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VMware open sources VR overlay for vSphere
vMotion becomes vThrowing in scenes resembling 1997's Unicenter TNG from CA
VIDEOS VMware has open-sourced a “VR Data Center Experience” that puts a virtual reality overlay over its vSphere product, to give you a virtual view of virtual machines.
The company first demonstrated this code at VMworld Europe, after it was whipped up at an earlier hackfest.
The tool attempts to replicate vSphere functions as actions in virtual reality. Examining a VM therefore becomes a matter of picking it up. Moving a VM between hosts requires the user to pick it up in VR, then drop it onto another server. Deleting a VM can be accomplished by dropping it into a rubbish bin.
In a demo seen today by The Register at vForum Sydney, moving a server from on-premises to the AWS cloud could be accomplished by throwing a server. VMware chief operating officer Sanjay Poonen also demonstrated provisioning a new server, whereupon auto-migration of servers saw them sprout drone-style helicopter blades and fly to new host, where they hovered before descending in a controlled fashion as they started to run.
Here's a look at a demo of the tool.
And here is where you can find the tool itself.
If you want to give it a go, you'll need to be running vCenter 6.5 and have a vSphere Cluster configured with at least one ESXi host and have an HTC Vive handy.
You'll also need some historical perspective, because this is not the first time this sort of thing has been tried. Computer Associates – which now insists on being referred to as just “CA” - created a VR interface for its Unicenter enterprise management suite in about 1997. And as luck would have it, Archive.org has preserved the two videos below to give us a look at it.
The first one is a mere 30 seconds long. If you've the time to consider the second, strap in for three-and-a-bit minutes of advertorial gold. ®
Biting the hand that feeds IT
