VMware Cloud on AWS
VMware Cloud on AWS was introduced during VMworld in 2016 to help solve the challenges around public cloud adoption and data centre modernization. VMware Cloud on AWS made the hybrid cloud model become a reality for customers by delivering the same familiar VMware solutions (vSphere, vSAN, and NSX) from the public cloud in a cloud operating model. This opened up use cases where VMware Cloud on AWS became an important part of customers data centre architecture.
What we as ITQ saw at customer was that these use cases were primarily focused on data centre extension and cloud migration.
Extend your Data Centre to the Cloud
Easily extend your on-premises data centre to AWS for quick access to additional capacity, on-demand scaling of apps, flexible development and test environments, or rapid regional expansion. Move your vSphere workloads without changing IP addresses into a VMware-consistent, enterprise-grade environment in the AWS Cloud quickly and cost-effectively, and manage it through your vCenter console.
Migrate Your Applications to the Cloud
Accelerate cloud migrations of vSphere workloads from months or years to weeks or days with familiar, consistent infrastructure that eliminates the rework tax needed to re-architect applications. Reduce the complexity, cost and risk of cloud migrations compared to alternatives that require time and scarce skills. Once in the cloud, use VMware and AWS services to modernize your apps at your pace.
Enabling new use cases through evolution
Since 2016, VMware Cloud on AWS has been evolving in a rapid pace. Every aspect of the service has been evolved to include new capabilities and features such as Stretched clusters, Distributed Firewalling, VMware Cloud Disaster Recovery, and most recently Tanzu Services.
It would be too much to cover all new capabilities and features since the beginning but for a brief overview of the new capabilities and features added in the first quarter of this year, be sure to check out this blogpost.
This continuous evolution of the service enabled exiting new use cases such as application modernization and Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS).
Modernize Applications Pragmatically
Start modernizing applications with minimal disruption to your business. Run, monitor, and manage containers and virtual machines on the same platform using familiar vCenter tools and centralized platform operations. Modernize apps using fully managed VMware Tanzu services and provision Kubernetes clusters within minutes from the VMware Cloud console. Enrich existing applications with AWS PaaS services, and automate the underlying infrastructure operations with DevOps tools.
Recover from Disasters with Cloud Service
Simplify disaster protection with VMware Cloud Disaster Recovery and VMware Site Recovery, on-demand disaster recovery as a service (DRaaS) optimized for VMware Cloud on AWS. Accelerate time-to-protection, simplify disaster recovery operations and reduce secondary site costs with cloud economics, while providing a secondary site that is operationally consistent with your VMware data centre.
What’s Next for VMware Cloud on AWS?
The addition of these new use cases makes VMware Cloud on AWS an even more compelling solution for our customers. The ability to quickly enable new uses case such as application modernization through VMware Tanzu Services fits perfectly in the cloud operating model of VMware Cloud on AWS.
Looking back at the beginning of the service and seeing where it stands now, not only shows the massive amount of new capabilities and features. It also shows that VMware Cloud on AWS is evolving in ways that were thought were not possible at the beginning of the service. The integration with the other VMware Cloud services (e.g. VMware Cloud Disaster Recovery, VMware Cloud Director Service) and the native AWS services (e.g. Transit Gateway, Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP) makes it a really powerful solution.
We are sure that the evolution of VMware Cloud on AWS is not finished yet and that the pace will only speed up, enabling new use cases and integrations with even more VMware Cloud and AWS services.
