT or vCenter. You don't need to worry about all those patching or how networks are configured within NSXT. You just need to say, here's a network that I want to create. Do I want to go out to the internet? What are my firewall rules? So you know, all those things that you normally would you know, you get to focus more on your application you don't have to worry about the infrastructure anymore.
>> So this sounds more akin to what VMware has advertised as its vCloud Director network and offering service provider. >> Service provider. >> I don't think I've heard of hyperscale or cloud build a solution based off of vCloud Director. >> We're the first hyper scaler to do that. So we're doing it and you know we saw the value of vCloud Director because it had the additional third party add-ons as well. So like we have VEAM integrated into our solution so we can provide backup for all the virtual machines you have running in your environment.
We have in the future, like coming this year we'll have the cloud availability and that will be able to provide you with that migration and the DR use cases. So that's another, DR is a very big use case that I see a lot of customers asking for. So you know, in this consumption model, you only would get charged for the storage that you're utilizing. And only once you power up those virtual machines would the associated CPU and memory costs come into effect.
>> Yeah, I, I've heard customers struggle with the complexity now but we did our comparison of VMware cloud solutions, we didn't include IBM, and a lot of customers emailed us asking us about the IBM solution specifically the challenges around disaster recovery. And you mentioned something that piqued my interest that been a frustrating point for a lot of folks and that's NSX, when NSXV was around, NSX is fairly simple, not as, not as robust, but simple. When you said, do I just want to make something public in NX, NSXT, I paused a little bit 'cause I've done this across all the major cloud providers and it's not as simple as it sounds.
How are you making the NXT consumption simpler or easier to consume using your vCloud Director approach? >> So as part of the vCloud Director we give you five public IP addresses. You have the option if you want to be public or a hundred percent private but we do give you the public IP addresses on day one. And that's already been configured with the firewall. It is in a denied state so that you can have control when you want to open that up to the internet.
But it's pre-configured ready for you to utilize those public IP addresses. They're routed straight through into the underlying, you know, T-zero, T-one configuration of NSXT. So it's ready to go out the door for everything. >> You know, that's, that's a lot how other cloud instances or VMs work. You get a public IP inherent with the virtual private cloud networking. >> Yep. >> And you just turn on, >> turn on their [Indistinct] >> Firewall and say, Hey, I want it public or or not.
And you know, there's [indistinct] and when you have to build that from a IS service like VMware from when you have the whole knobs, it's not as simple was it? >> No >> Townsend: It should be. >> You have to learn every individual cloud's uniqueness to actually, you know, find out how you get your public IPs, how you expose 'em, how you get that integrated networking. By providing VMware as a service, that's very simplified. >> So Brian, I think I like where you're going with this.
In theory, you could be a small customer who appreciates the simplicity and ease of operations of VMware, Vsphere. >> Yep. >> And the ability to pay by the drink. So a hundred dollars budget, 10,000 a month budget. If I'm an enterprise and I have established these processes around beam and disaster recovery is still IBM Cloud. >> Yes. So yeah, so you know, we give you the option to run you know, smaller workloads on the multi-tenant solution. You might run your dev test there.
You may use the single tenant for your enterprise workspace. You know, you can really isolate down to what your workspace, what your workload is. >> And if people want to find out more about IBM cloud's VMware solution. com/vmware. You can look at the different comparisons. There's a comparison page there for everybody. And from there you can go through the different walkthroughs on how you're going to order and select what's best for your workloads. >> Alright. And if you want to find out more about the CTO advisor, we've been covering IBM for the past year.
IBM's hybrid cloud solution which allows you to do stuff inside of your data center from the, from the IBM Cloud control plane. A lot of great conversation around whether this is a useful feature or not. I would love to hear from you. What do you think about IBM VMware cloud solution as compared to other solutions? What do you think about VMware cloud solution period? You can, @ me, dms are open @ctoadvisor on X stock, and I'm always available on LinkedIn.
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