VCD Roundtable: Ep. 45 - Expectations for 2025+

We are going to throw in a bunch of information which we currently discuss with the service providers who actually come in and originally say, "Hey, we are going to wait until all of this is over." Where I say, "this brought you as far as your V2T migration. You are now migrating unsupported into hopefully something supported." So let's kick off the discussion. Matthias, do you want to throw in a first statement on that one? Yeah. Thanks for that.

We already discussed a lot, which is common knowledge so far, that VCF 9 will be the new golden standard in terms of basic infrastructure. So VCF 5.2.x, which is the current version, will be replaced or migrated to VCF 9. And what we also know is VCF 9 will be different, a little bit different from the behavior, from a role distribution between the different components within VCF. And Cloud Directors, you said, will go away. What will stay? That's not a crystal ball part.

We have the second product, which is called today Aria Automation. And this will also not really go away, but... Cloud Director and Aria Automation will be merged into something we call VCF Automation. But I assume that VCF Automation will be partly a descendant or offshoot of Aria Automation, but other parts will move to the vSphere stack of VCF, or the vSphere part of VCF will be, for example, call Namespaces and stuff like this. So I think that that's a huge game changer.

We need to understand how that new part of VCF Automation will work, which capabilities it offers, and which features are available from the beginning. Because what we saw on the roadmap is kind of VCF Automation will be there from the beginning, but presumably not offering all features which are planned over the lifetime of the product. So the beginning will be challenging.

And I think a question will be -- Sascha, maybe you have a good answer to this one -- should... if I'm a CSP, and I'm currently ramping up a new infrastructure, what should I aim for? Like, I know Cloud Director will go away sooner or later. Should I wait? Should I still be using Cloud Director to implement all the business requirements I have and for features from the customers? Or should I wait or just skip the business? Yeah, that's a really good question.

We had this discussion with a lot of service providers. So, you know, with the White Label program, we get in contact with a lot of service providers. And many of them are currently not using it. They only used the license model in the past, but now figured out that with VCF, and all the Cloud Director stuff is included. They might have to take a look inside and with many discussion and design discussions of the complete environments and Health Checks.

We showed them that this old structure, where you have vSphere and multi-tenancy, try to use multi-tenancy on vSphere, that doesn't work. That doesn't work on vSphere, that doesn't work on NSX. With all of that combined, we need to clearly say, "hey, you need a multi-tenant solution. You need it and you are not able to wait until VCF comes with multi-tenant solutions, especially for the shared environments.

So what we heard is that we will get multi-tenancy in a basic way with VCF 9 and we'll get shared support or for shared workload domains for the service providers, beginning with 9.1. So that means that not all of the features will be available in the first release. So from that perspective, I would clearly recommend every customer, every service provider who is not using a real multi-tenant solution, still start with VCD. So VCD is the right product for it.

Also for service providers who are using VCD, still go the route with VCD. I think we have a really good product. It's a stable product. The customers like VCD with the multi-tenancy, not only for service providers who provide this to their customers, also for service providers who are using it for their own internal teams to, set permission on the different teams. Because, think about if you are a service provider.

Service providers have 100,000 of customers, and everyone has access to all of the customers. That doesn't work. And if you explain this to your customer that hundreds of consultants have access to your environment, they will not be happy with that. So my absolute recommendation is to go with VCD. Also if you start, there will be an upgrade pass. Nobody knows who will create the update tools, or the migration tools from VCD to VCF for multi-tenancy, but there will be A. a way and B. a tool.

And with this focus, I would clearly recommend it. If you are starting, start VCD. So if I get that correct, so maybe we should separate two different parts of CSPs, because we have CSPs working with a shared environment, what you have mentioned, and I agree with the route you suggested. But on the other hand, we have CSPs using dedicated environments for their customers. So I think we should separate those two stories from each other.

Also what we saw so far in Roadmap is that VCF 9, so the first release, should be good to go for dedicated environments. And what Broadcom is offering is a VCF 9 assessment tool. It has a new name, but I'm not sharing the name.

Let's stick with "VCF 9 Assessment Tool," which suggests if you can migrate your current infrastructure into VCF 9, yes or no. But I think if a CSP uses dedicated infrastructures and it solves all the requirements he has, there is no need to introduce Cloud Director to this part, speaking as of now, and stick with the dedicated approach and maybe with VCF Automation at a later stage if it solves any business requirements.

The big question from my perspective also there is... and we do not yet have the ability to look into VCF 9. So, we don't know the tenant availability of features included in VCF 9. And that's a problem. So, yeah, if you're running only dedicated environments, that might be an option. But the right answer you can only get first when you have a look in VCF 9, what features in multi-tenancy are available, because we have a big set of features.

We don't know if all of these features will stay in VCF 9 for multi-tenancy or only a part. So, I don't expect that all of these features will be included in VCF 9 and also not for dedicated environments. With dedicated environments, with VCF, you have much more options to give the customers the ability to directly log into vSphere or NSX.

But what we have currently with VCD is that a customer can create a network, that a customer can create Firewall rules in a very easy way without having this big knowledge you need on NSX maybe. Also, on other parts, how to configure the environment. It's very easy in VCD and you need much more and special knowledge on vSphere or VCF and NSX, if you go the path to share directly NSX manager and vSphere.

In addition to that, we currently don't know if NSX with this interface will be available in VCF 9. Maybe much more will be integrated directly in the VCF 9 console and you don't have to do so much directly in NSX. That's the other topic we need to talk about. Currently, as we don't have greater insight into VCF, we have no idea what we can do. True. That's why we are just sharing some ideas we have. That's the whole story about this episode. It will be interesting.

Dedicated environments, I think that's just one part and the second one is shared. I think what will be important is that right from the beginning, we're really focusing on VCF 9 and also what the new tools and or the new product will offer from a future perspective. I think it's very important that we start from the

I assume the Cloud Director migration to VCF Automation will be even more complex. Even though you have standardized use cases, but a lot more compared to NSX, because you have some networking configurations and features. So in V it's named A and in T it's B and it migrate over. But in Cloud Director, you have way more different configuration options and the migration tool might be

or the migration will be challenging. Every migration is challenging, but we need to come up with proper solutions right from the beginning. And we need to take a real deep look in all of this migration tools. So we saw it in the V2T migration tools. There are so many different versions coming out step by step, and also be skeptical if you run now the assessment tool, if it is available for VCF 9. That doesn't mean so. That will work for the enterprise.

Absolutely. I'm positive that they're bringing out a really good product for the assessment, but I don't think that they have service providers in mind on this migration tool.

So we also will spend a lot of time in the next months to check what's possible, what's not possible, what features will work, what features will not work maybe with VCF 9 in the first versions, because I think the Assessment Tool will not cover all of these different scenarios you have currently on a service provider side. That will be a challenge.

Yeah, it's a more. So, yeah, the first assessment tool will be a more generic approach, like trying to cover just VCF without having any specialized entity behind that like an enterprise or a CSP. I think it will be by its nature more enterprise focused, because that's the majority of the customers. But I assume that the first version will just check what's the current VCF configuration from an SDDC manager perspective.

Can this configuration, because that's the part of VCF, it has one central configuration. Can this configuration be migrated to VCF 9? Yes or no? And I think that's pretty straightforward. But again, I agree. That's just the infrastructure configuration which can be decided on is it migratable? Yes or no? But it's not validating any use case which is built on top of the configuration. And that's a different story. And that's where you differentiate between an enterprise and a CSP.

Absolutely. And that's the topic we need to cover. Also I'm very interested in the timelines of the third party vendors. So how long will it be until all of the backup vendors and replication vendors will cover all of the new VCF 9 topics. Because I think there will be a lot of major changes also in vSphere, vCenter and so on. And that makes it not easy for the third party vendors to directly change and get the product certified.

But honestly, Sascha, that's not VCF 9 really. We had that topic every single vSphere version in the past. So don't get me wrong on that one. Absolutely. But as we're talking about some major changes maybe in VCF 9, if we take a look at what happens in the past, it will take much longer as we get support for this third party products. To like major change. You might be too young for that. Or think about like the change from 4 to 5 in the

past. That was major and it took like months for the vendors to adjust. So the changes between the latest versions like 6 to 7, 7 to 8 were not that big because the product behavior changed in small features, which added a ton of value for the customers. But the product change itself wasn't that that big from my perspective. And then also the APIs didn't change that much. I think what I saw is that the third party vendors were pushing towards getting certified with the new

version. Whatever blocked them to get certified. Maybe it's the money. Maybe it's the process or whatever. But I think the changes weren't that big. But with VCF 9 you have no clue what's the underlying infrastructure. What the underlying infrastructure will be. Let's call it VCF 9. There will be a vSphere stack in there. Whatever the name will be and the version will be. It could be 8.8 update 4. It could be vSphere 9. I have no idea what. I clearly think that they want to go to version 9 in

all products. Because otherwise it makes no sense to jump from VCF 5 to 9. That's true. But the question is, is it a new product or just a name or a version change? Because we saw in the past in a few coincidences that they just changed the number like Log Insight; I know now it's called Aria Operations for Log. But in the past... VCF Log? Jesus Christ. They switched. Back then it was vRealize Log Insight. But they changed from 4.7 to 8 to streamline the version numbers. So it could be also

something like this. Tons of possibilities. Yes, it becomes really interesting. But let's cover one other topic. We got this question from many service providers currently. They are still on NSX-V. So Eve covered Yves covered it at the beginning at the intro. What should service providers do: stay on NSX-V and wait for VCF 9 to try to do a complete migration or whatever? So I think we also should cover this topic. Pardon the interruption. And I'm really looking forward to

the statement of Yves. But we have a question in the chat. Oh, see, I have voice command. So the question is, "When will VCF 9 be released? Will VCD 10.6 be the last standalone version? version of the city? We really heavily rely heavily on cloud director and so on and so forth. So I think the short answer is as far as we know 10.6 will be the last standalone version of Cloud Director. Currently it's 10.6.0.1. I don't know if we are allowed to share a VCF 9 release

date. There is a roadmap with which has a date suggestion. Sascha is nodding. So the idea is, VCF 9 will be released in the middle of this year. So that's public. And VCF 9 will not have a shared workload domain support for tenancy. That will come with version 9.1 which will be released in 2026. And yes, it's currently the plan that 10.6 is the last standalone version or version of VCD. It will be integrated

in VCF -- no longer being a dedicated product. I would say the features will be integrated in VCF. Not the product and if this is the last version, so I would absolutely expect that there will be a new version that supports VCF 9 in VCD. But it will be a 10.6 something release. Yeah, 10.6 something, 10.7. Nobody knows what will be the name of it. From that perspective, there will be no new features in the future.

So maybe rephrase it a little bit. So 10.6, speaking as of today, does not support VCF 9. Right. And there will be from a timeline perspective, a timeframe where we have a Cloud Director version, whatever the name will be, which supports VCF 9. And that's the migration window we will have in the future. But we as comdivision will heavily keep track on all the different features and versions and then have a migration solution ready by the time it needs to be ready.

Absolutely. But to cover also the second part of the question about the web interface or the interface of VCD. I don't think that Broadcom will migrate this view from VCD in VCF. I more expect that we get more like a VCF or vCenter view for the customers. Maybe not on the host side, but on the VM side, on the network side, that we get it more in that way than on the VCD way that we have currently. So that will be my expectation. But again, we don't... The VCD UI for tenants is great, but it's

complex. And if you have no clue what to do, it's like it's overwhelming from from a feature perspective. So I assume that the UI will change, because it changed a lot with 10.6 and it will change again massively, but it will offer a reduced feature set towards the tenant to just come up with the features that tenant really needs. What Broadcom thinks a tenant will need and everything else will be a managed service.

I'm not sure if they will reduce the features, because as we got in the last year, the message from Broadcom directly, "hey, these are our dedicated workload domains, sell dedicated workload domains to the customers. And the customers want to have those features So from the Broadcom perspective. But, not via Cloud Director. Correct, but but over VCF. But that's the question. Like VCD UI, how will VCF UI towards the tenant look like? How will the permissions look like?

Which can be shown, what can be hidden in the UI. That will be a big game. Absolutely. But as we... So from my perspective, the new interface for tenants on dedicated workload domains, they should have the same experience like they have in their home cloud with VCF local. So from that idea, I think we get a permission set where we can say, "that's allowed for the customer and that's not." Like we have it currently with VMC on AWS, AVS, GVZ and so

on. So you can... Or the hyperscalers can limit it, but you have the normal vSphere view. I think, from my perspective, it will go in that direction because many of the service providers and also normal customers complain that they don't have the normal vSphere view like they expect. Cool. And guys, to all our folks listening to us, and that's a cool part. So Sascha and I, we agree that we disagree. But that's a cool thing having multiple opinions and that's

clear that clearly shows that we have no knowledge. It's just our opinions we are currently sharing. Thanks. Thanks for a great question. But Sascha, PTI, pardon eruption. You were to ask Yves a great question. Could you repeat the question? Yes. It was on the side where we covered or got many requests from customers. Also this morning we talked about it: NSX-V.

So if I'm now on NSX-V, should I do the transition to T or should I stay on V until VCF 9.1 is out and then migrate directly or whatever? So maybe Matthias, you will cover this question. I thought Yves was covering the answer? I think I have audio back. Not ideal audio, but I have some audio back. But I think the answer is very simple. We don't know what else the migration path is going to look like.

So we now and VMware promised there will be a migration path from current VCD to whatever the new thingy, multi-tenancy thingy is going to be called. So from that perspective, you should definitely do that. There will be absolutely no way that Broadcom or VMware is going to invest anything to get you from NSX-V to whatever the new thing is. There will be no way into a VCF 9. So the solution is very clear.

You currently have a pathway which is still working to get you from NSX-V with whatever VCF version you are on to VCF 5.2 in combination with VCD and all of these wonderful things. So don't wait. Don't delay it, because every day you delay it, the less chance there is if there is something going wrong, if there is a possibility to get anyone from Broadcom to reacting to this from a support perspective is shrinking on a daily basis. There are not that many people left who actually can answer

anything on NSX-V. I mean, let alone that even the extended support is out. Let alone security incidents and all of these wonderful scenarios. So there is basically no choice. You need to move from V to T/VCF at the fastest pace. Actually, if you are still on V, you can directly move from V into VCF 5.2. Yes, you might need new hardware and everything else, but overall you delay the project so long that you most likely have to do that anyway.

And prepare then to actually move from there to VCF 9. But there will be no options and Broadcom also made very, very clear that in the future, the time they are accepting that people are running outdated and old versions is going to shrink. They want to have everybody on the same level, on the same grade and all of these things more like operating a cloud. There should be no difference for a customer.

When you closely watch Hock's keynote, he says very clearly he doesn't want to have any difference for a customer experience on-prem to public cloud, which also comes back to Sascha's point. I'm also with him. The user interface from VCD -- my personal opinion also is that it's going to be be the same like in vSphere or anything else, because of same overview, same usability everywhere.

But based on the fact of the same usability, Broadcom needs to get every service provider globally on the same software version, most likely as soon as possible because in reality, let's face it, even Microsoft has different rollout phases and things like that over the different sides. So that's going to be a reality across all of them. But yeah, that's my opinion on it. So get going because it's not going to get easier.

It's just going to get more and more difficult and more and more risky on a daily basis. So now, Matthias, up to you. Oh, we're already in the famous last words phase, right? Because we're way over time, but it's always the same with us. If we start discussing and sharing knowledge, it's like, yeah, time flies by.

Yeah, so I think what I expect for 2025 and the future is a massive standardization this year with VCF 9 and what you said, streamlining UIs for on-prem for public cloud, that will be 2026, but it's an expectation. This year will be introduction of VCF 9, starting migrations to VCF 9, getting hands-on VCF 9 and getting familiar with the product.

That's what I expect in 2025 and us coming up with cool new use cases and product usages and product packaging for the first like dedicated infrastructure bits and pieces. That's what I'm looking forward to. That's what I expect from 2025. Sascha, famous last words. Yes, so I expect a few years of changes now with all of the migration phases again. We had V2T. We are still in V2T and now planning for going to VCF 9.

For my last words, I absolutely recommend to take a look what features you are using. Maybe also send it to us. Send your products and your features in VCD to us that you are currently using. We will ccollect that info and meet with Broadcom to show which products are used. Because currently, I think they have a lot of customers where they have big relationships, especially on the Pinnacle partner stuff, that they take care of.

But currently, they more or less don't pay as much attention to the Premiere partners and the registered ones, so the secondary white label ones. And I think we should create a big list of features that our service providers currently using. Share it with us. We will share it with Broadcom. Also, maybe feature requests that can be integrated in future versions so that we can bring it to the development team of Broadcom and ask if there is a potential option to bring it in and the new product.

So that being said, I think it's as we agree on. You need to get to the current versions. That's one of the most important things. Also, if you want to be relevant for your customers, because Broadcom is also going to look for the customers and service providers which are on current versions. We already know that they are tracking that currently for licensing purposes and other things, but there will be more reasons behind that. So better be sure to be up to date.

If you need any help, feel free to reach out to us. One last word. Starting in February, for at least the service providers which are working with us on the training side, which are White Label or in any other way related to us. We are going to also host a monthly webinar where we cover all the latest and greatest news around the VMware ecosystem. And based on that, also what we are really knowing about VCD.

The reason for the webinar is it gives us a bit more freedom because we can get everybody to sign an NDA first. That gives us a bit more flexibility on what we can cover there. If you are interested in that, also feel free to ping one of us and we can see if we can get you enlisted for that one as well. That being said, this was our first episode for 2025.

We are going to be, at least Sascha and I, with Broadcom next week in Orlando, depending on when this podcast comes out that might already be in the past, but the week of Jan. 21st. Some partners are invited by Broadcom to actually meet in Orlando for some advisory boards. As you might expect, comdivision is going to be there and we are going to cover that.

We are going to cover some latest changes on the Knights Program and then we are going to basically be for the comdivision Kickoff back here in Dubai. And we are also going to do an episode, I think, from here as well as far as I remember, like what we did at all the last kickoffs. So that being said, have a wonderful remainder of the week and whenever you listen to it... Matthias, not everybody has the day done by the afternoon. Good, everybody, thank you for listening in. Goodbye.

Have a great weekend, bye.