Business
VMware announces vSphere Essentials 5.1 Plus targeting SMB
VMware vSphere Essentials 5.1 Plus is designed to target the business requirements of small to medium size organizations without also requiring them to have extensive virtualization expertise on staff.
Small to medium size businesses often have the same basic needs as a larger organization, but don't have the staff, the expertise or the desire to deal with a complex infrastructure. Some of their needs are:
- The ability to make the best use of their systems investment
- Reliable IT solutions that are simple to install and use
- Secure IT solutions without also having to hire a security expert
- Simple ways for their solution partners to install and update application software and tools.
VMware launched a new edition of its vSphere 5.1 Essentials Plus the company hopes will address their needs. The company also hopes to get the attention of these businesses before their competitors, Citrix and Microsoft, can convince them that their products are better, less expensive, faster or some other thing.
What VMware says about VMware vSphere 5.1 Essentials Plus
With the release of VMware vSphere 5.1, VMware will significantly extend the capabilities of VMware vSphere Essentials Plus to include:
- VMware vSphere Storage Appliance 5.1 – Delivering High Availability at low cost.VMware vSphere 5.1 will include an updated VMware vSphere Storage Appliance for Essentials Plus, which transforms servers’ internal storage into a shared storage resource, enabling customers to use advanced VMware vSphere business continuity features such as VMware vMotion® and High Availability without shared storage hardware. Enhancements will make it easy for customers to extend these benefits to existing VMware vSphere and Remote Office/Branch Office (ROBO) environments and reduce infrastructure costs by running VMware vCenter™ Server in a VM within a VMware vSphere Storage Appliance cluster. VMware vSphere Storage Appliance 5.1 will support RAID 5, 6, and 10 and also makes it easy for customers to add storage capacity online to keep pace with data growth.
- VMware vSphere Data Protection™ – Providing reliable virtual machine backup and recovery. VMware vSphere 5.1 will include new backup and recovery capabilities which enable users to quickly set backup policies within VMware vSphere. VMware vSphere Data Protection will leverage proven production expertise to reduce cost and management overhead by enabling agentless backups with built-in de-duplication.
- VMware vSphere Replication – Simplifying disaster recovery for all applications. Replication is a key component of any disaster recovery plan, and VMware vSphere 5.1 will include array-agnostic replication capabilities. VMware vSphere Replicationwill allow customers to replicate virtual machine data over the LAN or WAN for efficient, simple disaster protection. For those customers that want to simplify and automate disaster recovery, VMware is introducing a new version of VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager™ that will include support for VMware vSphere 5.1 Essentials Plus. VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager 5.1 will be supported by an expanding ecosystem of service providers offering “disaster recovery to the cloud” services that allow customers to failover to a service provider’s datacenter, eliminating the need for a dedicated disaster recovery site.
- VMware vShield Endpoint™ – Securing virtual machines. VMware vSphere 5.1 will include vShield Endpoint, which delivers proven endpoint security to any workload with an approach that is simplified, efficient and cloud-aware. VMware vShield Endpointwill eliminate the need for antivirus agents inside virtual machines by enabling the offloading of antivirus and anti-malware functions to hardened, tamper-proof virtual machines delivered by VMware’s partners.