What is AWS Outposts?
AWS Outposts brings native AWS services, infrastructure, and operating models to virtually any data center, co-location space, or on-premises facility. This can be especially useful for use cases in which you have workloads that can’t or shouldn’t be migrated to the AWS public cloud and have low latency requirement apps running besides it. With AWS Outposts, you can now put AWS native services, which are operated exactly like their public cloud counterparts, directly next to these on-premises workloads. It basically allows you to place workloads not suitable for public cloud inside a cloud computing operating model.
“This is ideal for workloads that require access to on-premises infrastructure such as an Enterprise Datawarehouse where the frequency of access and latency can potentially affect the performance of the application. With AWS Outposts, developers will get the benefits of data locality while still being able to consume AWS services using the exact same workflows, application programming interfaces (APIs), and tools that they are familiar with”. (Source: VMware Cloud on AWS Outposts: Cloud Managed SDDC for your Data Center by William Lam, VMware)
AWS Outposts comes in two flavors:
- VMware Cloud on AWS Outposts allows you to use the same VMware control plane and APIs you use to run your infrastructure;
- The AWS native variant of AWS Outposts allows you to use the same exact APIs and control plane you use to run in the AWS cloud, but on-premises.
If you are standardized on using the AWS API’s and control plane, option 2 is obviously your choice. If you are instead standardized on the VMware API’s and control plane, VMware Cloud on AWS Outposts is the way to go.
But what about the added complexity of adding a different technology stack on-premises?
If you are running VMware technology in your data center, introducing AWS Outposts with native EC2 technology inside your environment can add complexity to your operating model. To mitigate this, VMware and AWS also announced VMware Cloud Foundation for EC2. With this new offering, you can manage native EC2 instances in the same way as you manage your VMware workloads:
“VMware Cloud Foundation for EC2 extends VMware enterprise-class capabilities to provide seamless network connectivity to on-premises network and AWS cloud, end-to-end network visibility and insights, consistent micro-segmentation and application security policies for both vSphere and EC2 workloads, and unified data protection and management with existing tools and investments” (Source: VMware Cloud on AWS Outposts: Cloud Managed SDDC for your Data Center by William Lam, VMware)
VMware Cloud Foundation for EC2 delivers a consistent operating model for your hybrid cloud environment and provides an abstraction layer for the entire environment. This greatly simplifies the way you operate your heterogeneous data centers and cloud environments, so you can focus more on running apps for the business, instead of maintaining data centers.
AWS Outposts is a big strategic move for AWS and VMware. It enables a wide range of use cases that deliver more flexibility and freedom of choice. The services are expected to be delivered in the second half of 2019.
ITQ is a VMware Cloud on AWS Solution Provider Partner and AWS Consulting Partner. If you want to know more about the VMware and AWS partnership and the potential business value for your organization of these hybrid cloud services, feel free to reach out to us or feel free to contact me directly at jkusters@itq.euor +31652762189.
Source:https://cloud.vmware.com/community/2018/11/28/vmware-cloud-aws-outposts-cloud-managed-sddc-data-center/(William Lam, VMware)
