VMware Cloud on AWS

What’s New with VMware Cloud on AWS: April 2021

With VMware Cloud on AWS, customers are recognizing the benefit of having their public cloud integrate and work seamlessly with their on-premises infrastructure while utilizing their existing teams, skillsets, tools and processes. VMware Cloud on AWS enables enterprise IT and operations teams to continue to add value to their business on the AWS Cloud, while maximizing their VMware investments, without the need to buy new hardware. This offering provides a solution for customers to quickly and confidently scale up or down capacity, without change or friction, for any workload with access to native cloud services. Download the IDC white paper to learn more about how VMware Cloud on AWS delivers significant business value at a lower cost and faster path to hybrid cloud.

In our January blog post, we talked about how VMware Cloud on AWS provides improved compliance, workload protection and enhancement in scale, usage and migration capabilities. Now let’s look at what’s new this time around.

What’s New in VMware Cloud on AWS: April 2021

Improvements to enterprise workload support:

  • PCI: PCI DSS Certification for VMware Cloud on AWS service operating in AWS US East (N. Virginia), US West (Oregon) and Europe (Ireland):  VMware Cloud on AWS received the highest level of PCI certification, achieving PCI DSS Level 1 provider status. In phase 1, PCI compliant SDDCs are enabled in the following 6 regions: US East (N. Virginia), US West (Oregon), Europe (Ireland), Asia Pacific (Sydney), Europe (London) and Europe (Frankfurt). By being certified as PCI DSS compliant level 1 service provider, VMware has demonstrated that the VMware Cloud on AWS service operates PCI DSS compliant security measures and controls, thereby serving the needs of a broad range of customers and workloads that need to store, process, or transmit cardholder or sensitive authentication data. VMware Cloud on AWS PCI DSS compliant infrastructure enables customers to evacuate PCI in-scope systems from their data centers with simple deployment, configuration and management of PCI enabled SDDCs. The VMware Cloud on AWS PCI DSS compliant solution reduces the time, effort, cost and complexity associated with operating applications requiring PCI. For context, the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS 3.2.1) is a proprietary information security standard administered by the PCI Security Standards Council. PCI DSS applies to entities that store, process, or transmit cardholder data (CHD) or sensitive authentication data (SAD), including merchants, processors, acquirers, issuers, and service providers. The PCI DSS is mandated by the card brands and administered by the Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council.

Please note that this PCI DSS compliance certification is not applicable to any VMware Cloud on AWS add-ons. It is only applicable to core SDDC components (vCenter, ESXi, vSAN and NSX)

You can learn more about it in this deep-dive blog post

  • Containers: Modernize enterprise workloads on VMware Cloud on AWS: VMware Cloud on AWS provides a platform for running customers’ enterprise workloads of today and tomorrow. With VMware Cloud on AWS, customers can start their modernization journey while minimizing disruption to their business. They can migrate their applications to the cloud while minimizing downtime. Once in the cloud, they can start transforming these applications by using modern frameworks such as Kubernetes, enriching them with native cloud services and automating the underlying infrastructure operations with DevOps/advanced operations tools. VMware Cloud on AWS also provides an efficient developer experience across the entire VMware Cloud on AWS platform with a developer center, developer tools, and automation tools.
      • Kubernetes: VMware Tanzu portfolio supports VMware Cloud on AWS, delivering enterprise-ready Kubernetes runtime with unified management of all your Kubernetes clusters. With recent enhancement, customers will be able to provision Tanzu Kubernetes Grid clusters directly from Tanzu Mission Control to reduce complexity. With this capability, Tanzu Mission Control will support full lifecycle management — provisioning, upgrading, scaling, deleting — of Tanzu Kubernetes Grid clusters deployed on VMware Cloud on AWS. Now, DevOps teams will be able to manage the lifecycle of multiple Tanzu Kubernetes Grid clusters running on VMware Cloud on AWS through a single control point, and also operate them consistently and efficiently at scale.
      • Cloud Native Storage for stateful Kubernetes applications: Cloud native storage is a capability that would provide comprehensive data management for stateful applications. Built natively into vSphere, this feature would make Kubernetes aware of how to provision storage in VMware Cloud on AWS environments on-demand in a fully automated, scalable fashion as well as provides visibility for the administrator into container volumes through vCenter. This feature is designed to address the storage needs of high-churn, highly dynamic container environments, abstracting infrastructure from developers while giving cloud admins manageability through VMware technologies they are familiar with. Customers can use storage policy-based management capabilities to simplify operations and lifecycle management. Customers would be able run, monitor and manage containers and virtual machines on the same platform using the same tools thereby providing flexibility and simplifying our customers’ infrastructure operations. More details here
  • VDI:
    • PostgreSQL support to store events for VMware Horizon: VMware Horizon will integratePostgreSQL as an event data store for Horizon events. Similar to using Microsoft SQL Server and Oracle Database, Horizon administrators now will be able to configure PostgreSQL and use it to log all events.  This open-source database option will be useful for the customers in reducing their Virtual Desktop Infrastructure TCO, especially after Microsoft’s October 1, 2019 licensing changes. 
  • Monthly billing for host usage forWindows Server and SQL Server licenses purchased through VMware: As mentioned previously in this blog from Sep 29,2020, VMware now supplies Windows Server and Microsoft SQL Server Enterprise licenses for use on VMware Cloud on AWS when customers are not able to migrate their existing licenses using BYOL or license mobility.  Customers can select from pre-packaged OVA instances, ISO binaries to create their own instances, or import their own customized images for use on VMware Cloud on AWS. Once licensed, customers can deploy unlimited number of instances on a cluster by cluster basis. The licenses are:
    • Offered per host for all hosts in the cluster
    • Offered on-demand and metered on a calendar month basis
    • Once licensed, end-user can deploy an unlimited number of suitable VMs with Windows Server and/or SQL Server
    • Maintenance or remediation hosts are not charged
    • Offered either as a pre-packaged OVF, Microsoft ISOs to allow you to build you own, or ability to import their own images for use on
      VMware Cloud on AWS

With the recent improvement, starting Feb 1, 2021, customers who have previously purchased Microsoft licenses through VMware, will be billed monthly based on their host usage for Windows Server and SQL Server during the previous calendar month. Accrual starts on Feb 1, 2021 and billing will start in the next month. The customer is billed based on the maximum number of hosts that are active in a cluster anytime in the calendar month. Microsoft licenses are billed on a core count basis.  E.g. i3.metal is billed at 36 cores; i3en is billed at 48 cores.  Microsoft licensing does not allow reduced core configurations. Once a customer selects that Windows or SQL Server is enabled on a cluster, then charges begin immediately, and the customer is billed for the entire calendar month. In the event that the customer resets the selection, the customer will be billed for the entire calendar month.

Now, customers can be in compliance with Microsoft Windows and SQL Server licensing requirements for VMware Cloud on AWS with no additional engineering effort. The monthly billing provides an easy path for customers to select and pay for licensing fees and deliver the funds to Microsoft on behalf of VMware Cloud on AWS end customers.

Improvements to commerce experience for customers purchasing through AWS/AWS Partners:

VMware and AWS are constantly looking at ways to improve the experience of our joint customers. One key aspect of this is the commerce experience for customers that are purchasing the VMware Cloud on AWS service and associated value-added VMware solutions through AWS or its partner network. Recently, a number of new capabilities were added through VMware’s commerce integrations with the AWS Cost and Billing Management Platform. New enhancements done in this area include:

  • Some enhancements in the VMware integration with AWS Commerce Platform will enable multiple sellers of record within a single VMware Cloud on AWS defined organization (Org). Customers who purchase from AWS or AWS Partners can now have a VMware seller account that gives them the opportunity to purchase and run any cloud service within VMware that is compatible with VMware Cloud on AWS in a single Org. This includes Microsoft SPLA licenses and any other VMware Cloud service not available for sale through the AWS Resell route to market.

Previously, access to these services were either not available at all, or only available through a complex Multi-Org set up that restricted some services’ ability to run optimally.  Customers can now purchase VMware Cloud on AWS (with AWS Seller or VMware Seller account), and in the same Org, they can purchase other VMware Cloud Services not available through the AWS Resell route to market.  This allows customers flexibility to purchase VMware Cloud services that they may not have access to through AWS Resell

Improvements in scale, availability and customer experience:

  • Enhancement to Elastic DRS (EDRS) Rapid Scale Out Policy: EDRS Rapid Scale-Out is configured to react faster and to add hosts in parallel, to allow a cluster to scale-out more quickly during events that require multiple hosts to be added rapidly. Some primary use cases that can benefit from this new policy are VDI disaster recovery events, or even bulk workload migration/power-on events. The Rapid Scale-Out maximum resources thresholds are the same as the EDRS Performance Policy thresholds which is 80%, but the minimum thresholds are set to 0%. This allows for a scale-out task to kick off quicker but also means we will not automatically scale-in; scale-in will be a manual process driven by the customer. With the new enhancement, customers can add up to 12 hosts in parallel, when they select the Elastic DRS Rapid Scale Out Policy (as compared to up to 4 hosts previously). You can learn more about it in this deep dive blog post
  • Reduction of Stretched Cluster Cross-AZ charges: Stretched clusters facilitate zero RPO infrastructure availability for mission-critical applications. This enables customers to failover workloads with zero RPO within clusters spanning two AWS Availability Zones (AZs). A little over a year ago, the price of Cross-AZ charges was reduced by 95%. Now, with recent enhancements, ten petabytes per month of Cross-AZ charges are included with any Stretched Cluster deployed within the service from this point forward. Many VMware Cloud on AWS customers will be able make Stretched Clusters their default configuration and automatically make their business-critical application more resilient. Learn more
  • Increased scale attributes for NSX Distributed Firewall (DFW): With this enhancement, VMware Cloud on AWS SDDC now supports up to 40,000 DFW rules across all sections. Also, the number of security groups supported is now increased to 12,000 and the number of VMs per group is increased to 1,800. The complete list of configuration maximums for Networking and Security can be found here
  • Maintenance Progress Report for SDDC Upgrade: VMware Cloud on AWS regularly performs updates on your SDDCs. These updates ensure continuous delivery of new features and bug fixes and maintain consistent software versions across the SDDC fleet. With this new capability, Cloud Admins can view the detailed progress of ongoing maintenance of upgrades in VMware Cloud on AWS Console user interface. If maintenance is ongoing, the maintenance summary shows information about the current phase and step of maintenance. It shows details of the operations performed in each step, as well as start and end times for the steps. It provides better user experience with more visibility into the SDDC upgrade process.

 Compliance assets:

  • Germany C5 white paper

The Cloud Computing Compliance Controls Catalogue is a cloud security certification prescribed by the German Federal Office of Information Security (BSI). The certification is based on some of the leading international standards such as ISO27001/17/18, AICPA SOC2, Cloud Security Alliance ANSSI Referential Secure Cloud 2.0, IDW and BSI IT-Grundschutz Catalogues. The VMware Cloud on AWS white paper on C5 demonstrates how we address the control requirements in C5 through our existing compliance offerings.

  • Japan FISC white paper

The “FISC (The Center for Financial Industry Information Systems) Guidelines for Computer Systems for Financial Services” are set of information security guidelines for financial institutions in Japan. Our white paper on FISC demonstrates how VMware Cloud on AWS helps financial institutions address the requirements in these guidelines. Financial institutions can utilize this white paper to assess the service risk in terms of security, privacy and compliance and establish an informed risk profile when moving workloads to VMware Cloud on AWS.

  • Protecting customer data white paper

VMware has a number of security controls in place to ensure security of customer data on VMware Cloud on AWS. This white paper describes these key controls and processes and VMware’s approach towards securing customer data.

Enhancements to migration capabilities:

VMware HCX for VMware Cloud on AWS helps accelerate an organization’s cloud adoption by facilitating workload mobility across a variety of destinations running a VMware SDDC stack. With a slew of new capabilities that were made available recently for VMware Cloud on AWS users at no additional cost, organizations can now expedite their migration projects and timelines even further. Now, with VMware HCX 4.0.0 release, we are releasing some new capabilities that provide customers enhanced visibility during their workload migrations

    • Migration Estimations: With this feature, an admin can provide a better assessment of how long business-critical migration operations may take to complete. Using real-time and predictive learning models, VMware HCX will provide an approximate estimation time required to complete the migration of a VM. For the initial rollout, this feature will support real-time predictions for bulk migration only.
    • In-Service Upgrade for Network Extension: In previous releases, upgrading the Network Extension appliances incurs a service interruption of 30-60 seconds. This is because the new network extension appliances were deployed with the same uplink IP addresses and NICs and the extension tunnels were brought down and need to be reestablished between the new appliances before data traffic can begin to flow again. With this new enhancement, now the new appliances are configured using extra IP addresses from the existing uplinks and will perform a configuration sync between the old and new appliances reducing the downtime to close to 1-3 seconds, up to 60x improvement over the previous method. The standard upgrade option will still be available.
    • Network Extension Details: With a focus on visibility, VMware HCX will provide details on the connection statistics for each extended network associated with a specific Network Extension appliance. The diagnostic information for extended networks includes the bit rate, bytes transmitted and received, packet rate, and packets transferred and received etc., refreshed every minute for the most accurate results.
    • Migration Event Details: Migration Event Details provides a detailed view of all the actions that are part of the execution flow, including but not limited to the state of the migration, how long the migration remains in a specific state, whether the migration has succeeded or failed, and more. It documents everything that a migration goes through and logs it as a series of events.
    • Migrating NSX Security Group Tags: Customers using VMware NSX Distributed Firewall on the source site can migrate the security tags during the VM migration to the destination site (NSX), paving the way for a smoother transition of the security policies. This feature deepens the integration with NSX and is available with many HCX migration types such as, Bulk Migration, HCX vMotion, HCX Replication-Assisted vMotion (RAV), and cloud-to-cloud mobility migration. Existing security tags can be based on NSX for vSphere or NSX-T.
    • New release cadence: Starting with the HCX 4.0.0 release, HCX is switching the naming convention from ‘R’ releases to Major.Minor. Maintenance Semantic Versioning to align with the VMware convention. VMware HCX will now use X.Y.Z.P where:
      • X is the major version.
      • Y is the minor version.
      • Z is the maintenance version.
      • P is the patch version. This is a unique bit that uses the build number.

Please also note that the VMware N-2 Lifecycle Policy will be applicable with the new convention, providing extended support and more flexibility to customers.

Improvements to disaster recovery as a service:

  • Improvements to VMware Cloud Disaster Recovery: As a recap, VMware Cloud Disaster Recovery offers on-demand disaster recovery to IT administrators responsible for IT infrastructure and services resiliency, delivered as an easy-to-use SaaS solution with cloud economics. Some of the key new planned capabilities for VCDR include:
    • Expanding regional availability: VMware Cloud Disaster Recovery expanded its regional coverage by delivering availability in AWS Europe (Stockholm), AWS South America (Sao Paulo) and AWS Asia Pacific (Seoul). This will bring the availability of VMware Cloud Disaster Recovery to 16 Global AWS Regions, up from 13 in Jan 2021.
    • Support for pilot light environments with i3.metal 2-host clusters: VMware Cloud Disaster Recovery now supports VMware Cloud on AWS 2-host clusters on i3.metal for pilot light failover environments down from 3+ host environments, reducing the cost of pilot light environments further.
    • Support for inter-region protection: With this enhancement, now customers can choose VMware Cloud on AWS SDDC as a source site and protect their workloads using VMware Cloud Disaster Recovery
    • Confident Scaling- Multi-Instance Support: With this capability, VMware Cloud Disaster Recovery supports multiple instances per org. This empowers customers with the largest data estates to confidently scale their DR operations leveraging the elasticity and economics of the cloud and provides federated management of all VMware Cloud DR instances.
    • Paid pilot fully on-demand consumption: Now customers can purchase VMware Cloud Disaster Recovery service on an on-demand consumption basis for short-term, customer-paid pilots. Customers can pay a flat rate fee on an hourly basis and get 5 TiB protected capacity and 25 protected VMs and pay overage rates beyond that. Billing is monthly.
    • Monthly payment for term subscriptions (MonthlyPay): VMware Cloud Disaster Recovery is priced as a combination of a per-TiB charge based on the protected storage capacity and a per virtual machine charge based on the number of protected VMs (total price = $/TiB + $/VM). To use the offering, customers must purchase a committed term subscription for either a 1-year or 3-year term for the per-TiB part (for a minimum quantity of 5 TiB). With this new payment option, customers can pay in monthly installments for 1-year and 3-year term commitment for the per-TiB part.

Check out this blog to get deep dive understanding of ‘What’s new in VMware Cloud Disaster Recovery- March 2021

  • Enhancements to VMware Site Recovery: VMware Site Recovery™ for VMware Cloud on AWS simplifies traditional disaster recovery and delivers a high-performance service. Built on top of enterprise-grade DR tools (VMware Site Recovery Manager, vSphere Replication) and global cloud infrastructure (AWS), the service provides an end-to-end disaster recovery solution that is quick to deploy and leverages existing know-how. Some of the enhancements in VMware Site Recovery include:
      • Reduced time forre-protecting VMs: With this enhancement, the time needed for re-protecting virtual machines after a planned recovery with VMware Site Recovery has been reduced significantly. When the delta between the data on the source site and recovery site is not large, the reduction in time for re-protecting VMs is the largest. This will help customers bring up their applications faster when they run re-protect after a planned failover.
      • Replication performance enhancement: With this enhancement, initial full synch during replication has been optimized when the replica disks are empty. Also, with some latest updates in replication manager, it improves replication throughput and decreases latency impact of large VMs that results in reduction in RPO.

Improvements in flexible subscription options:

 VMware Cloud Universal: VMware Cloud Universal is a flexible subscription for multi cloud that delivers credits for flexible VMware cloud infrastructure and management for deployments across a customer managed private cloud, VMware managed local cloud, or a VMware managed public cloud. VMware Cloud Universal also includes VMware Success 360 – VMware’s premier customer success program. This new flexible subscription introduces credits that can be consumed via customer-managed on-premises (VMware Cloud Foundation-subscription), or VMware managed via local cloud or VMware managed in the public cloud (VMware Cloud on AWS.)  VMware Cloud Universal credits can also be deployed against VMware vRealize Cloud for management of previous VMware infrastructure investments.

With recent enhancements, some of the new capabilities are:

  1. Infrastructure Choice and Flexibility:   The VMware Cloud Universal subscription enables credits to be redeemed against a variety of VMware Cloud services.   These services allow for credit consumption aligned to specific offering attributes of each service.  Now, the following infrastructure services will include:
  • VMware Cloud Foundation- subscription (VCF-s), delivered as a Customer managed private cloud on-premises
  • VMware Cloud on AWS, delivered as a VMware managed cloud service running on AWS public cloud, and any VMware Cloud on AWS add-ons
  • VMware vRealize Cloud, delivered as a managed service for existing VMware infrastructure implementation.
  1. VMware Cloud Universal Add-on Services:  VMware will deliver multiple add-on offerings to maximize VMware Cloud investment.   Now, with recent enhancements, these will include the following add-ons for VMware Cloud on AWS: VMware Cloud Disaster Recovery, vRealize Automation, vRealize Cloud Universal, VMware Site Recovery, Log Insight, vRealize Network Insight Cloud, and vRealize Operations.  Basic AWS services (include IP and Bandwidth) can consume VMware Cloud Universal credits. In addition, through the VMware Microsoft SPLA, Windows DC Server and SQL Server Enterprise is available.

You can learn more about VMware Cloud Universal in this blog post

Improvements to advanced cloud management:

vRealize Cloud Management

VMware vRealize® Cloud Management is an intelligent hybrid cloud management solution that enables consistent deployments and operations for apps, infrastructure, and platform services, across VMware Cloud on AWS and on-premises/hybrid cloud environments.

Below are the enhancements for the key vRealize services:

New enhancements delivered for vRealize Automation Cloud include:

      • Cloud Zone Insights: Maintain visibility of VMware Cloud on AWS consumption and capacity for the cloud zones that users have defined. Combining the power of vRealize Operations Cloud with vRealize Automation Cloud, Cloud Zone Insights will bring users the information they need and the actions they will need to take on the same platform to tighten up your hybrid cloud operations.
      • Secret properties: Reduce the exposure of sensitive data by keeping them encrypted in the database. vRealize Automation Cloud will help users create and encrypt secret variables for VMware Cloud on AWS and consume them as part of VMware Cloud Templates or extensibility workflows (e.g., with ABX or vRealize Orchestrator).
      • Property Groups: Manage user teams more efficiently with Property Groups. Property groups let users templatize their VMware Cloud on AWS environment properties and reuse them for new catalog requests within a VMware Cloud Template.

New enhancements planned for vRealize Automation Cloud include:

      • Day 2 Networking Automation for VMware Cloud on AWS: Take control of your network security groups beyond provisioning. vRealize Automation Cloud is adding granular Day 2 actions for reconfiguring and changing rules on security groups for applications running on VMware Cloud on AWS
      • Granular Policy Criteria and Resource Tags: Refine the governance for VMware Cloud on AWS environments at the resource level, leveraging resource tags and numerous new resource attributes. Policies can be applied to one or multiple projects/user groups.
      • Flexible Disk Allocation: Define storage requirements for workloads provisioned on VMware Cloud on AWS for your user needs. Includes support for multi-vm/disk configurations, sizing and disk placement optimization.
      • New geographic availability in Canada (Central). This will be in addition to the available geographic locations for vRealize Automation Cloud, namely US West (Oregon), Asia Pacific (Sydney), Asia Pacific (Singapore) and Europe (Frankfurt).

New enhancements delivered for vRealize Operations Cloud include:

      • VMC Configuration Maximums dashboard to view both the published hard and soft limits for VMC Organizations, SDDCs, clusters, vSAN, and hosts. Any active configuration maximum alerts are listed along with color-coded limits showing which limits require attention.
      • Ability to aggregate and analyze VMware Cloud on AWS metrics and properties from multiple sources to determine compliance with supported configuration maximums for the service and provide appropriate alerts to users and service operators
      • New geographic availability in Europe (Frankfurt). This will be in addition to the available geographic locations for vRealize Operations Cloud, namely US West (Oregon) and Asia Pacific (Sydney).

 New enhancements planned for vRealize Operations Cloud include:

      • New geographic availability in Canada (Central). This will be in addition to the available geographic locations for vRealize Operations Cloud, namely US West (Oregon), Asia Pacific (Sydney) and Europe (Frankfurt).
      • Ability to integrate VMware Cloud on AWS costing to vRealize Operations to cover both vCenter and VMware Cloud on AWS for cost and capacity use cases. With this capability, the information on host subscription purchases can be pulled from CSP bills so that customers can add different hosts and SDDCs to their org in different time frames
      • Ability to add/remove workload integration with VMware Cloud on. AWS cost management calculated rates with VMware Cloud on AWS What-If scenario
      • VMware Cloud on AWS What-if Planning will enable customers to predict demand, plan for future capacity needs and get actionable insights with new capacity planning capabilities for VMware Cloud on AWS.  This enables VMC customers to understand when they will run out of time remaining, and cost impact of adding or removing VMs from an existing VMware Cloud on AWS environment.
      • Better context and information about the sddc and an org with new VMware Cloud on AWS org and sddc summary page
    • VMware vRealize Cloud Management Assessment: VMware vRealize® Cloud Management Assessment™ (CMA) is an easy to use assessment tool that provides simple instructions and links for more information and a specific set of dashboards for each use case. By installing vRealize Operations and using the Management Assessment, customers can get detailed insights working with VMware field personnel on:
      • Preparing for a move to VMware Cloud on AWS
      • Managing VMware Cloud on AWS
      • Understanding the applicability of vRealize Cloud Universal
      • Managing AWS public cloud environments
      • Managing container-based environments
      • Managing Horizon desktop environments
  • vRealize Network Insight Cloud is a solution for end-to-end network visibility, troubleshooting, and predictive analytics that enables application migrations, optimizes network performance with troubleshooting capabilities, and manages the scaling VMware Cloud on AWS deployments.

New enhancements delivered for vRealize Network Insight Cloud include:  

      • Improved granular networking metrics, data, and telemetry for VMware Cloud on AWS
      • Enhanced metrics for VMware Cloud on AWS NSX Edge and AWS Direct Connect
      • End-to-End VM to VM MPLS path visibility for VMware Cloud on AWS Direct Connect
      • Improved scale with Flow Based Application Discovery with Machine Learning – 3x Improvement for number of VMs and application scale supported
      • Cloud Provider Hub support for vRealize Network Insight Cloud so MSPs can utilize a multi-tenant version for network visibility of VMware Cloud on AWS
      • New geographic availability in Asia Pacific (Sydney). This will be in addition to the available geographic locations for vRealize Network Insight Cloud, namely: US West (Oregon), Europe (London) and Asia Pacific (Tokyo). 

New enhancements planned for vRealize Network Insight Cloud include:  

      • Network visibility of VMware Cloud on AWS SDDC Groups that provides visibility into traffic flows. This will help in cost analysis and network performance measurement and optimization. With this capability, intra-SDDC Group flows are supported. Flow based application discovery is also supported with SDDC Groups to discover VMs and application boundaries.
      • Visibility of network metrics for VMware Cloud on AWS Transit Connect which allows simplified topology visibility into flows, events, and troubleshooting for hybrid cloud
      • Improved metrics with bandwidth and packets per second for VMware Cloud on AWS NSX Edge router and VMware HCX Layer2 Connectivity
      • Alerts on various maximum threshold metrics for network and security configurations when certain metrics and thresholds are exceeded for network configuration environments
      • New support for L3 MPLS VPN and VRF Route Leaking for VMware Cloud on AWS Direct Connect Colo Router 
  • VMware vRealize Log Insight Cloud delivers centralized log management, deep operational visibility, and intelligent analytics across your VMware SDDC software stack running in VMware Cloud on AWS.

New enhancements delivered for vRealize Log Insight Cloud include:  

      • VMware Cloud on AWS Content Pack provides powerful insights into the NSX-T firewall rules, packet traffic rules created in VMware cloud on AWS along with audit details allowing administrators to audit, monitor and troubleshoot the behavior of configured rules in their VMware Cloud on AWS environment.
      • Triggered Alerts and Alert Definitions help accelerate time-to-resolution with intuitive dashboards and widgets, intelligent query and searchability, and visualizations that enable fast time-to-value with universal log collection
      • Forward logs and events to other endpoints. You can forward all VMC logs or use filters to forward specific logs

 New enhancements planned for vRealize Log Insight Cloud include:  

      • New geographic availability in Canada (Central). This will be in addition to the available geographic locations for vRealize Operations Cloud, namely US West (Oregon), Asia Pacific (Sydney) and Europe (Frankfurt).
      • Knowledge Base (KB) Correlation with logs using machine learning techniques helps show errors or events with the ability to perform different actions.
      • Enhanced Multi-Cloud observability across AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform logs (in addition to 50+ AWS services)

 

Availability

To view the latest status of features for VMware Cloud on AWS, visit: https://cloud.vmware.com/vmc-aws/roadmap . Refer to the release notes VMware Cloud on AWS release notes for latest updates.

The following capabilities are available today:

PCI: PCI DSS Certification for VMware Cloud on AWS service operating in AWS US East (N. Virginia), US West (Oregon) and Europe (Ireland), Containers: Cloud Native Storage for stateful Kubernetes applications, Monthly billing for host usage for Windows Server and SQL Server licenses purchased through VMware, Improvements to commerce experience: Enable multiple sellers of record within a single VMware Cloud on AWS defined organization (Org), Enhancement to Elastic DRS (EDRS) Rapid Scale Out Policy, Reduction of Stretched Cluster Cross-AZ charges, Increased scale attributes for NSX Distributed Firewall (DFW), Maintenance Progress Report for SDDC Upgrade, VMware HCX: Migration Estimations, In-Service Upgrade for Network Extension, Network Extension Details, Migration Event Details, Migrating NSX Security Group Tags, New release cadence, VMware Cloud Disaster Recovery: Expanded regional availability, Support for pilot light environments with i3.metal 2-host clusters, Support for inter-region protection, Confident Scaling- Multi-Instance Support, Paid pilot fully on-demand consumption, Monthly payment for term subscriptions (MonthlyPay), VMware Site Recovery: Reduced time for re-protecting VMs, Replication performance enhancement, VDI: PostgreSQL support to store events for VMware Horizon, VMware Cloud Universal availability, vRealize Automation Cloud: Cloud Zone Insights, Secret properties, Property Groups, Day 2 Networking Automation for VMware Cloud on AWS, Granular Policy Criteria and Resource Tags, Flexible Disk Allocation, New geographic availability in Canada (Central), vRealize Operations Cloud: VMC Configuration Maximums dashboard, Ability to aggregate and analyze VMware Cloud on AWS metrics and properties from multiple sources, New geographic availability in Europe (Frankfurt) and Canada (Central), vRealize Cloud Management Assessment, Ability to integrate VMware Cloud on AWS costing to vRealize Operations, VMware Cloud on AWS What-If scenario, VMware Cloud on AWS What-if Planning, VMware Cloud on AWS org and sddc summary pages, vRealize Network Insight Cloud: Improved granular networking metrics, data, and telemetry, Enhanced metrics for VMware Cloud on AWS NSX Edge and AWS Direct Connect, End-to-End VM to VM MPLS path visibility for VMware Cloud on AWS Direct Connect, Improved scale with Flow Based Application Discovery with Machine Learning, Cloud Provider Hub support, New geographic availability in Asia Pacific (Sydney), Network visibility of VMware Cloud on AWS SDDC Groups, Visibility of network metrics for VMware Cloud on AWS Transit Connect, Improved metrics with bandwidth and packets per second for VMware Cloud on AWS NSX Edge router and VMware HCX Layer2 Connectivity, Alerts on various maximum threshold metrics, New support for L3 MPLS VPN and VRF Route Leaking for VMware Cloud on AWS Direct Connect Colo Router, vRealize Log Insight Cloud: insights into the NSX-T firewall rules, packet traffic rules, audit trails, Triggered Alerts and Alert Definitions, Forward logs and events to other endpoints, New geographic availability in Canada (Central), Knowledge Base (KB) Correlation with logs using machine learning techniques, Enhanced Multi-Cloud observability

The following capabilities/offerings are expected to be available in VMware’s Q1’Fiscal Year 2022:

Kubernetes: Provision Tanzu Kubernetes Grid clusters directly from Tanzu Mission Control, Compliance assets: Germany C5 white paper, Japan FISC white paper, Protecting customer data white paper

 Resources

For more information related to VMware Cloud on AWS, here are some more learning resources for you:

 

Sonali Desai

Sonali Desai is a Product Marketing Engineer for VMware Cloud Foundation at VMware by Broadcom, Inc. Sonali has been working in IT industry for more than 15 years with experience…

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