VMware Explore Europe 2022 is history. This year felt different and very special! Rooms were fully booked, and people were queuing up in the hallways. The crowd had a HUGE interest in technical sessions from known speakers like Cormac Hogan, Frank Denneman, Duncan Epping, William Lam, and many more!

Compared to VMware Explore US, there were not that many major announcements, but I thought it might be helpful again to list the major announcements, that seem to be the most interesting and relevant ones.

VMware Aria Hub Free Tier

For me, the biggest and most important announcement was the Aria Hub free tier. I am convinced that Aria Hub will be the next big thing for VMware and I am sure that it will change how the world manages a multi-cloud infrastructure.

VMware Aria Hub is a multi-cloud management platform that unifies the management disciplines of cost, performance, configuration, and delivery automation with a common control plane and data model for any cloud, any platform, any tool, and every persona. It helps you align multiple teams and solutions on a common understanding of resources, relationships, historical changes, applications, and accounts, fundamental to managing a multi-cloud environment.

The new free tier enables customers to inventory, map, filter, and search resources from up to two of their native public cloud accounts, currently from either AWS or Azure. It also helps you understand the relationships of your resources to other resources, policies, and other key components in your public cloud and Kubernetes environments. WOW!

Aria Hub Free Tier Announcement: https://blogs.vmware.com/management/2022/11/announcing-vmware-aria-hub-free-tier.html 

Aria Hub Free Tier Technical Overview: https://blogs.vmware.com/management/2022/11/aria-hub-free-tier-technical-overview 

If you want to sign up for the free tier, please follow this link: https://www.vmware.com/learn/1732750_REG.html 

Tanzu Mission Control On-Premises

Many customers asked for it, it is coming! Tanzu Mission Control (TMC) will become available on-premises for sovereign cloud partners/providers and enterprise customers! 

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There is a private beta coming. Hence, I cannot provide more information for now.

Tanzu Kubernetes Grid 2.1

At VMware Explore US 2022, VMware announced Tanzu Kubernetes Grid (TKG) 2.0, and at Explore Europe 2022, they announced TKG 2.1, which adds support for Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI). Additionally, it will now also have the option of leveraging VMs as the management cluster. Each will be familiar, but now they both support a single, unified way of cluster creation using a new API called ClusterClass.

TKG 2.1 Announcement: https://tanzu.vmware.com/content/blog/tanzu-kubernetes-grid-2-1 

Tanzu Service Mesh Advanced Enhancements

VMware unveiled new enhancements for Tanzu Service Mesh (TSM) as well, which are going to bring new capabilities that would provide VM discovery and integration into the mesh, providing the ability to combine VMs and containers in the same service mesh for secure communications and to apply consistent policy.

VMware Cloud on Equinix Metal (VMC-E)

The last thing I want to highlight is the VMC-E announcement. It is a combination of VMware Cloud IaaS with Equinix Metal hardware as-a-service, which can be deployed in over 30 Equinix global data centers.

VMware Cloud on Equinix Metal is a great option for enterprises that want the flexibility and performance of the Public Cloud, where business requirements prevent moving data or applications to the public cloud. It offers full compatibility and consistency with on-premises and VMware Cloud operational models and policies and zero downtime migration

VMware Cloud on Equinix Metal is a fully managed solution by VMware (delivered, operated, managed, supported).

VMC-E Announcement: https://blogs.vmware.com/cloud/2022/11/07/introducing-vmware-cloud-on-equinix-metal 

VMC-E Technical Preview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-WpGfrxW39Y&feature=youtu.be&ab_channel=VMwareCloud