2V0-21.21 certification - Advanced Design VMware vSphere 7.x Updated: 2023

VMware disclosed a critical and unpatched authentication bypass vulnerability affecting Cloud Director appliance deployments.

Cloud Director enables VMware admins to manage their organizations' cloud services as part of Virtual Data Centers (VDC).

The auth bypass security flaw only affects appliances running VCD Appliance 10.5 that were previously upgraded from an older release. The company also added that CVE-2023-34060 does not impact fresh VCD Appliance 10.5 installs, Linux deployments, and other appliances.

Unauthenticated attackers can remotely exploit the bug in low-complexity attacks that don't require user interaction.

"On an upgraded version of VMware Cloud Director Appliance 10.5, a malicious actor with network access to the appliance can bypass login restrictions when authenticating on port 22 (ssh) or port 5480 (appliance management console)," VMware explains.

"This bypass is not present on port 443 (VCD provider and tenant login). On a new installation of VMware Cloud Director Appliance 10.5, the bypass is not present."

While VMware doesn't have a patch for this critical authentication bypass, the company provided admins with a temporary workaround until security updates are released.

"VMware released VMware Security Advisory VMSA-2023-0026 to help customers understand the issue and which upgrade path will fix it," VMware says in a separate advisory.

The workaround shared by VMware will only work for affected versions of VCD Appliance 10.5.0, and it requires downloading a custom script attached to this knowledgebase article and running it on cells exposed to the CVE-2023-34060 vulnerability.

According to VMware, the workaround does not cause any functional disruptions, and downtime is not a concern as neither a service restart nor a reboot is necessary.

In June, the company also fixed an ESXi zero-day used by Chinese state hackers for data theft and alerted customers to an actively exploited critical bug in the Aria Operations for Networks analytics tool.

More recently, in October, it patched a critical vCenter Server flaw (CVE-2023-34048) that can be exploited for remote code execution attacks.

November 10, 2023, 10:45 AM EST

The main purpose of VMware Private AI with Intel is to enable the virtualization giant’s customers to use existing Intel-based infrastructure and open-source software to ‘simplify building and deploying AI models’ with an emphasis on ‘practical privacy and compliance needs,’ the company says.

VMware and Intel said they are collaborating to help businesses adopt privacy-minded AI solutions faster by eliminating the guesswork to make the solutions run well on existing infrastructure.

At this week’s VMware Explore 2023 event in Barcelona, the virtualization giant said it has teamed with Intel to develop a validated reference architecture called VMware Private AI with Intel, which consists of VMware Cloud Foundation and its AI computing features as well as Intel’s Xeon CPUs, Max Series GPUs and AI software suite.

[Related: Gelsinger: Intel Is Prioritizing AI Sales Enablement For Partners]

The reference architecture is set for release by next month, and it will be supported by servers from Dell Technologies, Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Lenovo running fourth-generation Intel Xeon CPUs and Intel Max Series GPUs.

Chris Wolf, vice president of VMware AI Labs, said in a statement to CRN that the reference architecture will create new opportunities for VMware and Intel’s joint partners.

“Our broad and growing ecosystem of AI apps and services, MLOps tools, AI hardware and data services is creating considerable optionality by which our joint partners can customize and differentiate,” he said.

The reference architecture is an alternative to the VMware Private AI Foundation with Nvidia platform, which was unveiled in August and enables businesses to develop and run AI models on Dell, HPE and Lenovo servers powered by Nvidia GPUs, DPUs and SmartNICs.

Intel is eager to challenge Nvidia’s dominant position in the AI computing space with not just GPUs but also CPUs with AI acceleration capabilities such as Advanced Matrix Extensions. Tuning its hardware and software to run AI workloads well on VMware’s multi-cloud platform is an important step in giving the semiconductor giant a better fighting chance as it ramps up competition in silicon.

“With the potential of artificial intelligence to unlock powerful new possibilities and Strengthen the life of every person on the planet, Intel and VMware are well equipped to lead enterprises into this new era of AI, powered by silicon and software,” said Sandra Rivera, the outgoing executive vice president and general manager of Intel’s Data Center and AI Group, in a statement.

The main purpose of VMware Private AI with Intel is to enable the virtualization giant’s customers to use existing Intel-based infrastructure and open-source software to “simplify building and deploying AI models” with an emphasis on “practical privacy and compliance needs,” according to VMware.

This applies to infrastructure wherever “enterprise data is being created, processed and consumed, whether in a public cloud, enterprise data center or at the edge,” the company said.

By tapping into existing infrastructure, businesses can reduce total cost of ownership and address concerns of environmental sustainability, it added.

“When it comes to AI, there is no longer any reason to debate trade-offs in choice, privacy and control. Private AI empowers customers with all three, enabling them to accelerate AI adoption while future-proofing their AI infrastructure,” Wolf said.

The AI computing reference architecture covers the crucial steps of building and running AI models, from data preparation and model training to fine-tuning and inferencing. The use cases are wide open, from accelerating scientific discovery to enriching business and consumer services.

“VMware Private AI with Intel will help our mutual customers dramatically increase worker productivity, ignite transformation across major business functions and drive economic impact,” Wolf added.

Intel’s AI software suite consists of “end-to-end open-source software and optional licensing components to enable developers to run full AI pipeline workflows,” according to VMware. This includes Intel’s oneAPI framework for letting developers writing code once to target software for multiple types of processors as well as Intel’s Transformer Extensions and PyTorch Extensions.

VMware Cloud Foundation provides complementary features for building and running AI models, such as vSAN Express Storage Architecture for accelerating capabilities such as encryption, vSphere Distributed Resources Scheduler for maximizing hardware utilization for AI models and training, and VMware NSX for micro-segmentation and threat protection capabilities.

The multi-cloud platform also comes with secure boot and Virtual Trusted Platform Module features for enabling model and data confidentiality.

BARCELONA, Spain, Nov. 8, 2023 — VMware, Inc. has announced the next generation of VMware Data Services Manager, designed to support today’s data-driven innovation by making data services as easy to consume as what VMware has achieved for virtualized compute, storage, and networking.

VMware Data Services Manager will deliver best-in-class management for a wide range of data services, not just databases, as a natively integrated experience for VMware Cloud Foundation customers, serving the needs of IT admins, data teams, and developers alike. These capabilities, along with new data services partnerships with Google Cloud and MinIO, and new VMware Cloud advancements, will deliver developer-ready infrastructure to accelerate modern app innovation, provide multi-cloud flexibility and agility, and enable more secure and resilient organizations.

VMware Cloud Foundation delivers innovations from VMware’s on-premises and public cloud software offerings in a unified stack to enable a consistent and more secure environment across any on-premises, hyperscaler cloud, or partner cloud environments. VMware Cloud Foundation is the underpinning for VMware Private AI and yields benefits for modern AI/ML and generative AI workloads such as simplified management, enhanced scalability, improved security, and optimized resource usage. VMware Cloud Foundation is delivered as a service by hundreds of Cloud Services Providers (CSPs), including those delivering VMware Sovereign Clouds.

“Whether residing on premises, across hybrid clouds, or in a sovereign cloud environment, data is the fuel for digital transformation. Through our new data services innovations and partnerships, we are making VMware Cloud Foundation the best platform to power the traditional, modern, and AI/ML applications that are central to business,” said Krish Prasad, senior vice president and general manager, cloud infrastructure business unit, VMware. “VMware Cloud enables customers to build, deploy, run, and protect a broad set of high value workloads across their data infrastructure on multiple consistent cloud endpoints, with the same operational model and service level objectives for performance, business continuity, and security.”

Simplifying Data Services Management

VMware will empower IT to consistently and more securely manage databases, object stores, streaming, warehouse, caching, and querying solutions running on VMware Cloud Foundation. This strategy will help customers accelerate their digital transformation by building, deploying, and operating a diverse and growing data estate. With VMware Data Services Manager, IT admins will benefit from the native VMware infrastructure management experience for data services, including full control of infrastructure policies. Data teams and database administrators will maintain full control over data policies and be able to deliver a self-service offering for databases and other best in class data services on-premises to their lines of business, enabling rapid innovation for developers.

VMware is also announcing that Google Cloud AlloyDB Omni will be the first third-party PostgreSQL-compatible database natively integrated with VMware Cloud Foundation through VMware Data Services Manager and VMware vSAN. With AlloyDB Omni, customers will have access to an enterprise-ready PostgreSQL-compatible database, with Google Cloud support, on reliable, scalable, and highly secure VMware Cloud Foundation environments. With AlloyDB Omni running on VMware vSAN customers can experience more than 2x the transactional performance and up to 100x the analytical performance of standard PostgreSQL across a wide range of queries and workloads. Read the full announcement here.

Additionally, VMware is announcing MinIO Object Store will be the first third-party object storage natively integrated with VMware Cloud Foundation through Data Services Manager. MinIO is a highly performant and resilient object store offering active-active replication for mission-critical production environments. Running on VMware Cloud Foundation and managed through Data Services Manager, MinIO will be an ideal solution for data lake implementations and large-scale AI/ML use cases.

Comprehensive Detection and Recovery from Ransomware

Ransomware attacks are becoming increasingly more sophisticated as the data from companies becomes more lucrative. To help organizations combat this evolving threat landscape, VMware is announcing new solutions and technologies that enable organizational resilience.

Intelligent Threat Detection is a new capability in technology preview that will deliver proactive AI/ML-powered encryption prevention and response, allowing customers to see more to stop more and recover faster. Customers will be able to identify modern ransomware prior to encryption using aggressive behavioral analysis of powered-on workloads in a cloud-based isolated environment and detect encryption events across protected workloads by analyzing file system metadata, data change rates, and entropy.

VMware Live Recovery is a new offering that provides cyber and data resiliency for VMware Cloud. VMware Live Recovery delivers unified protection, secure cyber recovery and simplified consumption. Customers benefit from unified management of ransomware and disaster recovery across on-premises and public clouds, confident and accelerated recovery from modern ransomware, and flexible licensing for changing business needs and threats.

Modern, Consistent Cloud Infrastructure and Management for All Applications

New VMware Cloud Foundation advancements include:

• Enhanced networking and security with support for the vSphere Distributed Services Engine (DSE), modernizing data centers by offloading full stack infrastructure functions from CPUs to Data Processing Units (DPUs).
• Enhanced support for NVMe storage platforms with new support for vSAN Express Storage Architecture (ESA) that enables customers to deploy next generation servers that deliver higher performance, more scalability, and improved efficiency.
• Unified experience and fast issue resolution delivered by VMware Aria Operations with updates that include the ability to understand sustainability posture across data center footprints as well as meaningful grouping of alerts enabled by AI to help manage alert storms and Strengthen troubleshooting capabilities.

Availability

The next generation of VMware Data Services Manager, as well as VMware Live Recovery, new VMware Aria Operations capabilities, and updates across VMware Cloud Foundation, are all expected to be available in VMware’s Q4 FY24. Google AlloyDB Omni and MinIO Object Store for VMware Cloud Foundation, plus Intelligent Threat Detection, are currently in Tech Preview.

About VMware

VMware is a leading provider of multi-cloud services for all apps, enabling digital innovation with enterprise control. As a trusted foundation to accelerate innovation, VMware software gives businesses the flexibility and choice they need to build the future. Headquartered in Palo Alto, California, VMware is committed to building a better future through the company’s 2030 Agenda.

Source: VMware