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VMware-AWS Hybrid Cloud Solution Goes Live
Joint customers of VMware and Amazon Web Services (AWS) can now run their on-premises vSphere environments on the AWS cloud with this week's launch of "VMware Cloud on AWS."
First announced as a private beta last October, VMware Cloud on AWS officially exited preview on Monday, coinciding with the opening keynote of VMware's VMworld conference, taking place in Las Vegas this week.
At the outset, VMware Cloud on AWS is available only from AWS' Oregon region under an on-demand, hourly billing plan. However, the companies plan to expand availability to other AWS regions next year, as well as introduce one- and three-year subscription plans. Discounts are available for some customers with existing VMware licenses under VMware's Hybrid Loyalty Program. More pricing information is available here.
VMware Cloud on AWS leverages Cloud Foundation, VMware's software-defined datacenter (SDDC) platform, to enable organizations to extend their on-premises vSphere environments to bare-metal AWS infrastructure while accessing AWS' full service portfolio. The integration is designed to be seamless, according to the companies, obviating the need for users to develop new tools or processes, rewrite their applications, or acquire new hardware.
VMware is touting the new solution as a boon for its customers who are considering migrating some of their applications to the cloud (which, by some measurements, are the majority of them). It's also ideal for those who need to quickly spin up testing and development environments, or want to expand their existing datacenter capacity. Upcoming capabilities include support for container workloads and disaster recovery.
"VMware and AWS are empowering enterprise IT and operations teams to add value to their businesses through the combination of VMware enterprise capabilities and the breadth and depth of capabilities and scale of the AWS Cloud, providing them a platform for any application," said VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger in a prepared statement. "VMware Cloud on AWS gives customers a seamlessly integrated hybrid cloud that delivers the same architecture, capabilities, and operational experience across both their vSphere-based on-premises environment and AWS."
[Click on image for larger view.] VMware Cloud on AWS infrastructure overview. (Source: AWS/Jeff Barr)
AWS evangelist Jeff Barr provided more technical details about the offering in a blog post Monday.
"It supports custom-sized VMs, runs any OS that is supported by VMware, and makes use of single-tenant bare-metal AWS infrastructure so that you can bring your Windows Server licenses to the cloud. Each SDDC (Software-Defined Data Center) consists of 4 to 16 instances, each with 36 cores, 512 GB of memory, and 15.2 TB of NVMe storage. Clusters currently run in a single AWS Availability Zone (AZ) with support in the works for clusters that span AZs. You can spin up an entire VMware SDDC in a couple of hours, and scale host capacity up and down in minutes," Barr wrote. "The NSX networking platform (powered by the AWS Elastic Networking Adapter running at up to 25 Gbps) supports multicast traffic, separate networks for management and compute, and IPSec VPN tunnels to on-premises firewalls, routers, and so forth."
Though the service leverages AWS' platform, VMware Cloud on AWS is sold and supported by VMware and its partners. More information on VMware Cloud on AWS is available here.