There was a very significant announcement at VMworld Barcelona overnight, with the unveiling of a new service targeted at Managed Service Providers. VMware Cloud Director Service (CDS) looks to leverage a hosted SaaS based instance of vCloud Director to offer multi-tenancy on VMware Cloud on AWS. The VMware Cloud on AWS SDDC becomes the provider and MSPs can look to more efficiently consume VMC resources and expand as more capacity is required.
Daniel Paluszek has written a great overview blog post about what the service is, it’s key value points and some questions and answers that those in the VMware Cloud Provider Program may have. I’m personally looking forward to trying out the service myself and start looking at the data protection scenarios that can be supported.
They Said it Would Never Happen:
Back in 2016 when VMware first announced VMware Cloud on AWS, I saw the potential straight away and what it could mean for (at the time vCloud Air) VMware Cloud Provider Partners to extend their Provider vDCs to one that was backed by VMC.
At the time I hacked together what I saw to be the future.
This isn’t quite what this newly announced solution is and it will be interesting to see if VMware eventually allow SP based vCD installs to go out and source a VMware Cloud on AWS SDDC as a Provider of its own. I was told by a number of people that vCD would never be used with VMC…
Further improving on vCloud Directors maturity and extensibility, if the much maligned UI is improved as promised…with the upcoming addition of full NSX integration completing the network stack, the next step in greater adoption beyond the 300 odd vCAN SPs currently use vCloud Director needs a hook…and that hook should be VMWonAWS.
Time will tell…but there is huge potential here. VMware need to deliver to their partners in order to have that VMWonAWS potential realised.
That said, vCloud Director has evolved tremendously since then and delivered on almost everything that I was after at the time. This seems to be the last piece of the puzzle … though given that the actual Cloud Direct Service is delivered aaS does have me worried a little bit in terms of the ghosts of vCloud Air past.
Targeting MSPs over SPs:
I’ve already had some conversations as to who this new Cloud Director SaaS offering might be targeting. While I need to find out more information, it seems as though the main target of the service initially are MSPs. Depending on where you come from the definition of an MSP will differ to that of an SP. In some regions they are one and the same, however in the North American market an MSP would leverage an SP to offer infrastructure or software as a service.
Which every way you look at it, there is now the ability to spin up an instance of vCD that is managed and have that abstract resources that are in VMware Cloud on AWS. In a way this may lead some MSPs to ditch existing reseller relationships with existing VCPPs offering IaaS with vCD and go direct to VMware to have an end to end managed multi-tenant service and a direct reseller agreement with VMware.
Again, I need some more information before passing judgement and seeing how this fits into existing VCPP service offerings. Obviously the ability for existing VCPPs to land and expand into any VMC enabled AWS Region with this new service is significant also… but will they be able to use their existing provisioning and automation tools with the new service… and will the SaaS based version of Cloud Director be first to market with new features, followed by the VCPP versions?
Dropping the little v:
When VMware acquired Lab Manager and turned it into vCloud Director in 2010 it was hard to envision that the platform would still be going strong nearly ten years later. It’s now stronger that ever and set to go through its next evolution with the platform looking to extend beyond traditional vSphere IaaS based platforms… this explains why the little v has been dropped. We are not just talking about vCloud anymore… The premise is that Cloud Director will span multiple cloud and multiple platforms.
Be interesting to see when the name change takes place for the main product line that’s offered to VMware Cloud Providers… for the time being, it will still be vCD to me!
#LongLivevCD
#VCDpowered
References:
https://cloudsolutions.vmware.com/bite-sized-vmc
https://www.paluszek.com/wp/2019/11/05/vmware-cloud-director-a-new-day/
