NEW!! vSphere 8 Update 2 and vSAN 8 Update 2

In my eight years with VMware, I’ve had a front row seat to some game-changing innovations to our vSphere and vSAN portfolio. Our teams have done it again with the recent enhancements available with vSphere 8 Update 2 and vSAN 8 Update 2. I’ve shared a summary here, along with links where you can get more details.

vSphere 8 Update 2

This newest release of vSphere comes loaded with updates to:

• Enhance Operational Efficiency

• Supercharge Workload Performance

• Accelerate Innovation for DevOps

Enhanced Operational Efficiency

We know that updating and upgrading vSphere is sometimes a challenge in large environments because it often extends across the entire on-premises footprint and may run on hundreds or thousands of systems. That’s why we placed a heavy emphasis on lifecycle management and made it quicker and easier to update vSphere. We’ve also expanded support for 3rd party identity providers to make it easier for IT admins to centrally manage authentication.

Supercharge Workload Performance

GenAI has become a strategic priority for many of our enterprise customers. vSphere has been on the forefront of AI from the time we introduced the VMware NVIDIA AI-Ready Enterprise Platform in March 2021. We continue to make strides in our AI capabilities by scaling and refining our GPU virtualization technology. And it’s not just AI. We are expanding the availability of Data Processing Unit (DPU) technology across more hardware platforms so customers can realize these performance benefits.

Accelerate Innovation for DevOps

For DevOps engineers, developers and any infrastructure consumer, we understand the importance of self-service access. We introduced our Kubernetes integration in 2020 and have continued to improve self-service access. This release moves the needle again. Along with giving infrastructure users faster access, we’ve made it easier for IT admins or DevOps engineers to set up their Kubernetes environment.

Read the vSphere 8 Update 2 blog to learn more.

vSAN 8 Update 2

This latest vSAN release includes multiple platform enhancements with expected performance improvements of up to 30%. And something I’m excited about is that vSAN 8 Update 2 paves the way for a new offering - VMware vSAN Max™ -available in the second half of VMware’s FY24.

vSAN Max

vSAN Max is powered by vSAN Express Storage Architecture and will enable an optional deployment model delivering petabyte-scale disaggregated storage for vSphere. vSAN Max makes it possible for our customers to scale storage independently from compute and gain flexibility to support all of their workloads.

We know organizations depend on a variety of applications to run the business, and each has its own compute power, storage capacity and performance needs. We also see the increased use of advanced analytics, AI applications, and cloud-native applications. This growing diversity of workloads, and the need to scale, calls for flexible infrastructure that makes it possible for these mission-critical applications to scale as the business demands.

This is what makes vSAN Max so compelling. It puts our customers in the driver’s seat by giving them more options to deploy vSAN in a way that will help maximize resource utilization and lower their costs.

As always with vSAN, customers can manage all environments – both the traditional HCI model and the disaggregated model– from a single interface.

vSAN Max is just one reason to celebrate vSAN 8 U2. There are many new features that will deliver new levels of performance, data durability, and resilience in the Express Storage Architecture. Read the blog to find out more.