vFabric Cloud Application Platform Recently VMware introduced its cloud application platform strategy and solutions, enabling

developers to build and run modern applications that intelligently share information with underlying infrastructure to maximize application performance, quality of service and infrastructure utilization. This cloud application platform combines the Spring Java development framework with platform services including lightweight application server, global data management, cloud-ready messaging, dynamic load balancing and application performance management. The arrival of more PaaS solutions for cloud is a welcome sign, as PaaS will provide the much needed extensibility to the organizations to adapt to cloud. While we welcome this move, we already having Microsoft PaaS platform Windows Azure taking deep roots in cloud application development and hence an analysis of the common features between VMware vFabric and Windows Azure will be beneficial to the enterprises in their path towards cloud-based application development.

Windows Azure vs VMware vFabric Multi Tiered Application Design Patterns Windows Azure VMware vFabric Windows Azure currently supports the following two vFabric Enterprise Ready Server (ERS) is the web types of roles: server and load-balancing component of the Web role: A web role is a role that is customized for VMware vFabric cloud application platform. web application programming as supported by IIS 7 and ASP.NET. vFabric tc Server is the runtime server at the heart Worker role: A worker role is a role that is useful for of the VMware vFabric cloud application platform. generalized development, and may perform background processing for a web role. Classically speaking ERS and tc Server can play My article on , Windows Azure Design the roles much like the web role and worker role Patterns explains how multi tiered applications can plays. However we needed to see their provisioning be built using the platform. on demand capabilities on platforms like force.com where vFabric may be deployed. Development Platform

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Windows Azure Windows Azure currently supports the following programming languages : As Windows Azure is built in .net framework, the major languages like C#, VB.net are fully supported. More than the programming languages, to build applications and services on Windows Azure, developers can use their existing Microsoft Visual Studio expertise. Most of the complex tasks like publish, deploy to cloud can be done easily with a simple right click from the Visual Studio IDE.

VMware vFabric As mentioned vFabric is a 100% Spring Java Development framework, co-existence of other languages does not arise. SpringSource Tool SuiteTM (STS) provides the best Eclipse-powered development environment for building Spring-powered enterprise applications. STS supplies tools for all of the latest enterprise Java, Spring, Groovy and Grails based technologies as well as the most advanced tooling available for enterprise OSGi development. However we have to see how the development IDE integrates with the target cloud platform (like vmforce, EC2).

Relational Database & NOSQL Support Windows Azure VMware vFabric SQLAzure the Cloud incarnation of the popular Sql vFabric GemFire is the data management Server relational database, continues to take the lead component of vFabric Cloud Application Platform. due to combination of The vendor site claims the following too, GemFire blends advanced techniques like replication, partitioning, data-aware routing, and continuous Smaller or no learning cycle querying to deliver what databases can't: real-time, elastically scalable data access. Continued usage of existing tools With GemFire, you get horizontal scale, dramatically faster throughput, minimal latencies, and Adaptability to Cloud continuous availability-together with all the reliability and data management capabilities of a Rich set of interfaces and development tool database. support As it is a In Memory' database and built on JVM we have to wait for its performance on large datasets and also the ease of database programming which SQL Azure offers the same Tabular Data requires a strong procedural 4GL language support Stream (TDS) interface for communicating with the like PL/SQL or TSQL. database that is used to access any on premise SQL However the architecture of Gemfire shows lot of Server database. As a result, with SQL Azure, features for scalability if it is configured properly developers can use the same tools and libraries they and may take a while to get into the mainstream use to build client applications for SQL Server. database programming. We may need to study them closely for new use cases and design patterns which Windows Azure also provides NOSQL storage should be supportive of that model. options for unstructured data like,

Binary Large Object (BLOB) Service, the simplest way to store text or binary data with

Windows Azure. Table Serviceis better for large amounts of data that needs additional structure, which works exceptionally well with applications that need to work with data is a very detailed manner via queries.

On Premise' Integration Windows Azure VMware vFabric Windows Azure Appfabric Service Bus, provides Perhaps at this stage, among all the attributes secure messaging and connectivity capabilities that vFabric looks very weak in this context. enable building distributed and disconnected applications in the cloud, as well hybrid application RabbitMQ provides the robust and reliable interacross both on-premise and the cloud. It enables system messaging that is critical for cloud-based using various communication and messaging applications. A cloud-ready messaging service that protocols and patterns, and saves the need for the facilitates communications between apps both inside developer to worry about delivery assurance, reliable and outside the datacenter. messaging and scale. Access Control provides an easy way to provide However major integration tools for data is missing identity and access control to web applications and in this platform. services, while integrating with standards-based identity providers, including enterprise directories At this time the application server tcServer such as Active Directory, and web identities such guarantees 100% compatibility with Tomcat as Windows Live ID, Google, Yahoo! and Facebook. server. However to migrate enterprise applications Microsoft SQL Azure Data Sync, currently in support for enterprise application servers like Web CTP (Community Technology Preview) is a cloud- Logic, Web Sphere are needed. based data synchronization service built on We also needed security integration with on Microsoft Sync Framework technologies. It provides premise directories and access managers. bi-directional data synchronization and data management capabilities allowing data to be easily shared between multiple SQL Azure databases and between on-premises and SQL Azure databases. Summary With Java EE being a major platform on enterprise, a good PaaS platform like vFabric is very exciting. This gives lot of choices for existing Java EE-based applications to move to the cloud. The comparison with Windows Azure is done only for the new Cloud applications or building new SaaS. Again we expect both these platforms to get upgraded with many new features that will boost the SaaS market. At this time for new applications Windows Azure is ahead, but vFabric is a good choice for migrating existing Java EE applications to the cloud. We will definitely see integration aspects between them for the good of the enterprises.

VMware announced Tuesday it will include a suite of middleware services with the Spring Framework for Java developers in a new offering called vFabric 5. The combination is meant to serve developers producing applications for the virtualized part of the data center or for cloud applications. Providing such a bundle will give VMware a stronger position with which to compete with Microsoft, with its development tools geared for use with its Azure cloud, or with the rapidly evolving platforms in the Amazon cloud, such as Heroku or Engine Yard for Ruby developers, or Zend Technologies' Zend Server on Amazon for PHP developers.

VFabric 5 allows a server administrator to deploy some or all of the middleware components with a Java application, "depending on what virtual machine characteristics you want," said David McJannet, director of product marketing for VMware applications. For example, a Java application expected to scale might be assigned two instances of VMware's tc Server to work with its virtual machine. With vFabric 5, different virtual machines can take on different capabilities and performance characteristics, said McJannet. McJannet said the following seven components will be included with the Spring Framework in vFabric 5: --vFabric tc Server with Elastic Memory for Java. Tc Server is an enterprise version of the popular Apache Tomcat server, a lightweight Java application server. Tc Server is a previous Spring Framework add-on component. It's now integrated with VMware's virtualization management environment, vSphere, so that Java applications running in virtual machines under a single ESX hypervisor can make use of a pool of memory. Tc Server can make use of multiple heap memory allotments, combining them into a pool and managing Java applications more effectively using the pool. Heap memory is the amount of memory a Java application server allots to an application at startup. Because Java will conduct garbage collection as a memory management function across the heap, effective operations are typically limited to 2-3 GB of memory; tc Server increases this limit, allowing an application to use more memory and more easily scale up to more users, said McJannet in an interview. --vFabric GemFire is a server memory-caching system that creates a pool of server random access memory for a running application. Pulling both application logic and the data it needs out of RAM allows a Java application to perform better. Modules of the application can be moved off of disk and remain readily available in RAM as well as database data, McJannet said. --vFabric SQLFire makes use of server RAM in the same manner as GemFire and imposes an SQL interface for data retrieval instead of an API that knows how to go to disk. Data may then be retrieved through SQL statements. --RabbitMQ is a frequently used open source message queuing system used by Java programmers using the Spring Framework. With vFabric RabbitMQ, the message store and forward process can be built into applications to be run in virtual machines or in the cloud, McJannet said. --Spring Insight is a production version of the open source code, Spring Insight, used by Spring Framework developers for optimizing their Java code as it's developed. In the operational environment, vFabric 5's Spring Insight Operations allows operators to find bottlenecks in running applications and diagnose sources of slowdown in the code, McJannet said. Spring Insight has been integrated with vSphere to collect virtual machine operational data from it, he said. ---vFabric Hyperic is another component of vFabric 5, making use of the Hyperic application's ability to view virtual machine activity and build a reporting dashboard, making use of the colors green, yellow, and red, to indicate normal operations versus problem areas. Hyperic can view Java applications whether running on unvirtualized hosts, in virtual machines in the data center, or in virtual machines in the cloud. --vFabric Web Server is a version of the Apache Web Server bundled into vFabric 5.

vFabric 5 will be generally available in late summer at a price of $1,200 per virtual machine for the standard edition and $1,800 per virtual machine for the advanced edition.
VMwares cloud infrastructure, based largely on vSphere virtualization technology, is threatening to competitors because it provides an important launch pad for the companys burgeoning vFabric application platform. Ever since VMware launched its cloud strategy at its VMWorld conference last year, officials have highlighted application development as an important layer of its cloud compute ecosystem. One month after announcing its vFabric 5 integrated application platform for virtual and cloud environments, VMware rolled out this week the next-generation integrated cloud infrastructure, along with a new licensing model, optimized to support its application platform including its PaaS-based option called Cloud Foundry, thereby providing a clear and present danger to competitors IBM, Oracle and others.

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