VMware vFabric Cloud Application Platform
Engineered for Spring and Ideally Suited for VMware vSphere

Overview:

VMware® vFabric™ is a lean, fit-to-purpose platform for building and running modern applications in physical, virtual and cloud environments. It eliminates the exorbitant costs, high complexity, functional limitations, and lengthy coding and testing cycles of dated, heavyweight application development and production environments. With VMware vFabric, you can easily and rapidly build applications that scale elastically, deliver massive amounts of data quickly and reliably, and incorporate the latest Web and mobile-oriented features.

• Develop Web-oriented, data-intensive applications up to 50 percent faster.
• Build and run applications that can scale elastically at every infrastructure layer.
• Gain greater VM density and higher utilization rates on existing hardware.
• Run applications on your own private cloud or on public cloud services.

What is the VMware vFabric Cloud Application Platform?

The VMware vFabric cloud application platform is a complete solution that fills IT's need for a fast, efficient and lightweight approach to building applications and running them on virtualized and cloud-based infrastructure. While leapfrogging the limitations of traditional platforms, VMware vFabric draws on the expertise developers already have with popular frameworks and tools. VMware vFabric also works seamlessly with the world's most trusted and widely used virtualization engine—VMware vSphere® —making it ideally suited for applications that need to scale dynamically to address unpredictable spikes in user demand. VMware vFabric integrates all the essentials of a modern application platform:

• A proven development framework that bypasses the complexity of overweight platforms such as Java Platform, Enterprise Edition (JEE) to simplify and accelerate the development of modern applications
• A lean runtime platform optimized for both the development framework and virtual infrastructure
• A set of runtime services tailored to the needs of modern applications

How is VMware vFabric Used?

Building Applications

VMware vFabric includes the open source Spring Framework, used by more than 3 million developers to build half of all Java applications running today, and deployed in 90 percent of the Fortune 1000. Spring has demonstrated dramatic advantages in every phase of the application life cycle. It eliminates much of the complexity of application development—reducing coding by 50 percent, increasing portability across multiple environments, ensuring high reusability and simplifying testing.

Unlike traditional JEE platforms, Spring provides a range of capabilities for creating all application types, including enterprise Java, rich Web and enterprise integration. Spring open source projects (such as Spring Mobile, Spring Android and Spring Social) extend the framework with new capabilities, making it ideal for equipping applications with the latest must-have features and the ability to run on the newest generation of devices.

Deploying Applications in a Spring-Optimized Runtime Environment

VMware vFabric incorporates Apache Tomcat—a lightweight, small-footprint runtime server already deployed in 64 percent of corporate enterprises. The VMware version of Tomcat, vFabric tc Server, is enhanced with built-in operational management, advanced diagnostics for Spring-built applications and missioncritical support. The built-in Spring instrumentation accelerate development and deployment by as much as 50 percent compared to JEE servers. vFabric tc Server provides a single application server for all phases of the application lifecycle, eliminating myriad issues that arise when developers and operations use different application servers.

Equipping Applications for Modern Infrastructure

VMware vFabric provides a complete set of runtime services that give applications the capabilities they require to perform superbly in highly distributed cloud-based environments:

• Global data management – The distributed data management platform in VMware vFabric harnesses advanced in-memory processing to deliver what databases cannot: real-time, elastically scalable data distribution and caching for virtualized and cloud-based applications. Users experience subsecond response times, and IT gets all the reliability and data-management capabilities of a database.
• Cloud messaging – VMware vFabric supplies the intersystem messaging that is critical for making cloud-based applications highly available, scalable and portable, with predictable and consistent throughput and latency. Featuring support for the proven Advanced Message Queuing Protocol (AMQP) as well as other messaging technologies like HTTP, HTTPS, STOMP, XMPP, and SMTP, vFabric messaging is easy to use and supported by all major operating systems and development environments.
• Dynamic load balancing – VMware vFabric includes the popular and comprehensive Apache HTTP Server, offering superior performance, scalability, security and simplicity. With VMware vFabric, Apache comes precompiled, easy to deploy, tuned for performance and backed by full VMware support.
• Performance management – VMware vFabric provides continuous monitoring of application performance across physical, virtual and cloud infrastructure, giving you insight into 50,000 metrics spanning 75 Web technologies. You get the deep and complete visibility you need to rapidly fix performance problems at practically any layer of your application infrastructure, ensure optimum application performance, and meet SLAs.

VMware vFabric is the best place to run Spring Java applications, and is ideally suited for
virtual infrastructure.

Key Features:

Multiply the Benefits of Virtualization

VMware vFabric works synergistically with VMware vSphere to deliver even higher VM density and hardware utilization than virtualization achieves on its own. vFabric tc Server's small footprint and rapid start times enable the dynamic scaled-out performance that today's highly variable application loads require. tc Server's elastic memory management enables JVMs to share unused Java heap space, which further increases server consolidation ratios and reduces out of memory errors that can cripple applications.

Close-knit integration with VMware vSphere–based virtual infrastructure provides yet another benefit: VMware vFabric–built applications can leverage underlying VMware cloud-computing architecture, such as VMware Cloud Director, to provide unmatched deployment automation and self-service user provisioning.

Tailor Your Applications for the Cloud

Spring Framework, included in VMware vFabric, has proven to be the most complete, nimble and cost-effective Java development environment. Spring enables developers to quickly build a full range of modern applications that incorporate such innovations as social media, mobile-device capabilities, new data types and improved methods of data access. Through VMware partnerships with Google, CSC, and other public-cloud providers, Spring has become the de facto development framework for Java cloud applications.

Similarly, modern applications would not be fully capable without the functionality offered by the runtime services in VMware vFabric. You can build elastic scalability into the data tier to handle unpredictable traffic spikes, eliminating the bottleneck of databases that cannot scale flexibly with demand. The VMware vFabric messaging technology is specifically designed for virtual and cloud environments—providing all the message types users want plus Internet protocol support for lightweight in-browser messaging. And with the robust, comprehensive and unified application monitoring that VMware Fabric provides, development teams can target virtualized environments with confidence.

Deploy in Hybrid Cloud Environments

VMware vFabric is both a standalone application platform and the development layer of the complete VMware cloud-computing IT stack. Through its integration with VMware vCloud infrastructure solutions, VMware vFabric is the only platform that offers application portability and vendor choice across private and public cloud infrastructures.

How To Buy:

VMware vFabric is available in two editions, vFabric Standard and vFabric Advanced

• vFabric Standard

  Designed to provide the core components for building and running custom applications on vSphere, vFabric Standard includes the capabilities that every organization requires for running their applications: from the application server optimized for vSphere, web server, data management capabilities, management optimizations for Spring-built applications and more.

• vFabric Advanced

  vFabric Advanced extends the capabilities of Standard to address a broader range of workloads by including vFabric RabbitMQ messaging and by introducing a memory-oriented approach to data management with vFabric SQLFire. vFabric Advanced provides the full range of capabilities for building and running today's data-driven applications deployed on virtual infrastructure.

Feature	Description	vFabric Standard	vFabric Advanced
Spring Framework	Java Application Framework
vFabric tc Server	Java Application Server
Elastic Memory for Java (EM4J)	Elastic Java Memory Management
vFabric GemFire App Cache Node	Session State Cache
vFabric Web Server	HTTP Server
Spring Insight Operations	Java Application Performance Monitoring
vFabric Hyperic	Server Performance Monitoring
vFabric RabbitMQ	Message Broker
vFabric SQLFire	In-memory SQL Database

vFabric Advanced licensing is optimized for the needs of modern cloud applications:

Cloud Application Requirement	vFabric Approach
Deploy applications on pools of virtual infrastructure rather than physical servers	Per-VM pricing for hardware independence
Accommodate workload spikes from business cycles coupled with large user base	License based on average, not peak usage. Usage tracked but not limited, in order to accommodate workload spikes.
Reduce time-to-market by initially releasing applications in a “good enough” configuration that is later optimized as performance data is collected	Re-use licenses across different application tiers: web tier, app servers, data caches, databases, and message servers. For instance, you can initially deploy 10 vFabric Advanced VMs as application servers, then later re-deploy them as 10 database servers.

VMware vFabric is licensed on a per-Virtual Machine (VM) basis and provides the flexibility to choose the components deployed in each VM, eliminate the long-standing need to overprovision application infrastructure to accommodate peak workloads, and achieve architectural flexibility, in order to stay within license compliance.

With vFabric, you license only what you need and no more. Simply procure the number of VMs that your application requires and retain the option of amending your application architecture without concern for licensing constraints. Each licensed vFabric VM can run any or all of the software within the vFabric product family. The SQLFire component of vFabric Advanced will be available in Q4 2011.

VMware vFabric is available as a one-time perpetual license under which service and support (SnS) contracts can be renewed annually.

Support:

VMware Production Support & Subscription

Technical Support, 24 Hour Sev 1 Support -- 7 days a week.

Focused, 24-Hour Support For Production Environments

• Global, 24x7 support for Severity 1 issues
• Fast response times for critical issues
• Unlimited number of support requests
• Remote Support
• Online access to documentation and technical resources, knowledge base, discussion forums
• Product updates and upgrades

Overview

VMware Production Support is designed with your production environments in mind. Our global support centers are staffed around the clock to provide you access to our industry-leading expertise in virtualization and years of experience supporting virtual infrastructure products in real-world customer environments. We are committed to delivering enterprise-class, worldwide support with a single objective in mind: your success.

VMware Basic Support & Subscription Service

Technical Support, 12 Hours/Day, per published Business Hours, Mon. thru Fri.

Weekday Support for Test, Dev and Non-Critical Deployments

• Global, 12x5 access to support
• Unlimited number of support requests
• Remote Support
• Online access to documentation and technical resources, knowledge base, discussion forums
• Product updates and upgrades

Overview

VMware Basic Support is designed for non-critical applications and platforms that require support during normal business hours. Our global support centers have been strategically placed to provide you with fast and efficient access to the support center in your region. Each center is staffed with engineers that can provide industry-leading expertise in virtualization and years of experience supporting virtual infrastructure products in real-world customer environments. We are committed to delivering enterprise-class, worldwide support with a single objective in mind: your success.

Feature	Production Support	Basic Support
Hours of Operation	24 Hrs/Day 7 Days/Wk 365 Days/Yr 1	12 Hrs/Day Mon–Fri 1
Length of Service	1 or 3 Years	1 or 3 Years
Product Updates	Yes	Yes
Product Upgrades	Yes	Yes
Products Supported	All Products (excluding VMware Fusion and Player)	All Products (excluding VMware Fusion and Player)
Method of Access	Telephone/ Web	Telephone/ Web
Response Method	Telephone/ Email	Telephone/ Email
Remote Support	Yes	Yes
Access to VMware Web site	Yes	Yes
Access to VMware Discussion Forums and Knowledge Base	Yes	Yes
Max Number of Support Admins per Contract	6	4
Number of Support Requests	Unlimited	Unlimited
Target Response Times Critical (Severity 1 Major (Severity 2) Minor (Severity 3) Cosmetic (Severity 4)	30 minutes or less: 24x7 4 business hours 8 business hours 12 business hours	4 business hours 8 business hours 12 business hours 12 business hours
Business Hours North America and Latin America Alaska, Hawaii South America (NASA) Europe, Middle East, Africa (EMEA Asia, Pacific Rim, Japan (APJ) Australia/New Zealand	Monday - Friday 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. (local time zone) 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. (PST/PDT) 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. (EST/EDT) 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. (GMT/GMT+1) 8:30 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. (Singapore Time) 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. (Sydney AET)	Monday - Friday 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. (local time zone) 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. (PST/PDT) 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. (EST/EDT) 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. (GMT/GMT+1) 8:30 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. (Singapore Time) 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. (Sydney AET)

1Hours of operation for Gemstone are Monday - Friday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. (PST/PDT) globally.
1Hours of operation for VMware Go Pro and vCenter Protect products are 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. (CST/CDT), except holidays.
1Hours of operation for VMware IT Business Management and IT Financial Management are 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. (EST/EDT/GMT) except holidays.
1Hours of operation for Socialcast are 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. (PST/PDT).

Documentation:

Download the VMware vFabric Cloud Application Platform Datasheet (PDF).

Download the VMware vFabric Cloud Application Platform Brochure (PDF).