VMware Launches Micro Cloud Foundry and vSphere 5

A week ahead of its annual VMworld event in Las Vegas, VMware has announced general availability of VMware vSphere 5 and introduced a beta of Micro Cloud Foundry.

Micro Cloud Foundry

On Tuesday Vmware announced the immediate beta availability of Micro Cloud Foundry as a free download at micro.cloudfoundry.com. Calling it the industry's first open Platform as a Service (PaaS) solution, Cloud Foundry delivers access to frameworks and a rich ecosystem of application services from VMware, third parties and the open source community. It allows end-to-end applications to be developed locally with a complete version of Cloud Foundry running on a developer's Mac or PC. Micro Cloud Foundry will be able to enhance developers' abilities and options to build, test and deploy their applications while offering symmetry with other instances of Cloud Foundry in enterprise datacenters and public cloud service providers.

"Today VMware is taking another significant step forward in delivering a modern cloud application platform ideal for the hybrid cloud environment, by delivering industry’s only PaaS solution that can be run on an individual developer’s laptop," said Jerry Chen, vice president of cloud and application services, VMware. "Micro Cloud Foundry gives developers a full cloud development environment that combines all the flexibility of local development with the ability to deploy and scale their applications anywhere in the future. Micro Cloud Foundry gives developers the ability to build cutting edge cloud applications while exploring the latest developer frameworks and application services without configuration hassles."

Available as a downloadable virtual machine image, Micro Cloud Foundry is compatible with VMware Fusion for Mac OS X and VMware Workstation and VMware Player.

vSphere 5

VMware announced the general availability of VMware vSphere 5, the foundation of its cloud infrastructures suite. The new version delivers nearly 200 new and enhanced capabilities and can now be configured with up to 1 terabyte of memory and 32 virtual CPUs.  New flagship features in version 5 include Auto-Deploy, Profile-Driven Storage and Storage DRS (Distributed Resource Scheduler), which extends data center resource management. Customers can define policies and establish the operating parameters, and VMware vSphere 5 does the rest.

vSphere 5 features a new High Availability (HA) architecture that is scalable and will protect against unplanned downtime. The new version is also the first edition built exclusively on the ESXi hypervisor.

"With the release of VMware vSphere 5, VMware is helping customers accelerate their journey toward a more efficient and automated cloud infrastructure," said Bogomil Balkansky, senior vice president, cloud infrastructure products, VMware. "The enhancements and new innovations we've introduced in VMware vSphere 5 provide a robust, reliable platform for business applications, enabling customers to effectively respond to the growing needs of their business and giving them confidence in their IT transformation."

The product licensing model will evolve in version 5, to lay the foundation for a more cloud-like IT cost model based on consumption and value rather than physical components and capacity. VMware vSphere 5 is currently available and will range from $83 per processor to $3,495 per processor.

The annual VMware event VMworld will take place August 29 through September 1 at the Wynn in Las Vegas. VMware will have photos and videos on the event website, a number of meetups, lots of blog coverage, and can be tracked on Twitter on the #vmworld hashtag.