VxRail Technical Overview – Part 2 CTO Advisor PoC
Transcript
>> Welcome to the CTO advisor. I'm Allistair Cooke, one of the technical analysts, and I'm joined today for a look at the VMware cloud foundation and VxRail partnership by Thom Greene, who's actually had hands on. How are you doing, Thom? >> I'm doing fantastic. How are you doing Alastair? >> I'm good. It's a beautiful day here. And just to keep us honest and to make sure that we're not missing anything from the Dell side we have Joe Mauer joining us.
Joe, what's your role with Dell? >> Hi, guys. I am part of the technical staff working on our VxRail and VCF technical, engineering technologies team. And Thom, you spend some time hands-on with, with the products and particularly remote managing everything. And what did you run through with the combination of VxRail and VMware cloud foundation? >> Uh, yeah. So during my hands-on testing with VMware cloud foundation and the VxRail integration I was really looking for what was different-- what really set it apart.
And first and foremost, it was really cool whenever you're actually doing the initial setup for SDDC manager with the VMware cloud foundation piece, it actually calls out, right on the main screen, that you can deploy VCF with VxRail. You know that there's a very tight engineering integration with that option because it's the only other option other than just deploy VMware cloud foundation or VMware cloud foundation on VxRail. >> So, VMware cloud foundation normally expects that the ESXi hosts are already built, and that that's somebody else's problem to deal with.
Which is where that sort of synergy, so it doesn't, so that VxRail does that deployment for you. >> Right. Yeah, so you deploy your first cluster in order to have a runway to manage the rest of the business, but then whenever you go in and you actually set up VMware cloud foundation, before you even set up your first workload domain, which is where you run the virtual machines that power your business. It actually says, hey, is this on VxRail or is this on just, on other hardware?
So what you do, make that setting, and it knows how to reach in with the ecosystem connectors and talk to VxRail manager from the VCF interface itself. >> And that's, so that's unique? It's not available with any other vendors, HCI platform, or any of the other Dell VMware cloud foundation platforms? >> That is a unique feature, from what I understand. It is a feature that allows SDDC manager to actually go out to the Dell Depot, download the proper drivers and firmwares, and orchestrate the installation on the behalf of the engineer.
All the way down from the silicon, all the way up to NSX and the other software pieces that are powering the data center. >> So, Joe, how does that partnership look from the Dell side? What's the sort of perspective on what we're trying to achieve with that integration? >> Yeah. So what you're seeing is that we're really, you're seeing the effort that we've put into the development engineering of the VCF on VxRail solution and offering. And the fact that we've got that, really, API level integration, where SDDC manager is leveraging our VxRail APIs that we expose, and, actually, a part of that engineering work that we're jointly doing from our Dell perspective, and obviously with VMware on the VCF integration.
And so that really does bring a level of, kind of, integration that we don't get with obviously what you guys already talked about was the other vendor, other offerings that are also available for VCF, but you get that very tight coupling with our with our engineering development work there. >> And so, Thom, that would have made the deployment phase a lot more integrated, there would have been less time and less worksheets to coordinate for you as you're doing the deployment. >> Right, yeah.
So it's kind of funny. We were talking about this integration and, you know, I'm nerding out on it, and I'm talking to Keith and he's like, so why do we care? What does that actually mean for me? You know, if I'm doing the engineering on the CTO advisor hybrid infrastructure, and I'm saying we need to do this, what does it matter to the business? And ultimately it matters that we can trust that Dell and VMware as joint partnership is going to make sure this upgrade is going to be successful.
In previous lives, it's taken upwards of like three weeks, four weeks-- sometimes months--to make sure every bit inside of a a blade, a chassis, a network switch is all compatible. And even then, you know, it may look compatible on the surface, but because it's an OEM part versus a part from the actual vendor themselves, it doesn't work and you do a VMotion and something breaks. >> You've slid on from the really easy deployment, so clearly that wasn't tough for you, to do the ongoing updates and upgrades that occur in the environment because I noticed that you moved on to that validation phase of making sure all of the parts are right and ready.
And you had previous experience with spending quite a long time planning all of those updates. And I've had personal experience of missing one piece, making an assumption about about a behavior, and being bitten very badly when there was an incompatibility. >> Right, yes. You have the, that's definitely something that you don't really have to worry about whenever you're looking at this solution. If you download the thing, it takes a little while longer and you're not going to get a day one release on this solution.
It's going to have time to be validated by VMware, validated by Dell, tested in the lab. But that does save a lot of heartache and heartburn for me as an engineer, you know, my manager, and then all the way up to like the CTO and CIO. It's really going to make that from either the day zero deploy like we were talking about, it makes it simpler, but then also the lifecycle day two and on, of management. >> So that's really that VMware and Dell are working together to validate the packages in a way that if you had something that you'd built together yourself from parts, you would have to do it yourself and so it's one place, very focused on that effort.
And it's a close integration between the vendor, the two parts of the vendor, so Dell and VMware. So Joe, what sort of cycle is there between new releases of updates from VMware for the VMware side to it being available through this integrated update? >> Yeah, great question. So we really do focus, obviously on the core VxRail side of things. And I will say that that's a 30 day time window from major releases. We've got less time for patch releases, from getting an update from VMware.
So we do have a pretty quick time to turn around a fully qualified, fully engineered package that is available for update in your environment. And again, it gets to that known, good state, continuously validated state of we've done that testing, that integration, the work that, Thom, you brought up, that in the past you've had to sometimes go through. And even, Allistair, you brought up as well too, that there's sometimes the little pieces that sometimes get left out. That's something that obviously we're taking care of and handling all of those pieces so that it's not something that you're having to figure out and go back and say, oh, I forgot something.
Let me go back and do that. That's already taken care of as part of our overall cadence, our testing, our twenty-five thousand hours of testing per release cycle for any of our updates that go into our overall VCF and VxRail offerings. >> So that translates, Thom, to less time for you to both validate before. But, but also more trust that when you're doing a deployment of a new version that we're going to get a reliable platform at the end. >> Yeah, definitely.
That amount of validation testing is extremely impressive and whenever I'm looking at it and I'm saying, okay, well I can on day one, upgrade my test cluster without having to do any of the research and do a burn-in on that. And then after that, you're burned in and fine, we can do those methods on our workload domains, on our management domain to know, hey it took me two weeks, maybe, to get to this point, where in two weeks I probably would have only been able to build the materials, and the hardware compatibility list synced up.
You know, it really gets you down the road a lot farther and it helps you do things that make money for the business. Less than just going through and trying to figure out what firmware driver recipe is going to work. >> And that's going to be faster risk mitigation, higher uptime for the system, post patch. All of the things that we want out of patching, but delivered with far less effort, far less time. One of the other things I wanted to have a chat about was some of the intelligence around growing out that environment.
You talk about addin6g workload clusters and potentially expanding workload clusters. How did that look in the VxRail with VCF world? >> Well, Joe, I'll let you keep me honest here, but whenever we were deploying an extra workload cluster we would start just like a regular VxRail deployment and go through the initial wizard. And then it would say you want to add this to another vCenter. Which you either go into the SDDC manager and set up another workload domain, which would deploy6 a new vCenter for you and set So then whenever you do the actual joining it to that new vCenter, SDDC manager and it knows how to go in and do the updates, and do the configuration for that.
So, instead of having to add your own host, create your own vSAN, and do it piecemeal, the automation comes from both sides, from VMware and from VxRail manager, and it puts it together in a more automated and streamlined fashion than you would have otherwise. >> So that's another of the things that from the geek side is really cool to see. And it's the sort of thing that as you're manually doing the process you think why hasn't somebody built some automation for this and to make it all work together.
But from the business side, that just means less time and effort to deploy new workloads. They're ready for business applications sooner. Is that, that's the summary here? >> Yeah, that's how I would definitely put it is your time to market is going to be a lot, lot faster. You're going to be able to, you know, stage this upgrade, let the automation take over, have the new workload domain expanded in a very automated fashion that is easier to get consistent, easier to get right.
You understand how it's going to run. It's got all the bells and whistles of a VxRail deployment, plus it's controlled and it's all in line with the VCF design and deployment methodology. So you have a full managed NSX and vSAN and vCenter just ready to go. And it's a lot less worry, from an engineering perspective it's a lot more safe and a lot less worry to deploy that. >> So kind of more invisible, but yet really fully featured. >> Right.
>> So Joe, as customers are deploying this, do you get feedback from them about what it's meant to their actual either IT teams or in businesses as they've been deploying this collection together, of VxRail and VMware cloud foundation? >> Oh, absolutely. Yeah, just even just kind of hearing what Thom was just saying about that is that the, kind of just the capabilities of the expansion, where it is a very consistent, repeatable approach and delivers that time-to-value that oftentimes our customers are looking for now, with what they're doing on premise, compared to what they're doing in public and other cloud provider type of capabilities.
They want that, and that's really what we're delivering here. Where you're able to have that experience that there's that obviously that rapid time-to-value. And then also the, just the less time focusing on the operational side of that infrastructure they can focus on what's actually valuable to their business versus the minutiae that we take care of, and we do day in, day out on our team here with VxRail and VCF on VxRail. >> And that kind of comes back to one of the the themes that I see in the way IT infrastructure is working is that if you're expecting every customer to do the same process, then you as the vendor should be automating that process.
And that's what we have here, is that combination of pieces of automation that every customer wants, so that the customers can focus on what differentiates them as a business. >> Yeah. >> All right, Thom, have we missed anything in this? Have we hit the high points and the stuff that was exciting? Was there anything else that we went through this project that struck you as important? >> Just the integration, it can't be understated how much the the time that Joe spends testing all these things that keeps me from having to pull my hair out at two in the morning whenever I miss a critical feature, that's, you know, can't be understated it's something that you really need to check out for yourself and see how well the expansion, how well the integration goes.
>> Joe, anything for you, that you really see as a big business value in in here that we haven't already touched. >> Yeah, I'll add a couple parting items. I think one is that we did sometimes get a little bit overlooked as some of the capabilities of just the, even the support aspect of it. And sometimes things do, things can go wrong and obviously having that joint kind of support capability and offering that we've got working together with VMware to know what's happening what's going on in that, that solution.
That's one area that I know that we had feedback from our customers. That's something that's helpful and valuable to them. And then even just kind of a little bit of a an area where we get a little bit kind of on the geekier side of some of the things with automation in terms of API capabilities, if customers are looking at additional ways of even further automating beyond what we're doing with our core offering of VxRail and VCF on VxRail, of having our own APIs that are out and exposed to customers for the experience of getting even further into the level of automation, beyond what we're doing today.
And I'll say there's even further stuff that's coming, we'll continue to evolve and continue to add additional functionality, additional features, of doing a VCF on VxRail infrastructure environment even easier to use for you and for, obviously, for hopefully all of our end users and all of our customers. >> Cool. Thank you very much, Joe. And thank you, Thom, for joining me on this as well. CTO advisor has been spending quite a bit of time working with VxRail and also with the VMware cloud foundation.
You can see all of our videos on the CTO advisor channel and stay tuned for more. We'll be hearing a little more from Keith about his wrap up of the whole solution.
