VMware is extending its core virtual networking product family in an effort to help companies build infrastructure that can stand up to today’s challenges, including the shift to remote work and the need to securely move applications across the distributed enterprise.

The enhancements span VMware’s Tanzu, NSX and SD-WAN products, which fall under the company’s Virtual Cloud Network (VCN) architecture. VCN defines how customers can built and control network connectivity and security from the data center across the WAN to multi-cloud environments. The company’s core networking software, VMware NSX, underpins the VCN architecture, which also includes analytics capabilities.

As part of its new developments, VMware is integrating NSX Advanced Load Balancer with its Tanzu Service Mesh, which sets up an application connectivity and security fabric across Kubernetes clusters.

The idea is customers can easily launch an application that would include all required load-balancing capabilities without having to touch the infrastructure or worry about security because it would be built in, said Tom Gillis, senior vice president and general manager of VMware’s networking and security business unit.

NSX will also offer connectivity to Project Antrea, an open-source networking and security project that ties together Kubernetes applications across on-premises vSphere, public clouds and edge resources, Gillis said.

In addition, Gillis said NSX will ultimately get a new attribute-based policy model that will let users speed application protection by automatically defining and enforcing security based on profiles or behavior instead of traditional passwords.

While the NSX load balancing support will be available in VMware’s fiscal 2022 timeframe, the attribute policy model will be a future addition.

Also in the future, VMware said it will bring the NSX Services-Defined Firewall to its Project Monterey platform.

At its virtual VMworld 2020 event in September, the company previewed a new architecture called Project Monterey that melds bare-metal servers, graphics processing units (GPU), field programmable gate arrays (FPGA), network interface cards (NIC) and security into a large-scale virtualized network of SmartNICs.

A key component of Monterey is VMware’s SmartNIC, which incorporates a general-purpose CPU, out-of-band management, and virtualized device features. As part of Monterey, VMware has enabled its ESXi hypervisor to run on its SmartNICs, which will let customers use a single management framework to manage all their compute infrastructure whether it be virtualized or bare metal.

VMware said that the NSX Services-Defined Firewall running on a Monterey SmartNIC will be able run stateful Layer 4 firewall services at line rate. These same SmartNICs will also be able to run Layer 7 stateful firewalls, as well as VMware’s curated IPS signatures. This capability will let enterprise customers attach a tuned, ultra-fast, ultra-smart software-based firewall to their most valuable workloads – such as the database apps that hold their sensitive data, Gillis said.

Project Monterey is a technology preview, and VMware did not say when it expects to deliver it.

One piece of VMware technology that is available today is a new subscription-based package of the company’s SD-WAN software. The software is directed at individual remote business users who need guaranteed network connectivity, application performance and security. VMware said the package will be available at prices lower than the cost of a mobile phone line, and with bandwidth ranging from 350Mbps to 1Gbps depending on the level of subscription.

VMware’s latest announcements fall under a new framework the company calls the Modern Network, which encompasses the company’s VCN products and services and promises to extend them as the enterprise looks to address the rapid shift to remote work and deliver secure applications faster.

The framework is really an extension of VMware’s oft-stated goal of eliminating traditional network gear such as switches, routers, firewalls and load balancers and moving to a software-based environment it says is simpler and more cost effective, experts say.

“The networking implications of the cloud era are often underappreciated, but they are profound,” IDC wrote in a recent white paper, sponsored by VMware. IDC research shows that by 2023, more than 55% of enterprises will replace outdated operational models with cloud-centric models that facilitate rather than inhibit organizational collaboration.

“All previous networks were built on the assumption that applications would be hosted in on-premises environments, resulting in network architectures and operational models that are no longer useful. This is as true in the datacenter or core—now dispersed and distributed among clouds —as it is at the edge, in branch offices and remote sites, where a growing percentage of the applications consumed actually reside in SaaS or IaaS public clouds rather than in traditional on-premises datacenters,” IDC stated.

KVM vs VMware hypervisors is a classic debate. Hypervisors have increased in usability and power over the last several years as more companies use virtual machines (VMs) to quickly right-size their infrastructure. And as KVM and VMware continue to overlap in capabilities and performance, you may struggle with finding the best option for your VM architecture.

VMware vSphere comes as a free download with limited capabilities and the option to upgrade to paid vSphere plans. The tool connects with the vSphere ESXi bare-metal server software that you install directly on the server. Together, the vSphere hypervisor and the ESXi hypervisor manage the infrastructure that supports your VMware virtual machines.

KVM uses a Linux kernel and gives the kernel the virtualization and management abilities of a hypervisor. The tool can work on Linux or Windows platforms, which is a plus for Linux users.

This article will examine KVM vs. VMware hypervisors in terms of performance, usability, total cost of ownership, and security.

KVM vs. VMware Performance
Both KVM and VMware act as Type 1 hypervisors. VMware is an actual Type 1 hypervisor that runs on the bare-metal server hardware, increasing the performance of the tool over Type 2 hypervisors.

KVM is technically a Type 2 hypervisor, as it runs on the Linux kernel, but it acts as though it is running on the bare-metal server like a Type 1 hypervisor. The distinction is so minor that KVM is often referenced as a Type 1. What’s more, KVM takes significantly less time to start a virtual server. And the overhead of KVM comes in at approximately 10,000 lines of code in contrast to the (unconfirmed) 60 million lines of code that runs the VMware tools.

Usability for KVM vs. VMware vSphere
KVM is an open source tool, and it comes with all the pros and cons of the open source community. Support is available through vendors like IBM Red Hat or Oracle. KVM includes more features than any other hypervisor, and has more flexibility in terms of integrations. And users state that the graphical user interface (GUI) isn’t as comprehensive, which means you should be prepared to work in the command line.

VMware vSphere comes as a free tool with upgrades. It also has the features you’d expect from an enterprise-grade solution, including a Lifecycle Manager tool that allows admins to manage ESXi hosts via images or baselines. It can also be extended with Tanzu to run Kubernetes workloads directly on the hypervisor layer. The tools are user-friendly, with many options in the dashboards to quickly check the health status and spin up new VMs.

Scalability
Users of both KVM and VMware say that they have experienced very few issues with scalability on these products. Among those are that upgrading to a newer version of VMware may make your old servers unusable. And because VMware is installed directly on VMware servers, you’ll be locked into their hardware. Otherwise the two options can scale near-infinitely with the addition of more hardware.

Total cost of ownership (TCO)
Because it’s an open source tool, KVM will beat VMware on price every time. But KVM users will want to consider whether support and feature availability are high priorities, which is where open source tools often lag behind commercial options. They should also consider how KVM will integrate with their existing hardware. In addition, companies should take into account whether they can successfully hard partition their virtual machines to prevent taking on more application licenses than necessary.

Security
KVM security largely depends on the vendor. Oracle KVM has released Ksplice, which allows admins to run updates on the full infrastructure with zero downtime. Red Hat provides sVirt and Security-Enhanced Linux for security threat detection and prevention.

VMware offers security support for HIPAA, CJIS, and PCI DSS 3.2, among others, through its Compliance and Cyber Risk Solutions (CCRS) tools. These provide the infrastructure and the guidance to ensure that virtual workloads are secured and meet regulatory standards. Because it is supported by the VMware Enterprise environment, these tools may be preferable for companies in highly regulated industries who need the assurance of third-party security standards and oversight.

Choosing KVM vs. VMware hypervisors
What your decision may come down to is the infrastructure, the OS you use, and your security needs. KVM runs on Linux, so you’ll need to have a Linux machine available. VMWare runs directly on the ESXi architecture, which means the tool has marginal performance enhancements over KVM, but requires the purchase of the VMware infrastructure for expansion.