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VMware Cloud on AWS Improvements Announced at VMworld
VMware kicked off its two-day virtual VMworld 2021 conference on Tuesday, announcing several updates to VMware's long-running strategic partnership with Amazon Web Services (AWS).
The VMware Cloud on AWS service was launched four VMworlds ago as a joint hybrid cloud effort between AWS and VMware. With the service, customers of VMware vSphere can extend their on-premises environments to a VMware datacenter on the AWS cloud.
On Tuesday, VMware announced that its Kubernetes management platform, Tanzu, will be freely included in VMware Cloud on AWS sometime this month (specifically, VMware said the release would happen in the third quarter of its fiscal 2022, which ends on Oct. 29, 2021).
"Tanzu services makes apps modernization with Kubernetes faster, easier, and less expensive on VMware Cloud than alternative managed Kubernetes solutions," VMware said in its announcement. "IT admins can use the VMware vCenter interface to unify VM and container management on a common platform and provision Kubernetes clusters within minutes. Platform operators or SREs can manage Kubernetes clusters consistently across clouds using Tanzu services as a multi-cloud Kubernetes management plane."
In addition, VMware said version 1.4 of its Kubernetes runtime, Tanzu Kubernetes Grid, now supports NVIDIA GPU instances on AWS (as well as Microsoft's Azure cloud).
"Cluster API, the upstream technology we use for cluster lifecycle management supports GPU instance types for AWS and Azure," VMware said. "Developers can now create and manage the lifecycle of GPU-enabled clusters in Tanzu Kubernetes Grid for AWS and Azure."
VMware also announced that support for its platform on the AWS Outposts service will arrive by the end of October. AWS Outposts lets organizations run the full AWS cloud on-premises using server racks that are delivered and installed by AWS in the location of their choice. This integration, according to VMware, "will enable customers to benefit from a cloud operating model for VMware Cloud infrastructure running in their own data center or thick edge locations."