VMware introduces Virtual SAN 6 and vSphere Virtual Volumes

VMware has advanced to the next phase of its software-defined storage strategy with the launch of a new generation of enterprise storage solutions. Designed to enable mass adoption of software-defined storage, VMware Virtual SAN 6 will introduce significant scalability and performance enhancements to the company’s hypervisor-converged storage solution, and VMware vSphere Virtual Volumes will offer new levels of storage integration to make third-party arrays natively aware of virtual machines.   “Customers have told us they need a simple, cost-effective and cloud-aware approach to storage. VMware Virtual SAN 6 and VMware vSphere Virtual Volumes will deliver on this, and represent the next phase of our software-defined storage strategy. They address customer’s requirements through an improved hypervisor-converged storage tier, and a new virtual machine-aware integration with existing storage arrays,” said Raghu Raghuram, Executive Vice- President & General Manager, Software-Defined Data Center Division, VMware.   VMware Virtual SAN 6 and VMware vSphere Virtual Volumes are expected to become available in Q1 2015. VMware Virtual SAN is priced at $2,495 per CPU. VMware Virtual SAN for Desktop is priced at $50 per user. The new All-Flash architecture will be available as an add-on to VMware Virtual SAN 6 and will be priced at $1,495 per CPU and $30 per desktop. VMware vSphere Virtual Volumes will be packaged as a feature in the VMware vSphere Standard Edition and above as well as VMware vSphere ROBO editions.