VMware vSphere 8

The enterprise workload platform

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The enterprise workload
The enterprise workload platform Key Trends in the IT Industry
platform for traditional and
next-gen applications
for traditional and next-gen applications Private Cloud Public Cloud
Workloads are growing everywhere as business Millions of Workloads Millions of Workloads

Modernization challenges for

priorities shift
on-premises infrastructure
Today, enterprises need to function under a different set of operating 244
180
conditions. The rapid shift to a multi-cloud and subscription-based 148 126
Today’s enterprise needs environment and the adoption of software-as-a-service (SaaS)
modern solutions operating and consumption models, is helping organizations realize new 2020 2024 2020 2024
Source: VMware internal analysis, October 2021
operational efficiencies, performance optimization and cost benefits.
Introducing vSphere 8: The While realizing these and other benefits, enterprises also continue to
enterprise workload platform
run many workloads in traditional, on-premises data centers for a

Get cloud benefits

variety of reasons, including cost management, network bandwidth and
latency sensitivity; data privacy, security or sovereignty considerations;
19% Year-over-year growth rate of
Saas spending1

on-premises regulatory compliance; and the technical and migration risks and
By 2025, the number of enterprises

60%
complexities of refactoring applications.
that will fund LOB and IT products
Supercharge As on-premises workloads continue to grow, organizations also through OpEx budgets2
workload performance
continue to expand their public cloud footprint and expect the key
benefits of public cloud to be available on-premises, including a flexible By 2026, the number of global
Enhance operational
efficiency
as-a-service consumption model, developer agility, and the ability to
centrally manage infrastructure.
90% organizations running containerized
apps in production3

Accelerate innovation
for DevOps

VMware vSphere 8 eBook | 1

The enterprise workload
Modernization challenges for Additional server capacity
platform for traditional and
next-gen applications
on-premises infrastructure to meet the demand for
infrastructure drives up the cost
Workload complexity and volume: Modern workloads are increasingly
complex and high volume, creating higher demand for infrastructure
Modernization challenges for
on-premises infrastructure services that provide key underlying functionality for these workloads.
The increasing demand for software-defined infrastructure services places
more strain on CPUs, leaving fewer compute cycles for workloads. This Specialized infrastructure
Today’s enterprise needs has resulted in a diverse mix of data center architectures based on silos increase operational
modern solutions complexity
accelerators, such as DPUs, field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs),
and graphic processing units (GPUs), in addition to the mainstream
Introducing vSphere 8: The architectures based on CPUs. Modern applications are also increasingly
enterprise workload platform micro-services based and drive-up East-West network traffic within the
data center. CPU-centric security model
needs additional defense
Get cloud benefits With workloads and infrastructure services sharing a domain, the chances
on-premises against attacks
of malicious actors penetrating the network perimeter, persisting in the
intranet, surveilling business activity, and causing damage/stealing data
Supercharge are higher.
workload performance
Hence, traditional approaches to meet the needs of next-gen

Enhance operational
infrastructure are ineffective. Up to 30%
efficiency of CPU capacity is
consumed by networking
and security services4
Accelerate innovation
for DevOps

VMware vSphere 8 eBook | 2

The enterprise workload
Today’s enterprise needs modern solutions
platform for traditional and
next-gen applications
The volume and complexity of today’s workloads and micro-services based
architecture require a new approach that enables infrastructure transformation.
These modern workloads require the following:
Modernization challenges for
on-premises infrastructure

Today’s enterprise needs High-performing infrastructure to enhance workload

modern solutions
performance, support new types of accelerators and
simplify hardware lifecycle management
Introducing vSphere 8: The
enterprise workload platform

A developer-friendly platform that simplifies the

Get cloud benefits discovery and deployment of DevOps services improves
on-premises
the resilience of containerized workloads and delivers
greater flexibility to deploy Kubernetes clusters
Supercharge
workload performance

Enhance operational Flexible licensing that supports an OpEx and SaaS

efficiency model that scales capacity on demand

Accelerate innovation
for DevOps

VMware vSphere 8 eBook | 3

The enterprise workload
Introducing vSphere 8: The enterprise workload platform
platform for traditional and
next-gen applications
VMware vSphere® 8 is the enterprise workload platform that brings the benefits of the cloud to on-premises workloads. It
combines industry-leading cloud infrastructure technology with DPU and GPU-based acceleration to boost workload
performance. vSphere 8 centralizes management through the VMware Cloud Console to enhance operational efficiency and
Modernization challenges for integrates with a growing catalog of add-on hybrid cloud services to expedite disaster recovery, ransomware protection,
on-premises infrastructure
capacity optimization and planning, and more. vSphere 8 delivers an enterprise-ready self-service Kubernetes runtime with a
multi-cloud management plane that simplifies the operations of Kubernetes clusters. With vSphere 8, IT and DevOps teams
Today’s enterprise needs can easily build, run, manage, protect, and secure their traditional and next-gen applications. The vSphere 8 product line
modern solutions offers subscription options that provide more flexibility to meet financial management needs. In the following pages, we will
walk you through each of the below elements in detail.
Introducing vSphere 8: The
enterprise workload platform

Get cloud benefits

on-premises

Supercharge Get cloud Supercharge Enhance Accelerate

workload performance benefits workload operational innovation for
on-premises performance efficiency DevOps
Enhance operational Enhance existing Meet the throughput Efficiently reduce Easily discover, access
efficiency
on-site workloads in and latency needs of IT maintenance and deploy developer
place with cloud modern distributed windows services
Accelerate innovation services workloads
for DevOps

VMware vSphere 8 eBook | 4

The enterprise workload
Get cloud benefits on-premises
platform for traditional and
next-gen applications
With vSphere 8, organizations can bring the benefits of the cloud to on-premises workloads. vSphere 8 combines industry-leading
cloud infrastructure technology, an enterprise-ready Kubernetes environment, and high-value cloud services to transform existing
on-premises deployments into SaaS-enabled infrastructure. vSphere 8 also helps IT admins deploy add-on cloud services:
Modernization challenges for
on-premises infrastructure VMware Cloud Disaster Recovery (VCDR): This capability protects on-premises mission-critical VMs by
1
replicating them to the cloud and protecting them from both disasters and ransomware.
Today’s enterprise needs VMware vRealize Operations add-on service provides both capacity planning and optimization for
modern solutions 2
infrastructure with the right size to fit both the current and future needs of workloads.

Introducing vSphere 8: The

enterprise workload platform
Admin Developer Add-on
High value cloud services services services services

Get cloud benefits

on-premises
Cloud Console
Centralized management
Supercharge
workload performance

For all workloads

Enhance operational Traditional Modern AI/ML/HPC Real-time Bare-metal Compute & memory
efficiency applications applications applications applications workloads Intensive apps
Running on-premises
VMware vCenter
Accelerate innovation
VMware ESXi
for DevOps
Figure 1: With vSphere 8, IT admins can deploy cloud services that protect workloads and optimize on-premises infrastructure.

VMware vSphere 8 eBook | 5

The enterprise workload
Supercharge workload performance
platform for traditional and vSphere 8: Redis Performance Comparison
next-gen applications vSphere on DPUs Supercharges Workload Performance
VMware vSphere 8 enables you to meet the performance needs of Drive higher workload
Up to
Modernization challenges for modern distributed workloads, accelerating networking functions on the consolidation by utilizing
on-premises infrastructure DPU (Data Processing Units, a.k.a SmartNICs) with the VMware vSphere 20%
cores saved
saved cores, with similar
Distributed Services Engine. With this capability now supported in vSphere 5
or better performance
8, the era of heterogeneous computing, has truly started. This frees up
Today’s enterprise needs
modern solutions CPU cycles to run workloads, results in higher workload consolidation,
reduces latency and increases throughput so infrastructure services can
run faster.
Introducing vSphere 8: The
enterprise workload platform • Meet the performance needs of modern distributed workloads by 36% Supercharge performance
accelerating networking functions on the DPU Higher
by leveraging freed CPU
TXN rate5
Get cloud benefits • Reduce overhead of DPU lifecycle management with integrated vSphere cores and better cache
on-premises workflows locality to drive more
workload traffic, while
benefitting from vMotion
Supercharge
workload performance
27%
Lower
and DRS
latency5

Enhance operational
efficiency

Accelerate innovation
for DevOps

VMware vSphere 8 eBook | 6

The enterprise workload
Supercharge workload performance
platform for traditional and
next-gen applications
Support higher complexity AI models
For AI and ML, vSphere 8 enables unparalleled levels of performance and scalability for the most demanding and complex models.
Modernization challenges for
on-premises infrastructure Let’s look at these expanded capabilities

Higher scalability for complex AI/ML models with eight vGPUs per VM: AI/ML
Today’s enterprise needs
modern solutions development teams can now achieve higher scalability of available GPU resources with
support for up to eight virtual GPUs (vGPUs) per VM – a 2x increase.

Introducing vSphere 8: The

enterprise workload platform Development teams can speed up model training time with up to 32 passthrough
devices per VM.

Get cloud benefits

on-premises
Improved performance with fractional vGPUs: Multi-vGPU support now includes
fractional vGPU support with vSphere 8, ensuring demanding workloads have enough
Supercharge GPU resources.
workload performance

Support for automated VMs placement by vSphere Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS):
Enhance operational VM placement on the GPU is greatly enhanced by the enablement of DRS awareness of PCIe
efficiency topology. DRS automatically chooses NIC and GPU or multiple GPUs to improve performance.

Support for device group capability: Device groups enable the aggregation of PCIe
Accelerate innovation
for DevOps devices paired with each other at the hardware level, either using NVLink or through a
common PCIe switch.

VMware vSphere 8 eBook | 7

The enterprise workload
Enhance operational efficiency
platform for traditional and
next-gen applications
Upgrades, configuration, and maintenance are vital to the ongoing health of infrastructure yet can take valuable time and resources away
from running business-critical applications. vSphere 8 helps reduce operational burdens and improve efficiencies. IT teams can not only
return to regular operations faster but also track progress towards sustainability goals by monitoring energy consumed by workloads.
Modernization challenges for
on-premises infrastructure

Today’s enterprise needs

modern solutions
Enhanced workload placement by Optimize your IT maintenance window Track your progress towards
vSphere Distributed Resources Scheduler by pre-staging ESXi image downloads sustainability goals by
by factoring in memory (DRAM and prior to maintenance and performing monitoring energy consumed
Introducing vSphere 8: The PMEM) usage into bandwidth and latency. simultaneous upgrades on hosts. by workloads.
enterprise workload platform

Get cloud benefits

on-premises

Supercharge
workload performance

Enhance operational
efficiency

Accelerate innovation Figure 2: vSphere Lifecycle Manager can remediate

for DevOps multiple hosts in parallel, dramatically reducing the
overall time needed to remediate an entire cluster.

VMware vSphere 8 eBook | 8

The enterprise workload
Accelerate innovation for DevOps
platform for traditional and
With VMware vSphere 8, DevOps teams can now access
next-gen applications
IaaS services (ex. provisioning VMs, networking, setting
up Tanzu Kubernetes Grid clusters) easily from the Cloud
Modernization challenges for Consumption Interface, simplifying infrastructure setup
on-premises infrastructure across the vSphere estate through intuitive UIs and
developer-friendly APIs and freeing developers to focus
on development efforts vSphere 8 enables this with below.
Today’s enterprise needs
modern solutions

Gain self-service access to IaaS services

Introducing vSphere 8: The across vSphere cloud infrastructure from
enterprise workload platform an intuitive cloud console.

Get cloud benefits

on-premises
Improve the resilience of containerized
workloads through availability zones.
Supercharge
workload performance

Simplify TKG cluster lifecycle and Figure 3: Provisioning infrastructure through Cloud Consumption Interface
Enhance operational package management with API-driven
efficiency
Cluster Classes and Carvel to build on
Kubernetes with confidence.
Accelerate innovation
for DevOps

VMware vSphere 8 eBook | 9

Putting it all together
VMware vSphere 8 is the enterprise workload platform that brings the benefits of the cloud
to on-premises workloads. It combines industry-leading cloud infrastructure technology with
DPU and GPU-based acceleration to boost workload performance. vSphere 8 centralizes
management through the VMware Cloud Console to enhance operational efficiency and
integrates with a growing catalog of add-on hybrid cloud services to expedite disaster
recovery, ransomware protection, capacity optimization and planning, and more. vSphere 8
delivers an enterprise-ready self-service Kubernetes runtime with a multi-cloud management
plane that simplifies the operations of Kubernetes clusters. With vSphere 8, IT and DevOps
teams can easily build, run, manage, protect, and secure their traditional and next-gen
applications. The vSphere 8 product line offers subscription options that provide more
flexibility to meet financial management needs.

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1. Gartner, Inc. “Why are you wasting your SaaS Expenditure.” Jaswant Kalav, Luke Ellery, Oct 2021.
2. IDC. “IDC FutureScape: Worldwide Future of Digital Infrastructure 2022 Predictions.” Oct 2021. Doc # US47441321.
3. Gartner, Inc. “The Innovation Leader’s Guide to Navigating the Cloud-Native Container Ecosystem.” Arun Chandrasekaran, Wataru Katsurashima, August 2021.
4. Gartner, Your Server Is Eating Your Network – Time to Rethink Data Center Network Architectures, Joe Skorupa, Andrew Lerner, April 2021
5. Internal VMware performance testing , August 2022. DPU vs. Perf NIC (25G NICs with NSX overlay enabled)
GARTNER is a registered trademark and service mark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally and is used herein with permission. All rights reserved.

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VMware products are covered by one or more patents listed at vmware.com/go/patents. Item No: VMware vSphere 8 eBook 12/22