VMware vFabric Data Director

VMware announced a release of the new vFabric Data Director platform, special DaaS-solution for corporate clients in September, 2011.

The solution vFabric Data Director for the equipment and operation of databases presented during the VMworld 2011 conference is necessary for implementation of the DaaS model in infrastructure of the enterprise. As David Mak Dzhannet told, the director of division of cloud and application services of VMware company, the solution vFabric Data Director is an element of strategy Cloud Application Platform (a cloud platform for applications) from VMware. It will help IT specialists to exercise control and administration of different types of heterogeneous DB by means of the automation based on certain politicians. Also vFabric Data Director will allow to arrange the organization of services by means of model of independent providing hardware resources thanks to which developers can get access to the services of databases necessary for creating applications.

The solution vFabric Data Director is created on the basis of VMware vSphere and is capable to expand possibilities of the virtualized infrastructures to the DB level due to optimization of use of resources, at the same time providing high operational efficiency and cost reduction.

'Corporations are faced by a difficult task now: provide management of the growing amounts of data, necessary for modern applications, at the same time supporting the important initiatives of their development — Tod Nielsen, the president of the Application Platform group in VMware said. — Today VMware shows significant progress in development of strategy of the platform of cloud applicaions, providing the innovation services of data access and administration which can effectively service applications of modern level and lay the foundation for development of cloud applicaions of the next generation'.

Considering the changing nature of applications — including cloud, social, mobile and Internet platforms — VMware invests in creation of the full-fledged platform of cloud applicaions which will integrate new application development environments, services of storage and data processings, application services and also new cloud delivery patterns of PaaS applications. Such complex platform will allow to increase significantly labor productivity of developers and operational efficiency, at the same time providing access to the wide range of infrastructure services VMware, third-party developers and participants of community of development of the open source software.

Really, VMware continues to develop the modern platform of cloud applicaions, expanding community developer Java Spring by implementation of key innovations in the field of application development and also providing a basic set of cloud application services among which there are services of message exchange and data management in RAM. Besides, the company developed Cloud Foundry, the open PaaS-solution.

In view of rapid growth of the amounts of data necessary for support of modern applications, corporations suffer from so-called 'creeping of databases', i.e. growth of poorly managed, unsafe and even unknown databases in IT infrastructure of the company. vFabric Data Director sets the model of administration of databases based on certain algorithms that will allow to ensure complex safety, data protection and resource consumption on the scale of all DB of the enterprise. Automating routine transactions of management of databases by means of standard the politician and best practices of the industry, vFabric Data Director will exempt database managers from an essential part of work, will allow them to focus on more important initiatives and will lay the foundation for implementation of model of independent work with a DB for developers.

Besides, developers will get access to vFabric Data Director through the portal with the web interface and then will be able independently to use a broad spectrum of services of the databases necessary for specific projects, considers Mac-Dzhannet.

In the report 'DaaS develops directly in the eyes', released in 2008, the analyst of Forrester Research Noel Yukhanna notices: 'The enterprises are obliged to support hundreds and even thousands of applications to provide the increasing requirements of the business, but growth of number of applications considerably raises costs for maintenance and administration of a DB for them. Expenses on this work make a considerable part of the IT budget because of what it becomes difficult to provide support, for example, of Web 2.0 applications or other similar solutions in a DB. Even accomplishment of such prosy transactions as testing of the increased number of databases, becomes problematic. The modern actively developed direction called by DaaS allows to place a DB in a cloud, and it is quite good option for a number of new applications'.

The first database which is supported by Data Director is VMware vFabric Postgres, a new solution from VMware, completely compatible to PostgreSQL, told Mac-Dzhannet. PostgreSQL is the database of a corporate class which is already implemented in infrastructures of some big customers and besides received warm welcome of community of developers of the open source software.

VMware also optimized vFabric Postgres for the vShere environment. Adaptive memory of the vFabric Postgres database dynamically adapts to the changing loadings that allows to reach bigger efficiency of use of memory and higher level of consolidation. Setup of a dynamic point of interruption and an opportunity to automatically compare parameters of the virtual machine for ensuring optimal performance and resource consumption do vFabric Postgres by the best choice of a DB for the vSphere environments.

In spite of the fact that PostgreSQL is the first database which is supported by a new solution of VMware, Mac-Dzhannet claims: 'At the moment we consider a number of a DB and we will surely add support of other types of databases in the future'. VMware is going to expand the list of the supported vFabric Data Director of databases out of PostgreSQL limits, providing the general means of the equipment and operation to the broadest spectrum of commercial and open DB, says the company.

'The Sybase company, SAP subsidiary company, and VMware have the general point of view on the fact that requirements of new client applications and active deployment of cloud services change an appearance of the market of a DB both from architecture, and from providing applications — Raj Nathan, the executive vice president and the executive director on Sybase marketing said. — VFabric Data Director of VMware company offers both traditional, and new technologies of administration of a DB in the form of service for corporate clients. We are glad to cooperate closely with VMware as the main partner, providing our solution Sybase Adaptive Server Enterprise within the solution vFabric Data Director'.

'vFabric Data Director of VMware company represents the powerful innovative solution on a joint of a cloud, virtualization and data — Bill Cook, the president of Greenplum company, division of EMC said. — We are very glad to work together with VMware and we appreciate that role which vFabric Data Director plays in our cloud product for administration of data of the enterprise — Greenplum Chorus'.

vFabric Data Director also expands possibilities of virtual infrastructure for use them at the level of a DB that reduces operating costs by automation of transactions of the equipment, backup, recovery, cloning and monitoring of data.

'A core of our development strategy DaaS is ensuring simple management of databases of our corporate clients using cloud services — Jared Ray, the founder and the technical director of the company of Tier 3 noted. — vFabric Data Director from VMware allows our clients to overcome difficulties in the course of moving of the self-controlled DB to a cloud and unambiguously is progress in the technologies providing DaaS' development.

Fabric Data Director can be purchased by online loading in the III quarter 2011 at the price of 600 dollars for one managed virtual machine. The vFabric Postgres database is available in a packet with Data Director and also on CloudFoundry.com, according to representatives of VMware.

VMware vFabric Data Director 2.0

In July, 2012 VMware presented the solution VMware vFabric Data Director 2.0 with support of corporate Oracle databases as office platform. The solution vFabric Data Director 2.0 automates and simplifies management of lifecycle of databases, allowing the IT companies to provide them as service thanks to what the efficiency of development increases and total cost of ownership databases decreases.

"The way to clouds" is designed to simplify work of developers and departments of IT more effectively to react to the requirements arising at the solution of modern applied tasks: the accelerated development cycles, processing of huge amount of data and increase in efficiency of IT departments" — Jerry Chen, the vice president of department of cloud and applied company services of VMware tells. "Thanks to the automation based on the strategy of resource allocation, and management model with self-service solution VMware vFabric™ Data Director 2.0 allows to use as much as possible advantages of virtualization at the level of databases, cutting down the expenses and difficulties connected with their operation".

The companies and service providers promptly implement the cloud platforms with self-service allowing IT specialists to turn quickly virtual machines and other key components of infrastructure. Clients are busy now with search of IT providers thanks to whom they will be able to get similar advantages of use of software solutions, crucial for business, including databases. Virtualization of databases using VMware vFabric Data Director does it possible and besides fixes a number of problems with which clients face during management of the growing infrastructure heterogeneous databases: progressive tense of development, busy database managers and excessive operating costs.

Management of lifecycle of databases with self-service

The solution vFabric Data Director 2.0 automates processes of implementation, management of heterogeneous databases and also allows IT departments to automate and delegate safely accomplishment of routine tasks of management of databases, including deployment, reservation, cloning and introduction of corrections. It means that the specialists servicing this or that application will spend for deployment of the database read minutes, but not days, and IT department will be able to offer developers access to the database with self-service, solving at the same time problems of control and compatibility in compliance with established policies.

New and enhanced capabilities in vFabric Data Director 2.0:

• Expanded support of databases — the solution vFabric Data Director 2.0 works with Oracle 10gR2, Oracle 11gR2 and vFabric Postgres 9.1 now (the optimized relational database of VMware on the basis of PostgreSQL).
• The automated data transfer with physical in virtual environment — for the purpose of further simplification of virtualization of databases the solution vFabric Data Director 2.0 provides automation of transfer of the physical database in virtual environment now. It will allow the companies to integrate the available databases on the VMware vSphere platform and, thereby, to increase efficiency and in addition to cut down expenses.
• Integration with cloud infrastructure and solutions for large volumes of data (big data) — the provided application programming interfaces (API) are intended for integration with other products, for example, vCloud® Director™, vFabric Application Director™, the project open source of Cloud Foundry™, EMC Data Domain and Greenplum Chorus. The companies using these products can receive the maximum benefit from application of Data Director for deployment and management of databases at their joint work now.

"One of the main obstacles at transfer of infrastructure, both in virtual environments, and in a cloud, consists in the difficulties and risks connected with databases" — Stephen O'Grady, the top analyst of RedMonk company notes. - "Now, thanks to support of solutions of Oracle and PostgreSQL, the VMware company offers clients painless movement of databases".

The solution vFabric Data Director is included into VMware vFabric product family including GemFire®, SQLFire and products optimized for Spring — the Java application development environment and also a full range of services for creation, start and management of modern applications in the distributed cloud environment.