At VMworld this morning, VMware announced it’s latest product, EVO:RAIL.

So just what is EVO:RAIL?

EVO:RAIL is a hyper-converged solution for business of many sizes.  Partnering with multiple hardware vendors, and utilizing vSphere with VSAN, VMware is able to provide a single product for your datacenter.

With 4 nodes, the EVO:RAIL appliance comes pre-loaded, and you can have VMs spun up in minutes from powering on.  These 4 nodes will meet the following minimum specs:

• 2 x 6 Core Processors
• 192GB RAM
• 3 x 1.2 TB SAS HDDs
• 1 x 400GB MLC SSD
• 2 x 10GB NICs

Simply connect the nodes to your 10GB switch, and browse to the appliances IP.

From here, you answer a few questions about IP addresses, gateway, DNS, Time servers, naming conventions, and passwords – and the appliance deploys everything – vCenter, Log inSight, all hosts, etc.

While the vCenter web client is available still for management, EVO:RAIL supplies a new simplified management console for monitoring the appliance and statistics, and then also creating and managing VMs.

I’m excited to see EVO:RAIL out in the real world, and think that this is really going to get a big market share quickly.  The appliance handles about 100 normal workload VMs, and the solution can scale up to 4 appliances!

More information will be released this week, so expect more news!

http://www.vmware.com/products/evorail