Introduction to VMware Cloud on AWS

VMware Cloud on AWS is a product jointly engineered by VMware and AWS enabling customers to run proven, enterprise-grade VMware software-defined data centers (SDDCs) on top of bare metal AWS hardware. VMware Cloud on AWS enables enterprise IT and operations teams to continue to add value to their business in the AWS cloud while maximizing their VMware investments, without the need to buy new hardware. This offering enables customers to quickly and confidently scale capacity up or down, without change or friction, for any workload with access to native cloud services.

Understanding VMware Cloud on AWS is not possible without knowing the broad range of capabilities of the AWS cloud (https://aws.amazon.com/resources/analyst-reports/gartner-mq-cips-2021/). VMware Cloud on AWS helps customers design their environments using different cloud models, facilitating connections between on-premises deployments and public clouds

AWS was officially launched in 2006 and has grown rapidly to become one of the world’s largest cloud providers. AWS operates in over 25 geographic regions worldwide, with plans to expand to more regions. This means that users can deploy their applications and services in locations closest to their customers, improving performance and reducing latency. AWS provides over 175 fully featured services for computing, storage, databases, analytics, machine learning, Internet of Things (IoT), security, and more.

AWS is used by millions of customers worldwide, including start-ups, large enterprises, and government organizations

One of the key benefits of the AWS cloud is its flexibility and scalability. Users can quickly and easily provision the needed resources and only pay for what they use.

The AWS cloud also offers a range of deployment options, including private, public, and hybrid cloud models. This allows users to tailor their cloud environment to their specific needs, depending on security requirements, compliance regulations, and performance goals.

VMware Cloud on AWS is a jointly engineered and fully managed service that brings VMware’s enterprise-grade SDDC software and Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) bare-metal instances running on the AWS Global Infrastructure. This integration enables customers to seamlessly migrate their workloads to VMware Cloud on AWS without re-platforming their virtual machines (https://aws.amazon.com/resources/analyst-reports/gartner-mq-cips-2021/).

Introduction to cloud deployment models

Companies can choose from different models to deploy cloud services. The deployment model will be driven by the application requirements, business use cases, and existing IT investments. The following section describes the different approaches.

Public cloud

Cloud computing delivers IT services with flexible pay-as-you-go pricing and consumption models. Customers can access as many resources as they need, often immediately. Charges are only applicable to resources that have been used or reserved. Customers can consume fully managed services that encompass computing, storage, networks, databases, containers, application platforms, functions and much more.

An application can be created directly in the cloud, known as a cloud-native application, or migrated from an existing on-premises infrastructure to take advantage of the public cloud benefits through a modernization process. Customers break the application’s monolith architecture into microservices, also known as refactoring.

Private cloud or on-premises

The private cloud approach is the deployment of resources on-premises, using physical facilities, hardware, virtualization infrastructure, and automation software dedicated to an organization in most cases.

Usually, customers will own the facilities and physical IT hardware in their on-premises environment. Private clouds are often used to meet compliance with data governance regulations or to leverage investment into existing IT infrastructure.

Customers who were not born in the cloud have a significant part of their workloads running in their on-premises infrastructure. VMware is a leader in the on-premises SDDC with its VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) software stack and vSphere’s virtualization solution.

Hybrid cloud

A hybrid cloud is an IT architecture and an operational deployment model that enables customers to leverage public and private clouds. A hybrid cloud enables delivering applications and connecting infrastructure with common orchestration and management tools between on-premises and public cloud providers.

Processes and workloads established for on-premises need to be integrated with the workloads and processes in the public cloud to ensure unified management of data, applications, and their associated governance, life cycle management, and security policies.

Hybrid cloud solution core principles

The following are the hybrid cloud solution core principles:

• Seamless workload mobility between private cloud and public cloud environments
• Provision and scale resources through an API or self-service portal in the public cloud provider
• Network connectivity between environments through a high-speed, reliable, and secure solution
• Automate processes across environments with a common automation process, toolset, and APIs
• Manage and monitor environments with unified tools between environments

Different approaches to the hybrid cloud

Public cloud providers have solutions bringing their native centralized data center services to run in their customer’s on-premise environments – for example, Google with its Anthos solution for Kubernetes workloads, AWS with Outposts and Amazon EKS Anywhere for Kubernetes workloads, and Microsoft with Azure Stack and Azure Arc.

VMware’s approach is to extend existing VMware on-premises infrastructure to the cloud rather than building new infrastructure in customer data centers that implement point solutions of the different hyperscales.

It can help organizations benefit from hybridity with public clouds without rethinking their application delivery and security model, governance, policies, or procedures.

Multi-cloud

Multi-cloud is an operational model that combines more than one public cloud and potentially a private cloud. Many customers rely on multiple public cloud providers. Often, this adoption of multi-cloud is developed bottom-up in organizations, where different business units and development teams procure their cloud services without IT knowledge or guidance, or through a merger and acquisition process where two organization operational teams need to converge after adopting different cloud strategies.

For instance, using the Google App Engine for Platform as a Service (PaaS) services and AWS for EC2 with Lambda for Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Function as a Service (FaaS) services, while, at the same time, running a third private cloud with VMware on-premises.

Note

Workloads are not portable between public cloud providers by default, and vendor lock-in concerns customers.

The VMware hybrid cloud stack can run on major public cloud providers, not only AWS. It enables customers to migrate their IaaS workloads between different public clouds and their private cloud without public cloud vendor lock-in.