VMware Middleware Makes Internal and External Clouds Mingle

VMware is hoping to lead the charge in merging private, on-premise clouds with external cloud providers. The whole idea is to build an in-house cloud utility using virtualization.

Once that is running and you gain the presumed efficiency and reliability of being able to shift workloads, you can extend data storage, applications and processing by linking to service providers. Instead of adding more servers or arrays in-house when you run out of gas, you simply order more juice from the provider.

All this is easier said than done. Building your own on-premise utility ain't easy. Virtualization is still highly complex and making a big batch of VMs as stable as a horde of discrete servers takes some real smarts (not to mention elbow grease).

Fortunately an array of vendors is working all sides of the problem, and things should reach a point to where a mere mortal can make this all happen.

On the VMware side, the company next month will ship a vSphere 4.0 connector that lets you run your VMs either in-house or move them to a service provider's cloud -- provided that provider provides vCloud support!

This way VMs can be shifted to where they make most sense. In addition, IT can check on their VMs running in the service provider using VMware management and monitoring tools.

Posted by Doug Barney on 02/15/2011 at 12:47 PM