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 Optimizing Your
Hybrid Cloud
with VMware
Hitachi Vantara Special Edition

by Gary Breder and

Paul Morrissey

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 Optimizing Your Hybrid Cloud with VMware For Dummies®,
Hitachi Vantara Special Edition

Published by
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 Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION................................................................................................ 1
About the Book...................................................................................... 1
Foolish Assumptions............................................................................. 2
Icons Used in This Book........................................................................ 2
Beyond the Book................................................................................... 2

CHAPTER 1: Getting to Know Hybrid Cloud........................................... 3

Defining Hybrid Cloud.......................................................................... 3
Exploring the Ups and Downs of Hybrid Cloud................................. 5
Getting the Outcomes You Want......................................................... 7

CHAPTER 2: Exploring VMs and Containers........................................... 9

Managing Cloud Workloads and Data................................................ 9
Using Containers in Code Deployment............................................ 12
Exploring Tanzu Kubernetes Grid..................................................... 14

CHAPTER 3: Maximizing the Application Infrastructure.......... 17

Considering the Overall Hybrid Solution.......................................... 17
Stability and consistency............................................................... 18
Modern automation...................................................................... 18
Consistent operations................................................................... 19
More considerations..................................................................... 19
Optimizing the Physical Infrastructure............................................. 19
Loving the Single Control Pane.......................................................... 20
Putting the Right Services in Place.................................................... 21

CHAPTER 4: Modernizing with VMware and

Hitachi Vantara............................................................................ 23
Appreciating Flexibility in Infrastructure.......................................... 23
Benefiting from the Unified Cloud Platform.................................... 24
Gaining Mobility................................................................................... 26

CHAPTER 5: Ten Key Takeaways for Your

Hybrid Cloud Journey.............................................................. 27

Table of Contents iii

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 Introduction
C
loud computing is a compelling way to deliver IT services —
it’s cost-efficient, agile, scalable, and flexible. But for a lot
of organizations, picking absolutely everything up and
heading to the cloud isn’t feasible, or even desirable. Merging the
best of cloud computing with traditional on-premises solutions —
including those already doing their jobs well right now — makes a
lot of sense in a complex and interdependent environment. This
best-of-all-worlds approach is the hybrid cloud, which is growing
by leaps and bounds.

Getting the most from hybrid cloud requires a careful look at

infrastructure and services, along with some significant rethink-
ing. The good news is that stepping into this diverse and some-
times complex world doesn’t have to be difficult. In fact, it can
be surprisingly simple and easy to achieve a robust and scala-
ble hybrid cloud with solutions such as those provided through
Hitachi Vantara and VMware.

Indeed, what’s known as a converged and hyperconverged infra-

structure puts a complete foundation in place to get started
quickly and easily: a hardware-software platform complete with
software automation in an appliance format. Computing, storage,
networking, and the hypervisor are all there, ready to work right
out of the box. And with the latest modern application capabili-
ties integrated together, your developers can accelerate coding,
testing, and deployment. The IT operations team can benefit from
consistency, predictability, and efficiency. Digital transformation
can happen much more rapidly, costs can be reduced, and the
business can become all the more competitive.

About the Book

Optimizing Your Hybrid Cloud with VMware, Hitachi Vantara Special
Edition, is your guide to this transformation. You discover more
about what the hybrid cloud is, why it benefits your enterprise,
and what areas to consider as you embark on your hybrid cloud
journey. You dive into the world of Kubernetes and containers
and learn how VMware solutions can enable hybrid cloud success.
You dig into the infrastructure and automation needs that must
be considered and find out how Hitachi Vantara’s groundbreak-
ing solutions open the door to easier entry into the hybrid cloud.

Introduction 1

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 Foolish Assumptions
When we wrote this book, we made a few assumptions about you,
the reader:

»» You’re involved in IT as an architect, an admin, a chief

technology officer (CTO), or maybe a DevOps leader.
»» You understand some of the benefits and challenges of the
hybrid cloud.
»» You want more information about how VMware, Kubernetes,
and Hitachi Vantara may answer your needs.

Icons Used in This Book

In the margins of this book, you see visual guides to help you
explore the content. Here’s what those icons mean:

In case you’re reading quickly, please be sure to slow down and

digest the paragraphs marked with the Remember icon.

The Tip icon points to ideas and actionable insights about moving
your legacy IT to hybrid cloud.

Life in IT is full of warnings, and in this case the icon lets you
know of something that could go awry if you aren’t careful.

Beyond the Book

When you put this book down, you may be ready for more detail
and depth. If so, check out these resources:

»» www.hitachivantara.com: Visit the Hitachi Vantara website

for hybrid cloud solutions that work right out of the box.
»» www.vmware.com: VMware provides a foundation for
innovation in the multicloud world.

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 IN THIS CHAPTER
»» Exploring what hybrid cloud entails

»» Weighing advantages and challenges

»» Preparing to make the move

Chapter 1
Getting to Know
Hybrid Cloud

I
t’s obvious that digital technologies are changing the world.
Data-driven business models stir up one industry after another,
and digital revolutions create whole new ways of working. In
this chapter, you explore how the concept known as hybrid cloud
helps enable these revolutions. You get a general understanding
of hybrid cloud, its advantages and challenges, and some initial
thoughts on how to get the most from this approach for your
organization.

Defining Hybrid Cloud

Data-driven companies are creating all-new, flexible value
chains. Customers, employees, and partners alike are relying on
digital experiences no one could’ve imagined a decade ago — with
the accelerated shift to remote work driven by a pandemic and the
digitalization that optimizes today’s business processes. Busi-
nesses that hope to thrive amid the change are modernizing their
digital core and their data-driven strategies.

CHAPTER 1 Getting to Know Hybrid Cloud 3

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 As this digital revolution changes how businesses operate, the
innovation for the infrastructure powering the new workloads
and applications is often described by terms that end in the let-
ters “aaS” — that is, as a Service. One capability after another has
moved from some sort of traditional delivery to an as-a-Service
model. The main types are Software as a Service (SaaS), which
delivers the functionality of the software without the need to
install and support it. You’ve got similar innovations involving
the infrastructure (IaaS). These are pay-as-you-go compute,
storage, and network resources for supporting your applications.
And there are development platforms (PaaS) to create and run
your own applications and workloads.

These days, you’ve got so many types of as-a-Service solutions

that sometimes they compete for the same acronym — data man-
agement or desktop or delivery as a Service, and backup or bank-
ing as a Service, for example. It’s not surprising that people are
now just simplifying the idea into Anything as a Service (although
the acronym for that is generally seen as XaaS).

At the heart of all this acronym-happy transformation is cloud.

It’s a way of doing IT that can greatly accelerate new applica-
tion and service delivery, make IT a whole lot more agile when
it comes to meeting workload demands, and shift the financial
model to one focused on consumption-based operating expenses.

The winners in this game will be those who make the right choices
in terms of cloud adoption, cloud technologies, and cloud operat-
ing models that provide flexibility and enable them to continually
optimize. Those who want to get ahead must ask their IT teams
to shift their focus from managing infrastructure to adopting a
cloud approach for delivering IT services to the organization they
support.

A cloud-first approach — lifting and shifting all applications,

data, and workloads to the cloud — may seem like the boldest
way to venture across the changing landscape. The more forward-
thinking approach, though, is to think of cloud as a way to do IT
rather than a place to do IT. This leads to more strategic outcomes
than blindly moving everything to public cloud. Placement in this
approach is based on security needs, performance considerations,
financial realities, and operational considerations.

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 The best approach is most often hybrid cloud, which provides
common workload management and data services spread across
core, cloud, and edge infrastructures. Here’s a quick overview of
the hybrid cloud concept:

»» Hybrid cloud is the coordinated use of data center and public

cloud resources.
»» It embraces various types of apps and workloads, such as
legacy apps, traditional apps that are virtualized or bare-
metal, modern cloud-native apps, and legacy apps that have
been refactored as cloud-native.
»» Hybrid cloud opens up different types and classes of
resources that allow you to run any of the apps and work-
loads on-premises or off.
»» Your IT teams benefit from greater flexibility and agility.
»» Improve customer engagement, boost profitability, and build
new competitive advantage for your company.

Exploring the Ups and Downs

of Hybrid Cloud
Like any big decision, the move to hybrid cloud has its pros and
cons. The opportunities are tremendous and make it absolutely
worth the effort, but the challenges shouldn’t be underestimated.

First, the upsides (and there are a lot of them):

»» Increased flexibility: You can use private cloud when it

makes sense, on-premises resources when that may be
more appropriate, and tap into the resources of the public
cloud when necessary.
»» Greater agility: Hybrid cloud puts you in a better place for
responding to changing business needs and priorities. It’s
easier to scale up when your demand is higher, and if your
demand outgrows your on-premises capacity, you can gain
even more scale by moving applications to the public cloud.
Hybrid cloud is also allowing businesses to speed up
time-to-market of new innovations.

CHAPTER 1 Getting to Know Hybrid Cloud 5

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 »» Lower costs: One big plus of the cloud, of course, is the
ability to buy only what you need to consume, and your
appetite will vary. Hybrid cloud lets you pick where you’re
going to run workloads in order to find the most cost-
efficient approach.
»» Added values and insights: A diversity of resource and
application types helps you work smarter and improve the
business’ bottom line.
»» Opportunities for compliance: If you’re in a highly regu-
lated industry, there will likely be some workloads you can’t
move to the public cloud, or which have special security
requirements. The flexibility of hybrid means you can treat
sensitive data in whatever way you must to be compliant,
while still leveraging the benefits of cloud.

It’s also worth preparing yourself for the challenges that may lie
in the hybrid cloud path ahead:

»» Risk of disruption: Significant change, such as moving to a

hybrid cloud approach, brings the risk of disruption. The
payoff of this disruption can be fantastic, but it is, well,
disruptive.
»» Added complexities: A move to a new hybrid environment
could easily be more complex than what you were doing
before, as you deal with new technologies, legacy equip-
ment, cybersecurity concerns, and the increase in application
and resource types that need to be managed. Increasing the
management tools and application services could make it
harder to optimize for cost targets and more difficult to
reach performance and availability targets.
»» The need for skills: Sometimes, you don’t know what you
don’t know, until one day it hits you. In the hybrid cloud
approach, new operational models and new app services for
cloud-native apps require new skills. That can create a skills
gap because your organization hasn’t yet gained a lot of
experience with these elements.
»» The accelerated pace of change: The hybrid cloud
approach provides a great deal more flexibility and agility.
As a result, the business may ask you to put all that flexibility
and agility to the test, which can expose weakness in your
processes and operations that were designed for simpler
times.

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 Getting the Outcomes You Want
Simpler is better. That’s age-old wisdom that rings true in many
aspects of life. That doesn’t mean it’s the right mantra for every
situation, though. Consider the world of IT. In the past, you could
gain efficiency through standardization. You got ahead by stan-
dardizing tools, operating systems, vendors, and approaches.
Totally sensible, and hybrid cloud would in some ways seem to
stray from this simple wisdom.

But that’s really the point. With hybrid cloud, you’re embracing
a diversity of application types and many types of IT approaches,
and a lot of different resource types. In the past, that would’ve
been seen as a liability, but in this world, it’s an opportunity.

Indeed, in the hybrid cloud world, efficiency doesn’t come from

simplicity — it comes from something else. We’re talking about
a high degree of functionality and capability that are integrated
together. That allows generalists to operate the diverse environ-
ment, while automation reduces the burden on administrators.

Here’s another bit of common wisdom — don’t change just for

the sake of change. There is a place for this wisdom in the hybrid
world. You need to minimize changes that aren’t necessary, and
because hybrid pulls in a diversity of resources, this is entirely
possible.

Indeed, you can win by changing what needs to be changed,

leveraging what works now, and expanding platforms your team
already knows well. Your hybrid environment can include tools
and app services that your people are familiar with today.

Businesses that really succeed in hybrid cloud get there through

a tailored and dynamic management plan. They’re making the
move with a keen eye on balancing time, risk, cost, and the value
they hope to achieve. That requires systematically analyzing every
application. Which ones should move to the cloud? Which need
refactoring or rewriting? Which would be best to keep on-premises?

A one-size-fits-all approach doesn’t really exist, but depending

on your business needs, you may choose a few proven fast-track
paths to success:

»» Hybrid-cloud-in-a-box simplicity: The use of converged

and hyperconverged infrastructure is the key foundation.

CHAPTER 1 Getting to Know Hybrid Cloud 7

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 With the proper infrastructure and advanced automation
for operational efficiency, you can simplify the compute,
network, and storage infrastructure — but you need to
choose your infrastructure carefully. Make the best decision,
and you can seamlessly integrate with modern container
and virtual machine (VM) management systems, such as
VMware Tanzu and Red Hat OpenShift. And it gets your
DevSecOps teams on the same page.
»» Storage unification: Software-defined storage architectures
for block, file, and object storage allow for storage portfolios
that integrate into the major hybrid cloud stacks. It’s
orchestrated centrally with Artificial Intelligence for IT
Operations (AIOps) and modern software-defined data
services that let you scale to meet workloads and extend the
data plane for cloud-native apps.
»» Near-cloud placement of critical data infrastructure:
Near cloud, with colocation providers, offers an alternative
to an on-premises data center and public clouds. You can
maintain complete control over mission-critical data while
gaining cloud-like management and high-speed connectivity
to public cloud computing.
»» Hybrid cloud data protection: The hybrid cloud’s most
deployed paths include data backup, archive, and disaster
recovery. Protection and recovery are flexible, and you can
set up “dual use” methods such as using cloud archives for
compliance reporting.
»» AI data and workload management: Unlike traditional
file-based apps, AI data workloads need massive bandwidth
for training, mixed read/write handling for data pipelines,
and ultra-low latency for inference at the edge. Distributed
file management and edge-cloud data pipelines are among
the answers.

Whichever path you choose, travel it with a strong partner. Your

partner should allow you to focus on an integrated approach,
providing more advanced capabilities for hybrid cloud (without
increasing complexity) and XaaS delivery models to make your
entire environment more cloud-like.

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 IN THIS CHAPTER
»» Understanding cloud-native applications

»» Deploying with containers and

Kubernetes

»» Getting to know VMware Tanzu

Chapter 2
Exploring VMs and
Containers

I
t’s a race to maintain existing applications while developing
new ones. All of them must be managed so they continue to
deliver business services, run reliably and securely, are kept
up-to-date, and run at the peak of efficiency. Containers have
proven to be a vital tool in achieving these goals, especially for the
new cloud-native applications and workloads.

This chapter explores the most effective approaches for manag-

ing these new cloud workloads and data and explains the role of
microservices for this new style of applications. We outline how
containers are used to deploy code, how Kubernetes orchestrates
the magic, and how VMware Tanzu brings it all together for
forward-thinking enterprises.

Managing Cloud Workloads and Data

What makes a cloud-native app different from other kinds of
apps? This sounds like a trick question, and the most obvious
answer is that it runs in the cloud, but the trick is that’s not the
most important point. What makes it different isn’t where it runs
but how its assembled and managed.

CHAPTER 2 Exploring VMs and Containers 9

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 For sure, a cloud-native app is designed specifically for the archi-
tecture found in the cloud. A microservices architecture is a set of
functional application building blocks that are used to assemble a
complete application that an organization needs to support a par-
ticular business function. These building blocks are independent
and have their own data store and application logic. Microservices
are used and reused in different combinations to create various
applications. You can think of applications as no longer being
written, but instead they’re assembled from these microservices.
Simply put, the concept of microservices splits up the work of
an application into independent modules or services. Each has its
own goal and taps into its own data.

Also key to running and managing cloud-native applications is

the concept of containers. This type of software is aptly named
because it isolates an application from physical resources and lets
it run the way it’s supposed to. If a microservice is running in
a container, it won’t run into interference from other microser-
vices. You can even have multiple instances of the same service.

Application program interfaces (APIs) allow these separate

microservices modules and containers to communicate with one
another. They hold it all together and make maintenance and
security more manageable.

Think of it as kind of like having a full orchestra of modules that

are working together to perform the symphony of the application.
Whether you’re talking Beethoven or Shostakovich, a symphony
is complicated, requiring careful orchestration — it’s not coinci-
dental that your cloud-native app relies on orchestration tools to
manage container life cycles.

The cloud-native symphony needs these tools to handle such

things as resource management and load balancing. The tools
provision and deploy containers across server cluster nodes, and
handle restarts in case of failure.

This is the key to why applications running in cloud can be more

efficient and quite powerful. Cloud-native apps are designed
and assembled specifically to take advantage of the dynamic
microservices-enabled environment in the cloud or in your data
center. They’re fully optimized and up to the task in a number of
key ways:

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 »» Microservices are independent of one another, which is
great because it’s not uncommon for some of an app’s
components to require updating faster than others.
»» Automation makes it easier to manage and update cloud-
native apps, and your developers can work on one microser-
vice without worrying about how it’s going to affect another.
Even if they’re just looking, your engineers will appreciate
visibility into specific services.
»» Failure in one microservice doesn’t impact another, thanks to
the use of containers.
»» Cloud-native apps are more cost-effective because of their
efficient use of resources. Microservices only use their
storage and computing resources as needed and return
these resources back to a common pool when idle. This
also makes scaling up or down much easier.
»» They’re portable, which means containers can port microser-
vices from one vendor’s infrastructure to another’s, or from
one cloud to another — including your own data center.

Just to be clear, beyond cloud-native apps, you also may run cloud-
based or SaaS-based apps, and although that sounds similar, it’s
not the same thing. SaaS-based apps run in the cloud — think
of customer relationship management (CRM) with salesforce.com
as an example. There will be some applications that run more
efficiently or effectively in a public cloud compared to your data
center. But there will always be traditional bare-metal and virtu-
alized apps that will never be converted, refactored, or rewritten
into cloud-native apps and containers. In the hybrid cloud world,
not everything is moving to a cloud workload and container.

Yeah, it might be easier to manage this diverse set of application

types and workloads if absolutely everything was going to move
to cloud workloads and containers. But this kind of standardiza-
tion usually doesn’t serve the needs of the business as well as
using the best approach for each application, workload, and data
type. This is why it’s vitally important to be able to manage all
this diversity in a cohesive fashion.

CHAPTER 2 Exploring VMs and Containers 11

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 Using Containers in Code Deployment
No one needs to tell you of the dizzying pace at which business and
technology operate these days. People have for years been saying
that change is a given and that the winners are those who fully
embrace the power of change. But change seems to be happening
faster than ever, including in the world of cloud computing.

Indeed, whole business models rely on disruptive computing

concepts — and their ability to rapidly change to meet the cir-
cumstances of the day. Take delivery as one example. When the
COVID-19 pandemic hit, there was a sudden explosion in the
demand to have stuff delivered to your door, from restaurant
meals to groceries to virtually anything and everything that could
be put in a box and shipped. Companies that were able to quickly
enhance and scale up their shopping and delivery apps were quick
winners.

And think about the speed at which that change happened. The
world pretty much shut down in a matter of days back in early
2020. Who had time for a software delivery cycle requiring weeks
and weeks for new ideas and upgrades to move into production?

For those entrepreneurs who were thinking on their feet, con-

tainers helped put their quick ideas into motion. Containers, and
the way they fit into cloud-native architectures, made it possible
to quickly package an app and all of its various dependencies into
an image, and then get that deployed into production.

Containers are a big part of the answer to a problem that has long
faced developers. How do they develop their applications and
consistently port them to production? Various roadblocks make
that tricky — for example, a developer’s computer environment
is often different from the environment on the production server.

By providing a virtual environment in which an app can run, that

problem is mitigated. It doesn’t matter what the underlying plat-
form is, what kind of computer, or what kind of OS, because the
app is in a self-contained environment.

Here’s another issue. To help an application scale effectively, your

developers will spread the workload across multiple containers.
You need a control plane to manage that issue, and there’s also
a need for containers and the modules they support to pass con-
figuration data back and forth.

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 That’s where the orchestration tools mentioned in the last sec-
tion come into play — and Kubernetes is a prime example. It’s
an open-source platform offering a simple API for defining con-
tainer infrastructure. Kubernetes orchestrates your containerized
applications.

Kubernetes, which some folks like to abbreviate as K8s, auto-

mates and manages such things as resource utilization, configu-
ration, availability, scalability, failure handling, and desired state.
It lets you take full advantage of the power of microservices and
containerization and brings applications into production at the
speed you need — even the speed required by a pandemic.

Kubernetes orchestration turns the innovation potential of con-

tainers into reality. Cloud-native applications can be published
quickly, then continuously maintained and updated. Automation
and orchestration of application infrastructure is simplified into
self-service.

In the world of Kubernetes, a control plane node acts as the brain

of the whole distributed system. Within it is an API server and
scheduling capabilities. The workloads are run in worker nodes
called pods, which include one or more container instances.
A node is able to run multiple pods, and the Kubernetes cluster
pools resources from the nodes that are within it.

Kubernetes keeps a close eye on the containers in each pod and

takes action if something goes awry. If a pod has trouble, Kuber-
netes will try to redeploy it. If an underlying node in the Kuber-
netes cluster has issues, it will redeploy pods to another node.

By using standard plugins and interfaces, Kubernetes is compat-

ible with all kinds of different infrastructure providers. A con-
tainer storage interface (CSI) allows interaction with storage, and
a container network interface (CNI) provisions networks. A stan-
dard API is used to define the desired state of an application.

Many good reasons exist for moving toward a cloud-native

architecture. Of course, few enterprises are starting out from
scratch, and most have critical apps that aren’t cloud native or
containerized. Even as they make moves toward cloud-native
architectures, the reality is that they’ve got a mix of workload
types and need a common infrastructure and tool set that work
with both legacy and modern architectures.

CHAPTER 2 Exploring VMs and Containers 13

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 VMware’s software-defined data center is one such engine that
can live in both worlds and run apps side-by-side, whether
they’re legacy or modern. For organizations using the VMware
vSphere cloud computing virtualization platform, Kubernetes
clusters can be deployed on top of vSphere.

A Kubernetes cluster uses a vSphere cluster or a resource pool to

provision nodes as virtual machines (VMs). The Kubernetes clus-
ter scales up or down through the addition or deletion of VMs for
Kubernetes worker nodes. If a node fails, Kubernetes can restart
pods on the next worker node VM.

After they’ve deployed a Kubernetes cluster on vSphere, your

developers can access the familiar Kubernetes API that’s part of
the control plane VM. Then, they can use that API to deploy con-
tainerized application services as pods within the cluster.

You can deploy both stateful and stateless applications on Kuber-

netes. For stateful apps, those that need to persist data, Kuber-
netes depends on infrastructure to provision storage for those
persistent volumes. The CSI interacts with the infrastructure to
handle the creation, attachment, and deletion of those volumes.

VMware has a vSphere cloud provider and native CSI volume plu-
gin. vSphere provides volume disks that Kubernetes makes avail-
able to pods that request them. Those who’ve been operating in
this environment will recognize there are significant similarities
between Kubernetes and vSphere, especially in terms of how they
manage infrastructure resources. Kubernetes manages container-
based workloads, and vSphere manages VM-based workloads.

The stack architecture can get a bit complicated, though, as those

two separate entities go about dealing with similar tasks. That’s
why VMware brought it all together by embedding Kubernetes
constructs within vSphere. It’s known as vSphere with Tanzu, and
it creates the architecture needed to run Kubernetes and vSphere
together.

Exploring Tanzu Kubernetes Grid

What’s the Holy Grail of digital transformation? There are plenty
of potential answers, but one that’s hard to beat is that it’s the
ability to modernize your operations, gain the immense new

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 capabilities of cloud-native apps and microservices, and do it
faster and more cost-efficiently. At the same time, to be that Holy
Grail it should avoid adding the complexity of unfamiliar data and
application services that are separate from what your applications
are using today.

Too much to ask? Not necessarily. VMware Tanzu Kubernetes Grid

is an open-source-aligned Kubernetes distribution that allows
consistent operations and management of Kubernetes infra-
structure across multiple clouds. VMware Tanzu is all about using
microservices, containers, and Kubernetes to liberate apps from
their infrastructure so they can run anywhere and work indepen-
dently. It’s about helping users run, operate, and manage mul-
tiple Kubernetes clusters, across multiple clouds, but all the while
staying connected to the VMware virtualization portfolio.

Add in the ability to proactively manage apps that are in produc-

tion and to easily automate security and the delivery of container-
ized workloads. And it enables an infrastructure with consistent
Kubernetes everywhere. Developers end up with more time to
actually develop, their plates cleared of many of the tasks that
could otherwise distract from their creativity.

Multiple products together make up the Tanzu suite. Here’s a

rundown of the ones you need to know:

»» VMware Tanzu Mission Control: This centralized hub is for

simplified, multi-cloud, multi-cluster Kubernetes
management.
»» VMware Tanzu for Kubernetes Operations: This provides
a simplified, consistent approach to container deployment,
scaling, and management with tools, automation, and
data-driven insights.
»» VMware Application Catalog: This is a curated image
catalog with prepackaged application components and an
extensive Bitnami library of open-source software. It’s all
tested for use in production environments and constantly
maintained.
»» VMware Tanzu Observability: This offers enterprise
observability for monitoring and operating multi-cloud
environments. There’s full-stack visibility of nodes, pods, and
containers.

CHAPTER 2 Exploring VMs and Containers 15

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 Moving into a more powerful future can be a pretty daunting
endeavor, but it doesn’t have to be an all-at-once venture into a
brave new world. Moving your legacy IT to the hybrid cloud, with
the help of such advances as containerized workloads and tools
from VMware, offers the ability to expand and improve upon what
you already have and know.

That makes a whole lot more sense than adding a bunch of new
things wholesale that aren’t integrated into your present reality.

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 IN THIS CHAPTER
»» Pondering the hybrid cloud big picture

»» Planning for the infrastructure

»» Keeping it all under control

»» Getting the services you need

Chapter 3
Maximizing
the Application
Infrastructure

Y
our overall hybrid cloud solution requires a lot of thought
about infrastructure. It must be flexible enough to meet the
needs of a diverse set of applications and workloads as well
as your various stakeholders that are in different places in their
modernization journey. This chapter explores considerations
required for your hybrid solution and takes a look at the physical
infrastructure you need. It extols the virtues of a single control
pane to manage the whole environment and discusses how your
infrastructure must adapt to a wide range of business use cases.

Considering the Overall Hybrid Solution

One of the many beautiful things about a hybrid solution is the
very fact that it’s a hybrid. It’s not just one thing; it’s the best
parts of multiple things. That fits nicely with the fact that most
organizations are diverse, with needs that are not only unique
compared to other organizations but also unique from one part of
the enterprise to another.

CHAPTER 3 Maximizing the Application Infrastructure 17

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 The idea of hybrid IT isn’t a journey to the finish line so you can
move on to some other IT project. Each organization and business
process you support will change over time. Hybrid cloud gives you
more choices and options to continually optimize your applica-
tions, workloads, and data.

One answer is automation. It’s a ticket to doing more with less

and doing more without always having to be an ultra-specialist.
Another answer is a unified environment when it comes to man-
agement. Yes, the IT resources are hybrid, but your admins won’t
be well-served by using separate tools and app services while they
optimize the coordinated use of public and private resources.

This section gives you key considerations as you ponder the over-
all hybrid cloud solution.

Stability and consistency

You need infrastructure that can manage all the different appli-
cation and data types effectively in the hybrid cloud. Are you run-
ning customer-facing apps that need to leverage real-time data,
such as location, weather, or search results, from the internet?
Enterprise apps that must meet stringent compliance require-
ments? Industrial apps that integrate IoT devices and sensors?
Are you running analytics workloads, artificial intelligence (AI)
and machine learning (ML) workloads that require vast historical
data from multiple sources? Shared databases? Virtual desktops?
You must plan for infrastructure that can handle any area where
you answered “yes.”

With new products always coming down the pike, you need to be
able to deploy new code reliably and affordably. A unified com-
puting landscape is the only surefire way to speed application and
product development. Pre-validated turnkey solutions are a plus
for streamlining time to production.

Modern automation
Your IT team will greatly appreciate the ability to cross manual
tasks off the list. Anything that reduces the number of service
tickets is certainly welcome.

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 Automation is a must. Your hybrid cloud infrastructure needs to
be all about self-service and automation. That means full-stack
automated life cycle management to ensure that the compute
functions are always in top shape.

You’re looking for automated firmware to drive upgrades. That

should include full-stack upgrades, switches and all, to ease the
workload of your IT teams.

Consistent operations
Your infrastructure should aim toward autonomous ML opera-
tions and self-governing performance, health, and capacity man-
agement. Automation is the key for keeping the infrastructure up
and running. That includes automation on day-zero provision-
ing and configuration, giving you faster provisioning of clusters,
speedier deployment, and more rapid return on investment. But
it also includes predictive analytics that give you greater insight
into what’s about to happen next.

Your hybrid cloud must be able to provide the best service-level

agreement performance for all workloads. Infrastructure must
support applications anywhere, easily scaling as data require-
ments grow. In short, a unified hybrid cloud should be able to run
apps consistently, anywhere, with fail-safe performance.

More considerations
Self-service access to infrastructure and cloud-native application
services are essential for developers and apps alike. Meanwhile,
your IT administrators and operators require a robust platform,
along with platform management services that let the apps team
run services that power the business.

Security is a key point to factor in, as well. Granular data protec-

tion is a must, and micro-segmentation can help ensure business
continuity.

Optimizing the Physical Infrastructure

Your new infrastructure must be able to handle all the require-
ments of new cloud-native apps, while at the same time be great
at handling existing applications because you aren’t fully rein-
venting all your wheels at the same time.

CHAPTER 3 Maximizing the Application Infrastructure 19

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 To put it another way, your environment will include both new
and existing elements. But it would be ridiculously inefficient
to have duplicate infrastructures that can’t be a shared resource
for all types of work. It’s worth thinking a bit about converged,
hyperconverged, and non-converged architectures, and how they
fit into your IT environment.

First, non-converged architecture taps into your physical servers to

operate a virtualization hypervisor, which is responsible for man-
aging virtual machines (VMs) on that server. In the non-converged
world, storage is attached to the physical server. It could be a stor-
age area network, direct-attached storage, or network-attached
storage. But the key difference is that these individual components
generally lack the management and analytics tools that help you
optimize how the resources are used together.

Optimized use of the resources is what sets apart converged and

hyperconverged infrastructures. A converged architecture setup is
hardware-based. It converges storage and processes, combining
workloads, mitigating compatibility issues, and in general, reduc-
ing costs. Hyperconverged architecture is a software-based way to
go about converging storage and processes. Check out Chapter 4
for details on the benefits of hyperconverged infrastructure.

As you move forward, you may need additional options for VMs
and containers alike. You need to consider persistent storage
requirements in container environments. The best approach is a
hyperconverged infrastructure that’s powered by VMware Cloud
Foundation and employs Tanzu Kubernetes.

Loving the Single Control Pane

The benefits you gain by moving to a hybrid cloud environment
are compelling, for sure. VMs, containers, Tanzu Kubernetes —
all are keys to building, running, and managing modern apps on
any cloud, increasing your IT velocity, and simplifying multi-
cloud operations.

But as long as we’re talking about simplifying, it’s worth imagin-

ing what would not be simple: having to keep an eye on multiple
dashboards and control panes to manage the diverse resources

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 in your hybrid cloud environment. You might as well try to steer
your car, fly a plane, and operate your lawn tractor all at once.

To coordinate and optimize the use of multiple resources in mul-

tiple clouds, it helps to see everything and control everything in
one place. Otherwise, it wouldn’t be a “hybrid cloud,” it would
just be a long list of separate and disparate compute resources
that can’t be used together.

A single control pane, on the other hand, offers unified manage-

ment of converged infrastructure, hyperconverged infrastruc-
ture, and cloud foundation solutions. It’s one management plane
for deploying, administering, and operating workloads in any
environment.

In terms of your Kubernetes deployment, it’s a unified dashboard

providing efficient management and governance of multiple
on-premises or cloud-based Kubernetes clusters, along with all
resources across them. In short, it’s keeping your eye on the ball.
One ball. Not needing to juggle many balls in the air at the same
time. What’s not to love about that?

Putting the Right Services in Place

Your hybrid cloud requires infrastructure that lets you process
vital data and gather insights from that data. It recognizes that
different apps require different services and because of that your
hybrid cloud infrastructure works to ensure a robust breadth of
modern application services.

You can deploy your workloads wherever they fit best, whether
on the edge, in data centers, in private or public clouds. You can
also move those workloads from one computing environment to
another as the need arises. Beyond supporting applications any-
where, your hybrid cloud infrastructure allows for easy scaling to
meet growing data requirements and optimize performance for
individual workloads. And, it relies on automation to accelerate
business outcomes. This is infrastructure immune to traffic jams,
thanks to policy-based provisioning, automated firmware and
driver upgrades, and expansion of storage as needed.

CHAPTER 3 Maximizing the Application Infrastructure 21

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 With the help of hybrid cloud infrastructure and tools such as
VMware Tanzu, consider the various use cases that indicate how
you can modernize your applications and infrastructure:

»» Accelerating DevSecOps: Your DevSecOps teams are most

impactful when they’re focused on their apps, not fretting
over infrastructure or packaging. Tanzu can simplify building
and deploying applications on Kubernetes in a number of
ways and includes a self-service catalog of building blocks,
databases, runtimes, and the like. Better visibility, mean-
while, helps with troubleshooting and continual
improvements.
»» Pushing ahead with Kubernetes: It’s great for container
delivery, but Kubernetes can be complicated to deploy and
operate. The right tools can simplify the Day 1 and Day 2
operations and allow you to run the same Kubernetes in the
data center as well as on the public cloud and the edge.
»» Changing your existing business-critical apps: If your
current apps are hard to update and scale, they can stall
your response to customer needs while also opening
potential security issues. You can respond in a number of
ways, including containerizing existing workloads to run in
the cloud, or you can rearchitect and rewrite your existing
software. Either way, you need to also modernize your
infrastructure to better operate clouds and apps.
»» Getting to the cloud: Moving workloads to the public cloud
can upgrade operations and cut costs, but getting there is
more than just an infrastructure question. Your apps need to
run there, and it takes more than just a lift-and-shift. Tanzu
tools can help rationalize and modernize an existing
portfolio and build cloud-native apps.
»» Centralizing management of clouds, clusters, and apps:
Through Tanzu, you can implement centralized lifecycle and
policy management for all clusters run by multiple teams
and deployed in multiple clouds. And an observability
platform gives visibility into how apps are operating and
what issues need to be fixed.

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 IN THIS CHAPTER
»» Striving for flexibility

»» Tapping into unified cloud benefits

»» Appreciating workload mobility

Chapter 4
Modernizing with
VMware and Hitachi
Vantara

H
ybrid cloud mixes the best of public cloud with your on-
premises infrastructure, to optimize efficiency and agility,
and let your organization deliver services in the best way
possible. The question is, what’s the ideal infrastructure platform
for your hybrid cloud?

This chapter explores one approach to modernization powered by

VMware Cloud Foundation, benefiting from VMware Tanzu for
Kubernetes, and employing the expertise of Hitachi Vantara. It
discusses infrastructure options, outlines the benefits of a unified
cloud platform, and offers thoughts on workload mobility.

Appreciating Flexibility in Infrastructure

Hybrid cloud adoption is skyrocketing and taking over the IT ser-
vice delivery model. It’s an appealing upgrade in agility, scalabil-
ity, cost efficiency, security, and many other areas. But it’s really

CHAPTER 4 Modernizing with VMware and Hitachi Vantara 23

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 only possible when you can step back, rethink, and rearchitect
the underlying IT infrastructure that you’ll be using to build and
manage your workloads in the hybrid cloud.

The platform of choice is hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI). It’s

the answer to the potentially increased complexity that comes
from hybrid cloud. After all, you want a better option, but wouldn’t
you also like to reduce complexity?

HCI combines pre-integrated and pretested compute, storage,

networking, and hypervisor functions into an appliance format.
It’s all right there in a box. That makes it a whole lot easier to
deploy and makes scaling much smoother and more seamless.

An even better option is disaggregated HCI and VMware Cloud

Foundation. Disaggregated means there is seamless interopera-
bility involving an integrated HCI appliance along with external
storage area network (SAN) storage. Scaling and resource utiliza-
tion are more flexible, compared with older HCI designs that had
fixed-node configurations. In other words, it’s ready to roll with
the emerging trend of software-defined everything.

Are you hoping to extend the benefits of an earlier HCI imple-

mentation so you can take advantage of hybrid cloud? This has big
advantages, allowing you to meet the service-level agreements
for your applications while gaining the flexibility of scaling com-
pute and storage independently.

Benefiting from the Unified

Cloud Platform
Your aim is faster delivery of IT services and applications, whether
in the cloud, on-premises, or both. And you want to ensure a sta-
ble production platform, a more flexible operating environment,
and a nondisruptive way to maintain existing systems.

Goals like that mean a massive rip-and-replace project isn’t

a good plan. Too costly, too complicated, too risky, too time-
consuming. A unified cloud platform is the way to go, with HCI
protecting existing investments in SAN storage, and avoiding the
creation of new silos.

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 Think of hybrid cloud as a moving target. Although you want to
hang onto what’s working, you also want to move workloads to
the cloud when you can benefit from increased flexibility and
agility. That means strategic use cases such as business continu-
ity, online transaction processing, compliance, and data protec-
tion have an attractive home in the cloud. But some of your legacy
data may continue to live at home on your on-premises systems.

Disaggregation lets your IT teams figure out what the right

configurations will be for various workloads. And it means you
can move at your own pace, simplifying deployment, scale-up
and -out, management, and data migration.

Picking the right partner in this transformation is vital. Better

yet, picking a partner that has, itself, picked the right partners
may be the ideal. An example of that situation is Hitachi Unified
Compute Platform (UCP) RS. It’s a solution that’s tightly inte-
grated at the hardware, software, and tools levels.

The UCP RS platform combines Hitachi’s HCI appliance with

Intel’s Optane persistent memory and SSD technology, along with
VMware Cloud Foundation. The result is a software-defined solu-
tion optimized for hybrid cloud environments.

The system was designed from the ground up with the goal of
simple, fast deployment — whether as a greenfield implemen-
tation or as a scale-out of an existing platform. Putting it all
together before putting it into the box cuts down on what other-
wise would be time-consuming, complicated on-floor integration
tasks.

As a unified system, it delivers IT services in both on-premises

and cloud environments. Its stable production platform has built-
in resilience, along with full visibility into hardware performance
and behavior. It’s a flexible operating environment, eliminating
infrastructure component silos for compute, storage, and net-
working. That means you’re not locked into vendors the way you
otherwise might be.

Plus, having a tightly integrated solution means maintenance

of existing systems is nondisruptive. Expect rolling, automated
upgrades, plus high-visibility monitoring and management of
data centers.

CHAPTER 4 Modernizing with VMware and Hitachi Vantara 25

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 Gaining Mobility
Software-defined data centers are increasingly popular, and that’s
another reason behind the growing adoption of HCI for hybrid
cloud. A key attraction is the ability to tap into powerful, multi-
featured tools such as VMware Cloud Foundation and VMware’s
great virtualization tools: vSphere (for compute), vSAN (for stor-
age), and NSX (for networking and security).

With these tools, you’re able to disaggregate infrastructure and

benefit from easier management, faster deployment, and much
greater flexibility. VMware Cloud Foundation packs comprehen-
sive infrastructure services into a software-defined platform that
also integrates cloud management and improves security. And it
can do so on-premises as well as via a cloud service, which is the
very definition of a hybrid cloud environment.

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 IN THIS CHAPTER
»» Automating your operations

»» Pooling multiple resources

»» Controlling from one place

»» Tapping into trusted expert help

Chapter 5
Ten Key Takeaways
for Your Hybrid
Cloud Journey

R
eady to rock in the digital transformation revolution? Hybrid
cloud can ease you from today to tomorrow, enabling success
and disruptive growth with a minimum of complexity and
the most cost-efficient approaches. Here are some key thoughts:

»» Tapping into the cloud: One of the most prevalent trends

is to use multiple clouds, including on-premises clouds, to
deliver IT services. That gives IT more flexibility to use different
clouds, each of which excels at providing unique services and
cost points.
»» Easing in with a hybrid approach: Your hybrid cloud
should provide common application development, workload
management experience, and data services across core,
cloud, and edge infrastructures. The result is increased
flexibility, greater agility, and lower costs.
»» Employing microservices and containers: Microservices
allow development teams to assemble and reuse common
code. Containers and Kubernetes clusters make that process
more efficient by enabling application deployment life cycle
and management to operate across multiple clouds.

CHAPTER 5 Ten Key Takeaways for Your Hybrid Cloud Journey 27

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 »» Using automation to get ahead: Ensure scaling and
velocity to deliver IT services by providing self-service access
to developers and automating infrastructure operations.
Examples include predictive analytics for performance,
health, and capacity management.
»» Reducing costs: Rapidly changing business environments
can quickly obsolete IT investments. The flexibility of hybrid
cloud enables IT to cost-effectively redeploy resources,
change the location of those resources, and modify applica-
tions and data services.
»» Pulling your resources together: VMware Tanzu brings
together microservices, containers, and Kubernetes to free
apps from their infrastructure and let them run anywhere and
independently. Users can run, operate, and manage multiple
Kubernetes clusters, across multiple clouds, while staying
connected to the VMware virtualization portfolio. They can
proactively manage apps in production and easily automate
security and the delivery of containerized workloads.
»» Benefiting from flexible data services: Applications and
workloads requiring different storage types and service level
objectives can be easily accessed using policy-based
selection. Scalable, software-defined storage technologies
and data services are integrated with VMware technologies
to simplify management.
»» Reducing complexity: A single control pane offers unified
management of converged, hyperconverged, and application
infrastructures. With multiple resources in multiple clouds, a
single management plane is helpful for deploying, adminis-
tering, and operating workloads.
»» Getting trusted partner help: Choose a strong partner and
technology portfolio that allows more advanced capabilities for
hybrid cloud without added complexities. For example, Hitachi
Unified Compute Platform (UCP) RS combines Hitachi’s hyper-
converged appliance complete with modern processors and the
latest NVMe technology so you can take advantage of enterprise
storage, all integrated with VMware Cloud Foundation.
»» Protecting your business: A reliable platform ensures that
you get uninterrupted operation of the enterprise hybrid
cloud that runs your business and that your data is protected.
This reduces risk and increases security in a world of increased
cyberthreats.

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