Krome Cast TECH-IT-OUT: Upgrading to vSphere 7 & VMware Acquisition

In this episode of Krome Cast - Tech IT Out, we discuss upgrading to vSphere 7 before the end of general support for vSphere 6.5 and vSphere 6.7, on the 15th October 2022. 

For any VMware customers that have delayed upgrading their vSphere environment, due to other projects or the pandemic, now is the time to embark on your vSphere 7 upgrade, or even to the latest version vSphere 8 (which was announced this week 30.08.22). 

In this podcast, we talk about some of the key enhancements between vSphere 6.7 and vSphere 7, including the integration with Kubernetes, the improvements made to patching with VMware Lifecycle Manager, the new MFA feature which protects your environment from attacks, enhanced DRS functionality and the integration with Azure, AWS, G-Cloud and improved DR functionality. We also review how the new vSphere+ allows you to manage a multi-cloud environment, with a centralised management console. 

This tech panel podcast features Krome's Commercial Director, Sam Mager, along with Krome's MD, Rupert Mills, sharing their insights and own personal opinions on the VMware acquisition by Broadcom, and what this could potentially mean for VMware customers in the future; whilst we cannot predict the future, Sam and Rupert discuss the potential commercial changes that could be seen as a result, such as moving towards a consumption and subscription model in the future.

🕐 Timestamps 🕐
00:00 Introductions to vSphere 7 and vSphere+
00:54 End of general support for vSphere 6.7 and vSphere 6.5
01:52 Key differences between vSphere 6.7 and vSphere 7.0
04:01 vSphere plus multi-cloud management
04:49 Hyperscaler integrations
06:35 Kubernetes vSphere integration
07:02 vSphere 7.0 upgrade considerations
08:41 VMware acquisition by Broadcom, opinions based on industry news and reports

► ABOUT KROME: Krome Technologies is a technically strong, people-centric technology consultancy, focused on delivering end-to-end infrastructure and security solutions that solve business challenges and protect critical data. We work collaboratively with clients, forming long-term business partnerships, applying knowledge, experience and the resources our clients need to solve problems, design solutions and co-create agile, efficient and scalable IT services.

► KROME WEBSITE: https://www.krome.co.uk/

► CONTACT
 • Telephone: 01932 232345
 • Email: info@krome.co.uk

► ABOUT KROME: Krome Technologies is a technically strong, people-centric technology consultancy, focused on delivering end-to-end infrastructure and security solutions that solve business challenges and protect critical data. We work collaboratively with clients, forming long-term business partnerships, applying knowledge, experience and the resources our clients need to solve problems, design solutions and co-create agile, efficient and scalable IT services.

► KROME WEBSITE: https://www.krome.co.uk/

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► CONTACT
• Telephone: 01932 232345
• Email: info@krome.co.uk

Transcript

0:00

Welcome to Krome Cast, Tech-it-Out. I'm Sam Mager, Commercial Director for Krome Technologies. I'm joined today by my business partner, Mr Rupert Mills. Hi Sam. Good to see you again. Today we're discussing vSphere 7, VMware +, vSphere Plus. Yeah, and the impending acquisition of VMware by Broadcom. Indeed. Cool. So, let's start on the, the vSphere 7, and Plus piece, etcetera. It's not new, it's been out a while. We've got customers - 2020 Yeah, customers, a lot of customers on it, but a lot of customers that for various reasons, pandemic and all sorts stuff, haven't yet made that, that jump to upgrade to version 7. Now we've kind of got a line in the sand and good reason to do so I suppose, which you'll know better than I do, I believe it's November this year - October this year. October, thank you. Well there you go, i'll let you carry on that bit then because you do know more than I do. Yeah, October this year there's, it's the end of mainstream, mainstream support, and the end of extended support or whatever VMware term it as, November next year. So if you want to be moving yourself up to up to for, that's for vSphere 6.7. Yeah. So if you want to be getting yourself up to vSphere 7, now's the time to be doing it, because you ideally want to keep it in mainstream support so, Yeah. Those people that haven't made the jump that have been sitting on the old infrastructure, because they've been sweating an asset or had lots of other projects due to catch up on the post COVID etc. Now's the time to be starting to think about, okay, we need to be moving, and if you're not doing it now then do at some point in the next 12 months to to get yourself there before the November deadline next year. But ideally that that out of mainstream support, there's probably going to be some sort of commercial uplift or something I imagine - Yeah, quite possibly. That can always be a bit chunky, so if you can do it in this window, kind of now's the time, right? Yep. So, I guess some of the questions been asked, is there's some differences between 6.7, which is very, very good, and this now jumped to 7, it'll be good if we can, I guess this knife and fork for a couple of those? Yeah, absolutely. So I would say there's a few things such as patching. So patching is much more straightforward now they've updated the tooling for doing the patching of vSphere. They've got the new VMware Lifecycle Manager, which replaces VMware Update Manager for patching. So that allows you to patch your estate much more smoothly. They've got better DRS functionality. So moving the resources around to make sure your VMs are running on the right host. It's more VM centric than just trying to get a straight balance across all the hosts. Historically, it was going to sort of have a level percentage of usage across all the hosts. Now it's actually focusing on well, this is a high intensity VM, so let's keep that on a keep that on a server on its own or, or less populated server. Would actually look at the resource on the server? So would it know how much RAM and compute and so on and load the workload to move it to? Yeah, that's the idea, look at the resources on the ESXi host, and say, actually, these, these servers should be in - This workload? Yeah, because they're a better place for it to be, but try, and it might, it might, with the new model, it might fill a server with a load, or a host with a load of quiet servers, even though that'll be a high utilisation of it, because they're all quite quiet. Yeah. Whereas something that's more intensely used might sit on a, on a host that's less utilised and has less things on it, because it's quite a high seat - Making more noise. Ok. Noise level. So doing that we're basically making it more more VM focused on the host-focused, which is good. MFA, MFA is a really good one, obviously. Yep. it integrates properly in vSphere 7, so from the perspective of people who want to get into that, from a protection for your environment, there's been a lot of talk about ransomware actors targeting ESXi hosts now, because historically, they've gone after servers. Now they're going after ESXi hosts and also trying to take out backups and all the rest of it. So makes total sense. And obviously, we've discussed a fair few times, the importance of security on this podcast, but yeah, yeah, good to see that in there, because it's an imperative nowadays. Yeah, without a doubt so, so that's another, another important function. Then you've got the vSphere+ stuff that's coming along, that allows you to say, I'm gonna take a multitude of VMware environments and that supports 6, 7 up, but ideally on 7, allows you to take a multitude of VMware environments and address them through a single pane of glass management. Okay. So that's, in a way kind of like if you're addressing your Azure, AWS or GCP regions around the globe and saying, well, I've got stuff in in Germany, stuff in the UK, stuff in America, stuff in Asia Pac, it allows you to do the same with your VMware environment. So you can take your individual vSphere environment in London, your one in Frankfurt, your one in Australia, your one in Singapore, wherever they may be, and put them all together and manage them through vSphere +, so you can move VMs between them, you can patch them all centrally, you can do all of that as well. Ah okay, so it's quite, and is that - we're talking there about some hyperscalers, so your VMware and AWS or G-Cloud, Azure etc. Yeah, so in VMware also with vSphere 7, you've got better integration with VMware in Azure or in VMware in AWS. Okay. So can I, let say I'm quite saturated in the utilisation of AWS, and I'd quite like to move those workloads now to G-Cloud, Can I - I don't think it'll do that for you. Too much to ask. Yeah, absolutely.(Laughter) Maybe - Cloud to cloud migration really isn't a VMware thing. I think if you were running, and don't quote me on this, but I would guess if you are running VMware in AWS and VMware in Azure, you'd be able to migrate, you probably have to bounce through an on-prem VMware environment, but the, but I can't see many clients doing that particular model. I think it's more focused around people who are running VMware on-prem, and VMware in Azure, or VMware in AWS. but having that single pane of glass for management and migrations and all that sort of stuff. Yeah. And the VMware DR functionality that's integrated with AWS now, VMware have put a lot of money into investing, or a lot of time and money into investing in getting the VMware AWS DR proposition there. So we've been talking for a while to, about people not buying their DR environment and having a load of passive compute out there, buy your active, don't buy your passive, put your passive in the cloud somewhere, we can do it in Azure, we can do it in AWS, but that VMware, DR functionality is better now. So a whole bunch of upgraded things in there. I do think the vSphere+ thing, will likely be a play around moving to some sort of consumption model in the future as well. Yeah, I mean, that's the subscription model is without a doubt going to be their future, given the bit we're talking about in a bit. Looking at kind of, the application layer, obviously, where VMware historically has been hosting now applications for Kubernetes, all that sort of stuff, so improvements there. Yeah, absolutely. You can run Kubernetes, I should have mentioned that. You can run Kubernetes natively - That's why I'm here, just to prompt you. Yeah, thanks. You can run, run Kubernetes natively inside vSphere 7 now. So again, people wanting to do that model rather than full blown VMs. It's all fully supported now, so it's, it's another another big step forward for people sort of looking at a modern computing environment. Okay. And then I guess the, to top some of it out, the upgrade? Is it big and scary? Is it a thing to consider? Is it a next-next-finish? It's not quite a next-next-finish, but it's not, it's not terribly scary. It's, it's checking your compatibility list, this is as important as ever, making sure that wherever you're going to put the, put the environment on, will actually run vSphere 7, is a good step. But it's, it's if you've got reasonably modern hardware, it's going to work. And it's not not a particularly scary upgrade, we can obviously assist with that, help move things through, but it's - Oh, yeah, and one more thing I need to mention was the fact that the vCenter is no longer available on Windows. So historically, it's been an appliance or on Windows from vSphere 7, it's appliance only. So if you're particularly wedded to vCenter on Windows, it's not there anymore, it's gone, you'll be running vCenter on appliance now. Okay, interesting. That kind of wraps up the, I guess the, some good features worth doing, kind of have to do it, if you want to be in support. Yeah, definitely worth doing, sort the security out, sort the backup out, sort the patching out. The security, all the other stuff, that is great, your vMotion is better, 6.7 is not particularly bad. Some really nice to haves, and for some people that will be really, really important. For kind of general users, there's a lot of stuff there, which could be viewed as nice to have. Think the key thing is that it's going to be out of general support. That's the time to get shuffle on, right? You've sweatted the asset for a bit, it's a good investment. But you got to keep it in general support would be my advice certainly. So that's kind of the reason to speak to your friendly VMware representative and get yourself moved. Get it moved. Okay. So I guess we can move on talk about the interesting news, which is obviously they have a new owner. Yeah, absolutely. Broadcom, have put $61 billion on the table for them, which is it's only slightly less than Dell paid for VMware and EMC. I think it was 67? 67 billion. They've done alright. I was checking, I was checking that actually, to make sure that, sort of facts around it. VMware, they got 80% of VMware in that deal. I think Dell offloaded VMware back into Michael Dell and his partners. I think they made 12 - Yeah, Silverlake isn't it? Yeah, Silverlake. I think they made 12, 12 billion at that point. But then they're offloading it again now for 61 billion - It's a hard, hard life. Yeah, I think very shrewd business moves by Michael all round. Yeah, I mean, yeah, fair enough. I mean, it's interesting. It has been rumored for ages that he was going to do this. I don't think anyone was surprised that, that they have a new owner. No. That wasn't a surprise. But, you know, you look at the obvious people and you can discount them straight away. So all the kind of, the storage competition, it wasn't gonna be a NetApp, a HP an IBM, No. That couldn't happen right. So you thin the herd, then think, it could be an Oracle but Oracle will just take it and make it a very Oracle only product and make it very proprietary, and bury it. So that wasn't gonna happen. That only leaves a few people that could of, that could raise the capital to do it. And actually, it would make sense, but I didn't, I didn't think it'd be Broadcom. Yeah, I mean, the acquisitions they've made so far have been sort of, I think, there was CA and Symantec, and I think they were 10 and 18 billion, or there abouts - 13 and sub 10 I think, it's in that ballpark, but it's still significant amounts of money right? This is five times, five times the size. Yeah, it's a lot bigger. It's a big cash play. Yeah, so they're clearly out there being acquisitive, adding to the portfolio, all that sort of good stuff right. But I guess the reason I'm surprised by it is looking back at the CA acquisition and Symantec acquisition, reading the news, and we're not a CA partner, I'm not casting mud. Or Symantec. Yeah, or Symantec. Yeah, just, you know, from what I'm reading, and what I'm hearing, is that post-acquisition, pricing went up, and and the customer experience, support, etc, went down. Yeah. Now, that's not great if you're a customer, but if you're a VMware customer looking back, kind of retrospective of what's happened, and then you apply that to your VMware experience, are we looking at, and we said about, with VSphere+ and the subscription model that is definitely coming, there's gonna be a, what is rumoured to be a 30%-ish, hike, because they're talking about the need to make 30% more profit.

So to do that, well, a couple of ways: 11:22

A, they can hike profits, but as we've seen from some of the stuff they've previously done, they could also rip the guts out of the organisation to achieve cost savings. But then as a VMware, well, we're VMware customer, as much as we're a reseller, for want of a better expression of their products, you've got to think, you've just quoted some brilliant stuff that's obviously happened in R&D to come into, into version 7. Does that mean we start to see the slowdown, there's lots of cool stuff around application integration and so on, around Kubernetes, and all this sort of stuff. Yeah, who knows. Do they slow down? I think it's going to be, it'll be interesting to see what their long term strategy is. Their, their strategy with the other acquisitions it appears, to have been to buy them and then milk them to get their money back. If they do the same with VMware, they could very easily lay off a large portion of the workforce, cut back on the R&D, and just work their way through the customer base. Keeps shareholders very happy. Yeah, I mean, that their revenue when you look at it, as there's various stats around it, sort of 70 to 75% of their revenue, comes from their top 600 clients, which is nothing, you think about how many VMware customers out there in the world, there are, thousands - they're the what, they're the big, 10 million revenue a year plus customers? Aren't they, some of those? Yeah, I mean, they're huge. Yeah. I don't know the actual numbers, but it's 6, you're talking 600 customers, for 74% of their revenue I think it is. That leaves them 26%, that they're saying that these guys are the ones who we're going to move to a subscription model, we're going to try and monetise and just just let them run out, we'll see what they do. But it's a, it doesn't doesn't pay to be one of the people who aren't in that 600, and there's not a lot of spaces in that 600 for all the 1,000's - We're not in that 600. (Laughter) tens, hundreds, thousands of people using VMware out there. No, no, no. So yeah, it does. Well, we'll see, you know, they could, they could, it could, you know, they've got obviously that their roots are in, in the chips, in the processors, in the, that that kind of data centre fabric world, Silicon. Silicon, yeah. So it could be that actually the acquisition of, when you look at what the VM, what the, what VMware have with the, obviously the virtualisation of the host, and the application, and the Cloud connector, and so on. And we talked about this a lot, everyone talks about Cloud, and we've mentioned the hyperscalers, and I personally, we are seeing a lot of people that are for Azure, for AWS, etc. But we certainly speak to a lot of people that are hybrid, there's still an awful lot of on-prem. I mean you talk about the data centre, for a lot of people that is still, it might be co-located, or it might be owned, there's an awful lot of stuff that sits in the data centre. So are they kind of locking that up to a certain extent, because it's their fabric, it's their hypervisor, it's the applications are the key thing they're trying to own, whether it's sitting up with a hyperscaler, or in them and you look at the "the Edge", as it's called, which is what we both know is, on-prem right? Yep. There's an awful lot of noise about Cloud Edge. So it goes around in a cycle, we've done this before right? Yep. So a lot of this stuff is back, back at the Edge, back on-prem, it could be actually a really good acquisition if they're going to do something clever with this software stack they've got and now VMware. Yeah, it could be, it certainly could be. I'm intrigued to see what they do with it, because I have a sneaky suspicion, you're gonna see a lot of people migrating to other hypervisors in the not too distant future. There's a lot of people talking about Hyper-V with a lot more detail at the moment - Which is very good. Needing a lot more work with it. It's a very good hypervisor these days. The open source hypervisors are out there doing more and more, making more and more noise, Proxmox as an example, is one that's making a lot of noise at the moment. That's, that's getting its name out there. And there's a lot of people already talking about what happens when we don't run VMware. Now I think that - It's a big shift for some people. It's a big shift, yeah. And it won't be a possible shift for some people because their environments will be so integrated, and so automated to run on VMware. So that's where those top 600 are probably very well locked in. Yeah. But there's a lot of people out there who run, what we would term, say a 3,2,1, we've got a small VMware environment three, three hosts on a piece of storage. Yeah, a far easier migration - Changing that over to Hyper-V, or Proxmox, or moving it to Azure or moving it to AWS. It seems like a big job, but it's not. It's all infinitely doable. And I think it'll be intriguing to see whether or not VMware's change of things. I mean, we had it with Microsoft a few years back, where they started changing the rules around whether or not you were licensing a core, a CPU, or all the rest of it, and everything moves around, and everybody gets very jittery. And you realise that these workloads are portable, you can move your workload between the different platforms, and I think there will be a reticence from people just to allow VMware to come in and as you say, turn the price up by 30%, etc. So you might, and it's a very real possibility to move now, it might just accelerate things further into, into the, into the big hyperscalers. Could do, and I guess, that time will tell as with all these things. And we've seen many acquisitions in this industry, over all the years, we've done this, and you get the crystal ball out at the beginning of it and you review it six months later, you're like, Oh, it didn't quite go as we'd all guessed. So, it could be a fabulous success, and we could look at VMware in a year's time and go wow, didn't didn't see them doing that with it. That's really cool, right. Yeah. So conversely, we could all be going, everyone's moved to something else, or somewhere, and you know, somewhere down the middle, who knows? It's going to take time to play out, but it will just be, if it was me right now, I'd be sort of locking myself into a nice bought license for vSphere 7. You got to do your upgrade, right? So speak to your VMware people, and see if you can get a nice fixed rate for the next 10 years and lock it in, because yeah, it could get reassuringly expensive. It's not a cheap, it's a good product, but it's not an inexpensive product anyway, it's a big investment for I guess, for any business of any size, it's all relative. If they do start trying to, you know, squeeze - It's like your mortgage interest rates, get a good deal now while they're on the table. Yeah exactly, lock it in now. Lock it in. You know what, here's the thing I do, there'll be out there, because there'll be a lot of people that VMware reps will be looking at going, what does my future hold? What can I close this, this quarter, this financial year to get done? Yep. etc. So there'll be some good deals out there for people that are willing to go and haggle. Yeah, I suspect so. So we should probably get ours done. 10 years, I'll get on to it tomorrow.(Laughter) Alright, well, let's, let's run this again in a year's time, and see, see how this is, if it's evolved, how it's landed, what we're seeing people doing? Have we seen the big migration to something known, something new or actually, has it all panned out really well? Yeah, I mean, if you go back in time, when people looked at when Dell were buying it, and said what's going to happen to VMware and actually, relatively little. They carried on doing what they were doing - They kind of left it alone. They kind of left it alone, which makes sense because they then sold it on and done that with it. So it would be interesting to see, I don't think that's Broadcom's model - That's not. They've already talked haven't they, but it's all their whole software stacks going into as VMware now. Yeah. So they're gonna really, to then if their plans are to move it on in the future, it'll be very difficult with integrated, unless they're looking for a much bigger fish, I can't see that. But there are many, much bigger fishes. It's a lot of money to put in, but they get bigger and bigger every year. So anyway, let's, let's put a pin in it, until next year. Yeah. Thanks for your time, it's always interesting. Yeah, no, thank you. And thank you for joining us on this episode of Krome Cast, Tech-it-Out. Remember to like, subscribe, comment and share, and if there's anything you'd like us to cover in future episodes, then please leave it in the comments below. Remember now, to join us again, on Krome Cast, Tech-it-Out.