VMware Announces General Availability of New vSphere, vSAN

PALO ALTO, CA --(Marketwired - November 16, 2016) - VMware, Inc. ( NYSE : VMW ) a global leader in cloud infrastructure and business mobility, today announced the general availability of new releases of VMware vSphere®, VMware vSAN™ (formerly VMware Virtual SAN), VMware vRealize Log Insight and VMware vRealize Operations to help IT operations teams more efficiently run, manage and secure their traditional and modern applications on- or off-premises.

These new releases advance the VMware Cross-Cloud Architecture™ , which enables customers to run, manage, connect, and secure their applications across clouds and devices in a common operating environment. As the world's most complete hybrid cloud architecture, the Cross-Cloud Architecture delivers consistent deployment models, security policies, visibility, and governance for all applications, running on- and off-premises, regardless of the underlying cloud, hardware platform or hypervisor. VMware's Cross-Cloud Architecture builds on its leading private and hybrid cloud capabilities by offering customers the freedom to innovate in multiple clouds, and is delivered through VMware Cloud Foundation™ , VMware vRealize Suite and a new set of Cross-Cloud Services™.

Newly available offerings include:

• VMware vSphere 6.5 -- VMware vSphere 6.5 includes new features and multiple enhancements to deliver a simplified customer experience, comprehensive built-in security, and a universal applications platform to support all application types including containerized applications. Specifically, this latest release includes new features in the VMware vCenter Server® Appliance, new REST-based APIs, an HTML5-based VMware vSphere Client, and virtual machine encryption. VMware vSphere Integrated Containers™, a new feature of vSphere 6.5, is scheduled to be available later in Q4 2016. VMware vSphere 6.5 will be featured in vSphere with Operations Management 6.5. We also expect this new release to be a part of VMware Cloud Foundation moving forward. Learn more here .
• VMware vSAN 6.5 -- VMware vSAN 6.5 further improves total cost of ownership (TCO) savings by adding support for containers and physical workloads, unveiling iSCSI support, eliminating networking hardware costs from two-node Remote Office/Branch Office (ROBO) configurations, and adding all-flash hardware support to vSAN Standard Edition. A new VMware Ready for vSAN certification program is also now available to provide customers with the confidence that file services and data protection partner solutions will seamlessly deploy, run and interoperate with vSAN. Additionally, vSphere Virtual Volumes™ 2.0 is now available, featuring enhanced enterprise-readiness through capabilities like native support for array replication as well as support for business-critical applications such as Oracle Database with Real Application Clusters. Learn more here .
• VMware vRealize -- To further accelerate the delivery of infrastructure and applications, VMware has expanded the functionality of its comprehensive, integrated vRealize cloud management platform via the introduction of container management capabilities and support for Microsoft Azure as a dedicated endpoint. The newly available VMware vRealize Log Insight 4.0 features enhanced alert management and a redesigned user interface, while vRealize Operations 6.4 now delivers improved alert management and metric grouping, new customized dashboards, and predictive DRS for improved workload performance. Scheduled to become available later in Q4 2016, VMware vRealize Automation 7.2 will simplify hybrid cloud deployments with new out of the box support for Microsoft Azure. Additionally, it will enable IT to discover, deploy and manage containers throughout their environment with new container management capabilities. vRealize Automation 7.2 will also feature out of the box support for ServiceNow enabling vRealize Automation service catalog items to be accessed directly via ServiceNow. Learn more here .
• VMware Cloud Services -- VMware has expanded to include new Hybrid Cloud solutions for the enterprise. VMware has introduced the beta of a new vCloud Air disaster recovery solution and the beta of VMware Cloud Foundation on vCloud Air. These releases enable customers to gain cloud scale, agility, and flexibility with compatibility for a unified hybrid cloud experience. Learn more here .

New Coursework and Hands-On Labs Now Open for Registration

VMware Education Services is now offering new instructor-led courses at www.vmware.com/education . Following are new courses available for registration today:

• vSphere: What's New [V5.5 to V6.5] -- available January 18, 2017
• vSphere: Install, Configure, Manage [V6.5] -- available January 27, 2017
• vSphere: Optimize and Scale [v6.5] -- available February 3, 2017

Customers, partners and prospects can also test drive the newly available solutions such as VMware vSphere 6.5 via the VMware Hands-on Labs Online . VMware Hands-on Labs is the easiest way to explore new and existing products at no charge.

Supporting Quote

"Cognizant provides infrastructure and business process services to healthcare organizations to help them achieve new levels of IT performance and efficiency. Key to solving our customers IT challenges is driving increased efficiency via automation and our leading TriZetto healthcare solutions. We're excited about VMware vRealize Automation 7.2's support for Microsoft Azure which will help us to provide our customers with rapid access to their development environments with control and governance." -- Rene Lopez, VP Architecture, Cognizant

Pricing and Availability

Pricing for VMware vSphere starts at $995 per CPU. VMware vSphere Integrated Containers is a new feature of vSphere 6.5 (also supported on vSphere 6) and will be available for VMware vSphere Enterprise Plus Edition™ customers at no additional charge.

VMware vSAN list price starts at $2,495 per CPU. VMware vSAN for desktop list price starts at $50 per user. VMware vSAN Standard Edition now includes support for all-flash hardware.

Additional Resources

• Read "VMware Announces General Availability of vSphere 6.5" blog post
• Read "vRealize Operations 6.4: Supercharge your SDDC Intelligent Operations" blog post
• Read the IDC whitepaper that quantifies the energy and carbon emission reductions from VMware vSphere and compute virtualization technologies
• Revisit VMworld 2016 News in the Online Press Kit
• Connect with VMware on Twitter , Facebook and LinkedIn

About VMware VMware, a global leader in cloud infrastructure and business mobility, helps customers accelerate their digital transformation. VMware enables enterprises to master a software-defined approach to business and IT with VMware Cross-Cloud Architecture™ and solutions for the data center, mobility, and security. With 2015 revenues of $6.6 billion, VMware is headquartered in Palo Alto, CA and has over 500,000 customers and 75,000 partners worldwide. The company is headquartered in Silicon Valley with offices throughout the world and can be found online at www.vmware.com .

VMware, VMworld, vSphere, vSAN, vRealize, vRealize Automation, Cross-Cloud Architecture, Cloud Foundation, Cross-Cloud Services, NSX, vCenter, vCenter Server, vMotion, vSphere Integrated Containers, VMware Ready, Virtual Volumes, Log Insight, vCloud, vCloud Air, vCloud Air Network, Admiral, vRealize Operations, vCloud Availability, vCloud Director, and vSphere Enterprise Plus Edition are registered trademarks or trademarks of VMware, Inc. in the United States and other jurisdictions.