VMware announces EVO SDDC software suite with SDDC Manager, Hardware Management Services

VMware today debuted EVO SDDC, a new suite of software that includes several of the company’s existing tools for managing companies’ data center resources as well as a new “automation engine” and new open-source hardware management software.

The existing tools can handle server, storage, and networking virtualization. They include vSphere, Virtual SAN, NSX, and vRealize Operations, according to a statement VMware issued today at its big VMworld conference in San Francisco.

One new part is the EVO SDDC Manager. Here’s how it’s described in the statement:

… a new intelligent automation engine that will simplify and significantly reduce the time required for power-up, provisioning and monitoring of virtual and physical resources, including software, servers, top-of-rack and spine switches. The EVO SDDC Manager will pool resources across multiple racks as a single “virtual rack” and can dynamically carve out workload domain capacity based on availability and performance requirements.

Then there’s the new Hardware Management Services, which will “abstract the characteristics of heterogeneous switching, server and power distribution unit (PDU) hardware,” according to the statement.

The big picture here is that VMware is finally going to provide a ready-to-go piece of software to let companies live the vision VMware has been talking about for a year or more: the grand “software-defined data center” that SDDC stands for. Note, though, that EVO SDDC is the product previously code-named EVO: Rack, which was announced at last year’s VMworld in San Francisco.

Server virtualization is what VMware is built on. Now VMware is essentially making the other pieces a standard, even if they’re still not very widely adopted compared to server virtualization.

It’s possible that the new EVVO SDDC will integrate with VMware’s OpenStack distribution, the company said.

You can see more on EVVO SDDC in a new product page.

Find all of our coverage of VMworld 2015 here.