Introduction to the vSphere Breakroom Chat Series

​In this series, we share vlogs with industry-recognized experts from Broadcom and VMware by Broadcom partners and customers. These vlogs are concise, like meeting in a breakroom and having a quick conversation to get great information in a short amount of time. If you are an IT practitioner- IT admin, cloud or platform architect, developer, DevOps, senior IT manager, IT executive, AI/ML professional- this series is for you.

For the previous blogs, please visit: https://blogs.vmware.com/vsphere/breakroom-chats

vSphere Breakroom Chats Episode 38

Welcome to the next episode of the vSphere Breakroom Chats. Today, we are happy to present this vLog with Motti Beck, Sr. Director Market Development, NVIDIA and Neeraj Kuppam, GM, Software Defined Infrastructure, Lenovo. In this episode, Shobhit Bhutani, Motti Beck, and Neeraj Kuppam discuss the launch of Dual DPUs with Lenovo and NVIDIA.

Want to learn more about vSphere on DPUs with NVIDIA?

Check out the vSphere on DPUs webpage for more resources.

Questions? Please feel free to reach out to us on Twitter at @vmwarevsphere.

The post Unpacking Dual DPUs with Lenovo and NVIDIA | Breakroom Chats Episode 38 appeared first on VMware vSphere Blog.

Introduction to the vSphere Breakroom Chat Series

​In this series, we share vlogs with industry-recognized experts from Broadcom and VMware by Broadcom partners and customers. These vlogs are concise, like meeting in a breakroom and having a quick conversation to get great information in a short amount of time. If you are an IT practitioner- IT admin, cloud or platform architect, developer, DevOps, senior IT manager, IT executive, AI/ML professional- this series is for you.

For the previous blogs, please visit: https://blogs.vmware.com/vsphere/breakroom-chats

vSphere Breakroom Chats Episode 37

Welcome to the next episode of the vSphere Breakroom Chats. Today, we are happy to present this vLog with Katarina Brookfield, Product Marketing Engineer at Broadcom. In this episode, Katarina Brookfield and Harshad Kolte discuss the self-service IaaS features in VMware vSphere Foundation.

Want to learn more about VMware vSphere Foundation?

• Read the VVF 5.2 launch blog.
• Learn more about VMware vSphere Foundation.

Questions? Connect with us on Twitter at @VMwarevSphere and on LinkedIn at VMware vSphere

The post IaaS Services made easy with VMware vSphere Foundation | Breakroom Chats Episode 37 appeared first on VMware vSphere Blog.

Introduction to the vSphere Breakroom Chat Series

​In this series, we share vlogs with industry-recognized experts from Broadcom and VMware by Broadcom partners and customers. These vlogs are concise, like meeting in a breakroom and having a quick conversation to get great information in a short amount of time. If you are an IT practitioner- IT admin, cloud or platform architect, developer, DevOps, senior IT manager, IT executive, AI/ML professional- this series is for you.

For the previous blogs, please visit: https://blogs.vmware.com/vsphere/breakroom-chats

vSphere Breakroom Chats Episode 36

Welcome to the next episode of the vSphere Breakroom Chats. Today, we are happy to present this vLog with Bob Plankers, Product Marketing. In this episode, Bob Plankers and Harshad Kolte discuss the security features in VMware vSphere Foundation.

Want to learn more about VMware vSphere Foundation?

• Read the VVF 5.2 launch blog.
• Learn more about VMware vSphere Foundation.

Questions? Connect with us on Twitter at @VMwarevSphere and on LinkedIn at VMware vSphere

The post Address Security Posture of your infrastructure with VMware vSphere Foundation | Breakroom Chats Episode 36 appeared first on VMware vSphere Blog.

Introduction to the vSphere Breakroom Chat Series

​In this series, we share vlogs with industry-recognized experts from VMware and VMware partners and customers. These vlogs are concise, like meeting in a breakroom and having a quick conversation to get great information in a short amount of time. If you are an IT practitioner- IT admin, cloud or platform architect, developer, DevOps, senior IT manager, IT executive, AI/ML professional- this series is for you.

For the previous blogs, please visit: https://blogs.vmware.com/vsphere/breakroom-chats

vSphere Breakroom Chats Episode 35

Welcome to the next episode of the vSphere Breakroom Chats. Today, we are happy to present this vLog with Himanshu Singh, Director of Product Marketing, Broadcom. In this episode, Himanshu Singh and Harshad Kolte discuss  what’s new with VMware vSphere Foundation.

Want to learn more about VMware vSphere Foundation?

• Complete this form to contact us!
• Read the VVF launch blog.
• Learn more about VMware vSphere Foundation.

Questions? Connect with us on Twitter at @VMwareVCF  @VMwarevSphere and on LinkedIn at VMware vSphere

The post What’s New in VMware vSphere Foundation? | Breakroom Chat Episode 35 appeared first on VMware vSphere Blog.

Introduction to the vSphere Breakroom Chat Series

​In this series, we share vlogs with industry-recognized experts from VMware and VMware partners and customers. These vlogs are concise, like meeting in a breakroom and having a quick conversation to get great information in a short amount of time. If you are an IT practitioner- IT admin, cloud or platform architect, developer, DevOps, senior IT manager, IT executive, AI/ML professional- this series is for you.

For the previous blogs, please visit: https://blogs.vmware.com/vsphere/breakroom-chats

vSphere Breakroom Chats Episode 34

Welcome to the next episode of the vSphere Breakroom Chats. Today, we are happy to present this vLog with Judy Lee, Principal Product Marketing Manager, NVIDIA. In this episode, Judy Lee and Shobhit Bhutani discuss the General Availability announcement of VMware Private AI Foundation with NVIDIA platform. With this joint platform, enterprises can unlock Gen AI and unleash productivity.

Want to learn more about this announcement?

• Complete this form to contact us!
• Read the GA Launch Blog
• Learn more about VMware Private AI Foundation with NVIDIA.

Questions? Connect with us on Twitter at @VMwareVCF and on LinkedIn at VMwareVCF.

The post Announcing General Availability of VMware Private AI Foundation with NVIDIA | Breakroom Chats Episode 34 appeared first on VMware vSphere Blog.

Introduction to the vSphere Breakroom Chat Series

​In this series, we share vlogs with industry-recognized experts from VMware and VMware partners and customers. These vlogs are concise, like meeting in a breakroom and having a quick conversation to get great information in a short amount of time. If you are an IT practitioner- IT admin, cloud or platform architect, developer, DevOps, senior IT manager, IT executive, AI/ML professional- this series is for you.

For the previous blogs, please visit: https://blogs.vmware.com/vSphere/breakroom-chats

vSphere Breakroom Chats Episode 33

Welcome to the next episode of vSphere Breakroom Chats. Today, we are excited to present this vLog featuring Justin Murray, Product Marketing Engineer, and Shobhit Bhutani, Principal Product Marketing Manager. In this episode, Justin and Shobhit delve into the top capabilities of the VMware Private AI Foundation with NVIDIA platform. Additionally, Justin will share a demo of this platform.

Want to learn more about this announcement?

• Complete this form to contact us!
• Read the GA Launch Blog
• Learn more about VMware Private AI Foundation with NVIDIA.

Questions? Connect with us on Twitter at @VMwareVCF and on LinkedIn at VMwareVCF.

The post Mastering the Top Capabilities of VMware Private AI Foundation with NVIDIA | Breakroom Chats Episode 33 appeared first on VMware vSphere Blog.

Introduction to the vSphere Breakroom Chat Series

​In this series, we share vlogs with industry-recognized experts from VMware and VMware partners and customers. These vlogs are concise, like meeting in a breakroom and having a quick conversation to get great information in a short amount of time. If you are an IT practitioner- IT admin, cloud or platform architect, developer, DevOps, senior IT manager, IT executive, AI/ML professional- this series is for you.

For the previous blogs, please visit: https://blogs.vmware.com/vsphere/breakroom-chats

vSphere Breakroom Chats Episode 32

Welcome to the next episode of the vSphere Breakroom Chats. Today, we’re happy to present this vlog with Motti Beck, Sr. Director Market Development, NVIDIA. In this episode, Motti Beck (NVIDIA) and Shobhit Bhutani discuss how vSphere on DPUs with NVIDIA is revolutionizing the modernization of data centers by offloading, accelerating, and isolating infrastructure functions and improving security.

Want to learn more about vSphere on DPUs with NVIDIA?

Check out the vSphere on DPUs webpage for more resources.

Questions? Please feel free to reach out to us on Twitter at @vmwarevsphere.

The post DPUs Demystified: Modernize your data centers | Breakroom Chats Episode 32 appeared first on VMware vSphere Blog.

I recently wrote about VMware vSphere Foundation and how it is a new solution designed to help our customers with an attractive Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) and an accelerated Time To Value (TTV).

In particular, I referenced 4 key value propositions; Boost Operational Efficiency, Supercharge Workload Performance, Accelerate Innovation for DevOps, and Elevate Security.

In this blog, I am going to explore these and highlight the capabilities that are helping customers realize these benefits.

Boost Operational Efficiency

Is my use of my infrastructure resources optimal? When will I need more capacity? How much time are my valuable, skilled resources spending ‘keeping the lights on’?

These are the types of questions every customer asks and VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF) is designed to give you the answer and, if needed, to help turn a wrong answer to the right one!

Here are some examples of the ways that VVF helps drive this goal.

• Intelligent Operations and Advanced Analytics

  • Full Stack Visibility – Collect performance data across all endpoints from physical to virtual and Kubernetes containers to better service SLA’s
  • VM and Container Monitoring – Ensure VMs and containers are running properly by monitoring for performance, availability, and end-user experience
  • AI Driven Trouble-shooting and Remediation – Streamlined trouble-shooting with machine learning indexing for efficient anomaly detection. Provides a single place to collect data with metric correlation and to resolve them including last mile root cause analysis (RCA) reducing MTTR (mean time to resolution)

• Cost and Capacity Management

  • Assess Capacity and Address Shortfalls – Leverage real-time predictive analytics to gain insights into current and future capacity needs along with the ability to react swiftly to changing requirements.
  • Reclaim Capacity and Automate Cost Savings – Identify unused resources such as powered off VM’s, orphaned disks, obsolete snapshots, and idle vm’s to claim back capacity waste. Reclamation workflows streamline and automate the identification and re-allocation of capacity.
  • Infrastructure and Workload Planning – Define and use ‘What-If’ scenarios to model proposed changes to capacity, new workloads, or workload migrations. VVF will check if resources need to be added or removed to support the model as well as providing insight on changes to costs.
  • TCO With Showback/Chargeback – Dashboards provide an holistic view of TCO to optimize expenditure. Resources can be allocated to projects or business groups to provide chargeback or showback options for greater financial transparency of cost.

• Lifecycle Management Enhancements

  • ESXi Lifecycle Management Service – An extremely impactful enhancement that enables admins to centrally orchestrate updates across their entire fleet of ESXi hosts. With the ESXi lifecycle management service, upgrades will require far less time and effort and can be performed more often, allowing customers to stay more secure and take advantage of the latest capabilities of ESXi.
  • Reduced Downtime for vCenter Upgrades – The latest release of VVF dramatically reduces the downtime required to upgrade the vCenter service. During an upgrade, vCenter downtime is reduced roughly from an hour to just a few minutes. Planned maintenance windows can now be far shorter, enabling more frequent upgrades to benefit from the latest vCenter features.
  • Host Configuration at Cluster Level – Manage desired host configuration, compliance, remediation, and security standards seamlessly at a cluster level. Easily copy host configurations for all hosts when new clusters are created.

Supercharge Workload Performance

Can this infrastructure run all of my different types of workloads? Do they run as fast as I need them to? Can I manage their performance in a consistent way?

Having an efficient infrastructure is one thing but it means little if it cannot run every workload that we need it to and if the performance is not up to our requirements.

The heart of VVF is the market leading VMware ESXi with its unmatched ability to run both traditional and modern application types, as well as providing industry-leading support for GPU’s. VVF is also widely supported by 3rd parties for their applications and has a huge ecosystem of technology recognition and vendor partnerships.

Features that supercharge performance for the apps of today and tomorrow include;

• Power AI Workloads

  • Increased maximum vGPU devices per VM from 8 to 16 – Reduce AI/ML model training time and run higher end models with larger data sets.
  • GPU-Aware DRS – Workload placement and load balancing is now GPU aware, and DRS will try to place workloads with similar profile requirements on the same host. This improves GPU resource utilization, which reduces cost, as fewer GPU hardware resources must be acquired to achieve a desired level of performance.
  • Faster and More Scalable GPU Interconnects – Support for NVSwitch Technology allows for extremely high speed (900GB/s) and low latency crossbar switch on a single compute node.

• Continuous Performance Optimization

  • Intent Based Workload Placement – Placement of workloads is driven by business and operational considerations. This also provides for automated remediation of performance issues caused by resource contention, and balances workloads across clusters.
  • Enhanced Memory Monitoring and Remediation – DRS achieves optimal workload placement by factoring in memory statistics on bandwidth.
  • Intelligent Alert Clustering – To improve the ease of consumption of alerts, Aria Operations uses best-in-class object relationship mapping to group alerts based on related objects. This helps both narrow down the alerts and reduce the overall number.

Accelerate Innovation for DevOps

VVF runs both VMs (Virtual Machines) and Kubernetes (for containers). The container integration is not an additive software layer – the engine of VVF is built on Kubernetes itself so that both workload types are supported natively. Kubernetes orchestration can also be used for VMs as well as containers.

Not only does this mean that the workloads run well, it means the features exist to truly enable DevOps practices to drive innovation. That means providing developers with self-service while operations can focus on visibility, access, and operational guardrails.

Some highlights for how VVF enables and accelerates DevOps based innovation are;

• vSphere with DevOps Services

  • New VM Image Registry Service – DevOps teams, developers, and other VM consumers can publish and manage VM images in a self-service manner allowing VMs to be created more quickly without requiring assistance from an IT Admin.
  • VM Service support for Windows and GPUs – The VM service is a great way to provision VMs in a self-service manner and can now also be used to provision Windows VMs alongside Linux VMs to any hardware, security, device, custom or multi-NIC, and passthrough devices that VMs on vSphere support, including VMs that require GPUs.

• Kubernetes Deployment Flexibility

  • Availability Zones – Workload clusters can be deployed to multiple AZs to spread nodes across clusters in different zones to protect management and workloads against infrastructure failure.
  • TKG Lifecycle – Simplify lifecycle and package management with API-driven cluster classes and Carvel tools.

Elevate Security

Great technical features are important, but an organization also needs to rely on their infrastructure to play its part in their ability to observe their compliance and security requirements.

The VVF engine is vSphere ESXi – a robustly tested, battle-hardened and trusted hypervisor – but there are many other features of VVF that elevate your security posture to aid your ability to protect your workloads and data including;

• Resilience

  • Support for Microsoft Entra ID (formerly Azure AD) – When authentication is handled by a 3rd party identity provider, authentication is no longer processed by vSphere. Since logins and passwords are no longer stored within vSphere, security audits are easier, faster, or not necessary. VMware now supports Microsoft Entra ID in addition to previously supported providers like Okta Identity Service and Microsoft Active Directory Federation Service (ADFS).
  • Ransomware Protection and Recovery (Add-On) – VMware Live Recovery is a purpose-built, industry-leading ransomware recovery-as-a-service solution that empowers organizations to recover from ransomware attacks with confidence and agility. Organizations benefit from a dedicated ransomware recovery workflow that has deeply integrated recovery automation capabilities including a cloud-based Isolated Recovery Environment (IRE) to prevent re-infection of production workloads, guided restore point selection, and embedded next-generation antivirus and behavioral analysis.

• Regulatory and Compliance

  • Integrate Compliance Dashboards – Reduce risk and enforce IT regulatory standards with integrated compliance and automated drift remediation. Ensure your environment’s adherence to common requirements with six out-of-the- box compliance templates—such as for PCI or HIPAA —or create your own custom templates.
  • Sustainability – Green score visibility to dramatically aid ESG reporting and goal compliance by tracking carbon footprint, clean demand, green supply, power consumption, etc and tracking improvements across these many vectors.

Next Steps

These are just a few of the examples of how features and capabilities within VMware vSphere Foundation drive IT value that you can rely on. There are plenty more too and I encourage you to learn more. Check out these helpful resources:

• Visit vSphere.com to learn more about VMware vSphere Foundation
• Read the Aria Operations blog covering release 8.16

The post VMware vSphere Foundation: Optimizing Private Clouds and Driving IT Value appeared first on VMware vSphere Blog.

Introducing VMware vSphere Foundation

VMware vSphere Foundation is a new offering, designed to optimize your data center, and is the enterprise workload platform that enhances operational efficiency, supercharges workload performance, and accelerates innovation for organizations of all sizes. It delivers predictive and proactive operations management, purpose-built to enable the best performance, availability, and efficiency from your infrastructure and applications. It can improve performance and prevent disruption across the IT environment, with intelligent operations from apps to storage providing simplified availability and comprehensive visibility in one place.

VMware vSphere Foundation offers:

• 20% reduction in hardware costs through optimization and capacity management¹
• 50% reduction in mean time to resolution and quick remediation¹
• 93% reduction in unplanned downtime through intelligent insights¹
• Integrated self-service platform for containers and virtual machines, with embedded Kubernetes

Customers looking to purchase vSphere Enterprise Plus or vCloud Suite Standard can enjoy potential cost savings of up to 50% with a 3-year subscription by adopting VMware vSphere Foundation. In addition, they will also be equipped to handle scaling, modern workloads, and efficiency challenges with best-in-class solutions included at no extra cost.

Why VMware vSphere Foundation? – The Changing Landscape

In the realm of information technology, we are witnessing a continuation of the growth trends that have already impacted large enterprises. These changes are set to influence businesses of all sizes and industries.

During 2024 and beyond, customers will be wanting to:

Save More

Simplicity at scale, commonly referred to as ‘doing more with less.’ Businesses need to prioritize the outcomes that their IT infrastructure can provide, instead of investing precious time in addressing issues stemming from unreliable point solutions. VMware offers the most flexible and cost-effective private-cloud infrastructure that enables customers to build and customize as their requirements evolve.

Reduce Risk

With VMware Leverage a proven infrastructure solution and broad ecosystem that has been deployed by more customers than any other vendor. By seamlessly integrating with existing investments without any vendor lock-in, VMware solutions provide customers with peace of mind.

Make More

Business continues to digitize, and amid rapid market changes, businesses need an IT capability that provides the flexibility to adapt and scale, for any type of workload. VMware enables customers to roll out applications faster with the freedom to leverage a unified platform for both traditional and modern workloads.

Adding to this dynamic landscape is the industry’s macro-trend, shifting from perpetual licensing to subscription models. Managing a diverse portfolio of many subscription solutions can be a complex task and business are looking to simplify procurement and vendor/license management.

The Opportunity with VMware vSphere Foundation

 VMware has long been a trusted provider of infrastructure solutions for businesses worldwide, helping you to manage change and grow your business. VMware solutions, notably vSphere, have consistently been rated as best-in-class across various competencies and business have long viewed VMware solutions as the ones that ‘just work’.

At VMware, our primary focus has always been to provide solutions that align seamlessly with our customers’ challenges, both current and future. As previously discussed in Krish Prasad’s blog, the acquisition by Broadcom has accelerated our ability to simplify, enhance capabilities, and often reduce your costs.

VMware vSphere Foundation offers an ideal transition path for those currently using vSphere Enterprise Plus, or vCloud Suite Standard. At the same time, customers with lighter requirements such as basic hardware consolidation or virtualization on a very small number of servers are still able to use vSphere Standard or vSphere Essentials Plus Kit.

VMware vSphere Foundation is a new integrated offering from VMware. However, to help understand the makeup of the solution, the following overview refers to the legacy components that went in to making it:

• vSphere Enterprise Plus

– vSphere ESXi
– Tanzu Kubernetes Grid

• vCenter Standard
• Aria Suite Standard

– Aria Operations
– Aria Operations for Logs
– Aria Suite Lifecycle

• vSAN Enterprise (100 GiB per CPU Core per host)
• Production Support

On top of vSphere Foundation, you can deploy a variety of use-case based add-ons, as follows:

• VMware Cloud Disaster Recovery
• VMware Ransomware Recovery
• VMware Site Recovery
• vSAN Enterprise (Expansion)
• VMware Load Balancer (NSX Advanced Load Balancer)
• Tanzu Mission Control

Key Takeaways

To recap, vSphere Foundation is the solution that allows you to do more, for less. VMware vSphere Foundation is the best solution to continue with the industry leading infrastructure solution, while also providing a significant number of new capabilities that will help you address the challenges you will face over the next few years.

In my next blog post, I will explore each of the core value pillars for VMware vSphere Foundation:

• Boost Operational Efficiency
• Supercharge Workload Performance
• Accelerate Innovation for DevOps
• Elevate Security

Please visit vSphere.com to learn more, and reach out to a partner reseller to explore how vSphere Foundation and the available add-ons can help in your specific environment.

The post Embracing Change with VMware vSphere Foundation appeared first on VMware vSphere Blog.

In 2023, after several decades of niche growth and development, Generative AI and AI/ML adoption have achieved mainstream status.

As AI drives tremendous productivity gains and enables new experiences, many core functions within a typical business will be transformed, including sales, marketing, software development, customer operations, and document processing.

In fact, McKinsey projects that Generative AI’s impact on productivity could add the equivalent of $4.4 Trillion annually to the global economy.

But at the core of this remains the privacy of enterprises’ data. Hence, in August 2023, at VMware Explore in Las Vegas, we announced VMware Private AI and VMware Private AI Foundation with NVIDIA.

Today, we are excited to announce further expansions to the VMware Private AI ecosystem with two key partners.

VMware Private AI with Intel unlocks AI for all organizations

VMware and Intel have partnered for over 20 years to enable next-generation, datacenter-to-cloud capabilities with the broadest portfolio of trusted enterprise solutions, enabling businesses to move faster, innovate more, and operate efficiently.

Today, we are extending this partnership with Intel to unlock AI everywhere for all organizations.

With this partnership, enterprises can get AI models everywhere by harnessing Intel’s AI software suite validated on VMware Cloud Foundation.

VMware and Intel will help enterprises build and deploy private and secure AI models running on VMware Cloud Foundation and boost AI performance by harnessing Intel’s AI software suite, 4th Generation Intel® Xeon® Scalable Processors with built-in accelerators, and Intel® Max Series GPUs.

Let’s delve into the value enterprises can expect from this partnership.

1. Enable privacy and security for AI models: VMware Private AI’s architectural approach for AI services enables privacy and control of corporate data and integrated security and management. This partnership will help enterprises build and deploy private and secure AI models with integrated security capabilities in VCF and its components.
2. Boost AI Performance– Achieve excellent AI and LLM model performance using the integrated capabilities built into VCF and Intel processors, hardware accelerators, and optimized software. For example, vSphere, one of the core components of VCF, includes Distributed Resources Scheduler, which improves AI workload management by grouping hosts into resource clusters for different applications and ensuring that VMs have access to the right amount of computing resources, preventing resource bottlenecks, and optimizing resource utilization.
3. Get AI Everywhere – VMware and Intel are providing enterprises with a fully validated AI stack on already deployed clusters. This stack enables enterprises to do data prep, machine learning, fine-tuning, and inference optimization using Intel processors, hardware accelerators, Intel’s AI software suite, and VCF across your on-premises environment.

Architecture

VMware Private AI with Intel enables both Gen AI and classical AI/ML use cases. It harnesses the power of VMware Cloud Foundation and Intel’s AI software suite, processors, and hardware accelerators. This architectural ecosystem brings together VMware, Intel, ML Ops providers (cnvrg.io, Domino Data Labs, DKube, Kubeflow, etc.), major OEM server providers (such as Dell Technologies, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, and Lenovo), and Global System integrators like HCL, Kyndryl, and Wipro.

Use Cases

VMware Private AI and the collaboration with Intel enable several use cases for enterprises by securely enabling classical AI/ML and large language models, fine-tuning, and deployment (inference) within their private corporate environment. Here is a description of the top use cases.

1. Code Generation: Enterprises can use their models without the risk of losing their IP or data and can accelerate developer velocity by enabling code generation.
2. Contact centers resolution experience: Enterprises can fine-tune models against their internal documentation and knowledge base articles, including private support data, and, in turn, realize more efficient customer service and support with meaningful reductions in human interactions in support/service incidents.
3. Classical Machine Learning: Classical ML models are used for a variety of real-world applications across the financial services, health and life sciences, retail, research, and manufacturing industries. Popular ML use cases include customized marketing, visual quality control in manufacturing, personalized medicine, and retail demand forecasting.
4. Recommendation Engines: Enterprises can enhance experiences by suggesting or recommending additional products to consumers. These can be based on various criteria, including past purchases, search history, demographic information, and other factors.

VMware Private AI with IBM brings watsonx to on-premises environments

IBM and VMware are building on VMware Private AI to enable enterprises to access IBM watsonx in private, on-premises environments and hybrid cloud for the secure training and fine-tuning their models with the watsonx platform. The strategic partnership between IBM and VMware aims to enable mutual clients to easily embrace the hybrid cloud and modernize their mission-critical workloads. Now, by having the choice of when, where, and how to integrate GenAI technologies with VMware Cloud Foundation, enterprises will be empowered to quickly train and deploy custom AI capabilities across their enterprise while retaining full control and compliance over their data. With this partnership on AI technologies between VMware and IBM, enterprises benefit from a powerful solution leveraging the best innovations from VMware’s on-premises offerings in a unified stack to deliver a consistent environment integrated with the data and AI capabilities brought by IBM Cloud partner technology.

1. Get private and secure AI models with VMware Private AI: Privacy and security are paramount to enterprises. Enterprises can now build their private and secure AI models with VMware Private AI with IBM using the several integrated privacy, security, and micro-segmentation capabilities in VCF.
2. Deploy AI/ML models on-premises and in the cloud: This partnership enables enterprises to train, validate, tune, and deploy private and secure AI/ML models on-premises and on the IBM Cloud.
3. Select your option of open-source or IBM proprietary models: This partnership allows enterprises to choose LLMs by providing access to IBM-selected open-source models from Hugging Face, third-party models, and a family of IBM-trained foundation models. Here are a few examples of the supported models available with watsonx.ai
   • Open-source models: Llama 2 (70b)
   • 3^rd party models: StarCoder (15.5b)
   • Proprietary IBM models: Granite (13b)

Architecture

This full-stack architecture built on VMware Cloud Foundation runs Red Hat OpenShift and pairs the capabilities of the IBM watsonx platform for Gen AI and classical AI/ML-based workloads and enterprise-grade security. With this architecture, enterprises can use watsonx.ai for accessing IBM-selected open-source models from Hugging Face, as well as other third-party models and a family of IBM-trained foundation models to support GenAI use cases and for classical AI/ML model training, validation, tuning, and deployment.

Use Cases

VMware Private AI with IBM can enable several use cases for enterprises by securely enabling large language models’ customization, fine-tuning, and deployment (inference) within their private corporate environment. In the domain of code generation, the focus is on accelerating developer productivity while addressing critical concerns surrounding privacy and intellectual property. Moreover, VMware Private AI, in collaboration with IBM, presents a significant opportunity to enhance contact center interactions. This partnership promises improved content and feedback quality for customers, resulting in more accurate responses and an overall enhanced customer experience. This partnership can significantly streamline IT operations by automating tasks like incident management, reporting, ticketing, and monitoring, ultimately saving time and effort for IT operations agents. Finally, advanced information retrieval capabilities brought about by this collaboration can elevate employee productivity by streamlining document search and policy research, fostering a more productive work environment.

IBM Consulting Provides Clients with Expertise in VMware-specific solutions and Generative AI

Earlier this year, IBM Consulting established a Center of Excellence for generative AI and now has more than 1,000 consultants with specialized generative AI expertise who are engaging with a global set of clients to drive productivity in IT operations and core business processes like HR or marketing, elevate their customer experiences and create new business models.

This, combined with IBM’s VMware-specific expertise and service capabilities, will help accelerate our client’s business transformations with enterprise-grade AI on the VMware Private AI reference architecture.

Additionally, for clients looking to modernize & transform their workloads, IBM Consulting plans to integrate IBM watsonx and VMware Private AI services into its proprietary IBM Consulting Cloud Accelerator to help accelerate the cloud transformation process. Once released, this integration helps with reverse engineering, code generation, and conversion while helping manage the day two operations and beyond for seamless Hybrid Cloud management services from IBM Consulting.

Next Steps

Ready to start your AI/ML and Generative AI journey with VMware Private AI? Check out these helpful resources:

1. Learn more about VMware Private AI
2. Read the VMware with Intel Press Release
3. Read the VMware with IBM Press Release
4. Read the IBM launch blog
5. Read this technical blog about VMware Private AI ecosystem expansion
6. Read the HPE launch support blog

Questions? Please feel free to reach out to us on Twitter at @vmwarevsphere

The post Announcing New Collaborations in VMware Private AI appeared first on VMware vSphere Blog.

Introduction to the vSphere Breakroom Chat Series

​In this series, we share vlogs with industry-recognized experts from VMware and VMware partners & customers. These vlogs are concise, like meeting in a breakroom and having a quick conversation to get great information in a short amount of time. If you are an IT practitioner- IT admin, cloud or platform architect, developer, DevOps, senior IT manager, IT executive, Artificial Intelligence, or a Machine Learning professional- this series is for you.

For the previous blogs, please visit: https://blogs.vmware.com/vsphere/breakroom-chats

vSphere Breakroom Chats Episode 31

Welcome to the next episode of the vSphere Breakroom Chats. Today, we are happy to present this vLog with Jordan Plawner, Global Director of Intel AI Product Strategy. In this episode, Jordan Plawner and Shobhit Bhutani discuss the extension of Intel and VMware’s partnership to unlock AI and Generative AI/ML for all enterprises- VMware Private AI with Intel. With this partnership, enterprises can get AI models everywhere by harnessing Intel’s AI software suite validated on VMware Cloud Foundation.

Want to learn more about this partnership?

1. Check out the VMware AI/ML web page for more resources.
2. Read this blog post – Announcing VMware Private AI Ecosystem Expansion.

Questions? Please feel free to reach out to us on Twitter at @vmwarevsphere.

The post Let’s Talk About VMware Private AI with Intel | Breakroom Chats Episode 31 appeared first on VMware vSphere Blog.

This week on vSphere LIVE we’ll have Viviana Miranda on to talk about authentication and identity provider options with VMware vSphere 8.

Come join us at 11:00 AM Pacific TODAY to talk about:

• Old-school Active Directory & vSphere,
• Okta Federation,
• Azure AD/Entra ID,
• Things you need to think about regardless of the provider you choose,

As always, bring questions and we will answer them LIVE in the stream.

See you there! (And, if you miss it, we’ll record it on our YouTube channel, no problem)

The post Join Us LIVE to Talk About Authentication & Identity in VMware vSphere 8 appeared first on VMware vSphere Blog.

Last week on vSphere LIVE we had a long & great conversation about hardening VMware vSphere, with good questions from the audience. This week we will be talking about using vSphere to protect a workload like Microsoft Active Directory. Come join us at 11:00 AM Pacific today to talk about:

• Security inside a Windows virtual machine, like a domain controller,
• Advanced VMware Tools security options you should be using,
• Discussing why you would use Bitlocker or other data-at-rest technologies,
• Tips & tricks for using DRS to keep your domain controllers separated,
• Irreverent advice about timekeeping,
• Blaming DNS, as always,

And, as always, bring questions and Bob will answer them LIVE in the stream.

See you there! (And, if you miss it, we’ll record it on our YouTube channel, no problem)

The post Join Us LIVE to Talk About Protecting Active Directory with VMware vSphere appeared first on VMware vSphere Blog.

Hot on the heels of the latest release of the vSphere Security Configuration & Hardening Guide we will have Bob Plankers, our resident cloud infrastructure security & compliance expert, on a vSphere LIVE stream today at 11:00 AM Pacific to go deep into building security-hardened vSphere environments over the course of 90 minutes (or more if needed!).

He’ll cover:

• Server Hardware Hardening & Setup
• Isolation & Perimeter Security Controls
• Identity & Access Control
• Security Configuration & Hardening Guides, including the new auditing PowerCLI scripts!

As always, bring questions and Bob will answer them LIVE in the stream.

See you there!

The post Join Us LIVE to Talk About vSphere Security Hardening appeared first on VMware vSphere Blog.