Public cloud adoption has risen steadily over the last few years, with many organizations moving to a hybrid cloud approach, where they can harness the power of both private and public clouds. VMware provides seamlessly integrated hybrid and public cloud solutions to answer customers’ business imperatives. With a rich set of features and tools available on VMware Cloud on AWS, customers can now navigate through different phases of the cloud migration journey with great confidence and cost efficiency.
1. Discovery phase:
This is the initial phase of cloud migration, where different public cloud options and associated costs are explored, and workload migration candidates are identified. VMware Cloud on AWS offers customers an attractive TCO (total cost of ownership) story over the traditional 3-tier on-prem data center solution. Running on the dedicated AWS bare metal host, VMware Cloud on AWS has comparable or better cost versus other native cloud instances, depending upon the VM consolidation ratio. Customers receive the benefits of over-subscription on the dedicated VMware Cloud on AWS host, as the various VMs are not using all of their provisioned CPU or memory or storage capacity at all times. The more VMs the customer packs on the VMware Cloud on AWS host, the lower the cost is per VM. And with the on-demand nature of the cloud solution, new hosts can be spun up at the moment’s notice.
The free online VMware Cloud on AWS price calculator allows you to explore different service subscription terms and associated costs in different regions. A snapshot of the pricing tool is below:
Figure 1: VMware Cloud on AWS Pricing Calculator Snapshot
2. Planning phase:
The planning phase is often a daunting task for IT administrators, as this is where they plan for the re-platform and VM re-mapping effort, as workloads will be moved to the public cloud of choice. Changing vendors often involves huge planning and execution risk, as well as workload disruption and workforce retraining.
VMware Cloud on AWS makes your life much easier compared to other cloud alternatives. There is no need to re-architect the applications or to re-tool when you migrate vSphere-based virtual machines to VMware Cloud on AWS. You also get to enjoy the benefits of consistent operation management through vCenter servers, without the need to spend significant resources in retraining IT staff. All you need to do is to figure out how many hosts are needed in the cloud. A free web-based VMware Cloud on AWS capacity sizer and TCO tool can help you get a good estimate. The sizer tool allows you not only to choose the type of workload you want to migrate, but also to specify CPU cores, RAM, cache and capacity requirements for VMs. Default numbers based on average customer deployments are provided for your convenience. You will obtain the number of VMware Cloud on AWS hosts and SDDC clusters required as the output. Snapshots of the sizer input and output are shown below:
Figure 2: VMware Cloud on AWS Sizer Input Example
Figure 3: VMware Cloud on AWS Sizer Output Example
Furthermore, you can compare the VMware Cloud on AWS 3-Year TCO with the traditional 3-tier on-prem data center cost, and choose the best solution based on your budget.
Figure 4: VMware Cloud on AWS TCO Output Example
3. Migration phase:
VMware Cloud on AWS offers many features to make the migration journey easy for customers. Utilizing VMware vSphere® vMotion® feature with the AWS direct connect link, you can perform secure bi-directional application migration, while maintaining consistent policies. In addition, we have recently bundled the VMware Hybrid Cloud Extension service to the VMware Cloud on AWS core offer without any additional charge. Hybrid Cloud Extension offers bi-directional application landscape mobility and datacenter extension capabilities between any vSphere versions. It includes patent-pending capabilities to support VMware vSphere® vMotion®, bulk migration, high throughput network extension, WAN optimization, traffic engineering, automated VPN with strong encryption (Suite B) and secured datacenter interconnectivity with built-in vSphere protocol proxies. VMware Hybrid Cloud Extension enables cloud on-boarding without retrofitting source infrastructure, supporting migration from vSphere 5.0+ to VMware Cloud on AWS without introducing application risk and complex migration assessments.
All these powerful features enable customers to go through the cloud migration phase without significant disruption to workloads, reducing the time to migrate from months to days.
4. Operations Phase
When you are done with the workload migration, the same set of tools can be used to monitor and manage the application VMs, both in the cloud and on-premise. VMware Cloud on AWS ensures operational consistency in how you control, manage and secure the workload environments.
The same set of skill you have developed over the years using VMware services can be leveraged in the cloud. In addition, VMware takes care of the infrastructure software patching and upgrading work with no additional service charges. You can focus on delivering and running your business applications that directly impact your company’s bottom line. Last but not least, you have the ability to leverage AWS native services for application modernization once you have moved to the cloud.
In summary, VMware Cloud on AWS not only delivers enterprise-grade scale and performance, but also provides greater economic and technical benefits over other cloud alternatives. With VMware on AWS, a cloud service built on trusted VMware SDDC technologies, you, as a customer, will be able to navigate through the cloud migration journey with great confidence and efficiency!
