VMware Cloud on AWS Outposts

Announcing availability of VMware Cloud on AWS Outposts

Get the agility and innovation of VMware Cloud in your data center delivered as a Service with VMware Cloud on AWS Outposts. Today, we are very excited to announce that VMware Cloud on AWS Outposts will be available in VMware’s Q3FY22 and customers will be able to purchase it via the VMware Cloud Service Portal in VMware’s Q3FY22.

As you all know, modern IT infrastructure is one of the core pillars of the digital transformation strategy and public cloud has been a digital transformation enabler for the organizations because of several benefits such as elasticity, on-demand scalability, agility, innovation and reduced operational overhead to name a few. While a broad range of modern applications are increasingly finding value in public cloud, many applications need to reside on-premises due to several reasons such as data locality/proximity, low latency requirements, data residency/sovereignty requirements, etc. For such applications, customers want to leverage cloud operating model on-premises so that they can focus on strategic business priorities rather than focusing their resources on managing infrastructure. And that’s why we have come up with VMware Cloud on AWS Outposts- bringing best of both the worlds- public cloud and private cloud

What is VMware Cloud on AWS Outposts?

For customers looking to extend their AWS-centric model to their on-premises data center, VMware Cloud on AWS Outposts is a perfect solution. It is a jointly engineered on-premises as-a-service solution, which is powered by VMware Cloud Foundation, that runs VMware’s enterprise-class Software-Defined Data Center (SDDC) software on next-generation, dedicated Amazon Nitro-based EC2 bare-metal instances provisioned in AWS Outposts. It provides a deeply integrated hybrid cloud environment with a unified control plane that provides access to VMware Cloud on AWS capacity and regional native AWS services.

VMware Cloud on AWS Outposts: VMware and AWS Executive Perspective

Hear  from Matt Morgan, VP, Cloud Infrastructure Business Group, VMware and Steven Jones, Director, Product Management, Amazon about their perspectives on how this announcement extends our partnership and delivers value to our customers:

Why VMware Cloud on AWS Outposts: Key differentiating capabilities:

  1. Best-in-class enterprise grade capabilities delivered as-a-service on-premises
    • VMware’s flagship SDDC software (vSphere, vSAN and NSX along with vCenter Management) running on dedicated Amazon Nitro-based EC2 bare-metal instances provisioned in AWS Outposts, delivered as-a-service on-premises
    • Fully managed infrastructure: Continuous lifecycle management, ongoing service monitoring and automated processes that will enhance the health and security of infrastructure, backed by expert VMware Site Reliability Engineers
    • Proactive hardware monitoring from AWS with break/fix support
    • VMware will be a single point of contact for any kind of support
    • Developer ready infrastructure delivered in weeks vs. months with plug and play installation
    • Intrinsic availability and built-in resiliency with features such as comprehensive failure protection with Storage Policy-Based Management (SPBM), vSphere HA, Auto Remediation
    • Ability to auto scale and rebalance clusters based on user requirements through Elastic DRS feature will be enabled out of the box
  2. Next-gen high performance AWS Outposts infrastructure with enhanced security
    • Amazon Nitro-based bare metal EC2 infrastructure with high performance and enhanced security that will support the workloads of today and tomorrow
    • AWS Nitro System that will continuously monitor, protect, and verify the instance hardware and firmware
    • Resilient infrastructure with dark node capacity included for remediation, Elastic DRS scale-out, and lifecycle management purposes
    • A centralized redundant power conversion unit and a DC distribution system in the backplane of the rack that will improve reliability, cost, serviceability, and energy efficiency.
    • Hardened security with removable and destroyable hardware security key on each server and Nitro security key to better protect data at rest residing on the rack
    • Enclosed rack with lockable door and built-in tamper detection
    • Encrypted network connection to the AWS region along with network encryption between the nodes in Outposts rack
  3. Deeply integrated end-to-end Hybrid Cloud as a Service
    • Compatible infrastructure: No reconfiguration, conversion, refactoring, or rearchitecting of existing applications
    • Consistent operations: Use established on-premises governance, security and operational policies and vSphere/vCenter APIs across environments.
    • Familiarity: Eliminate re-training or minimize learning curve by using familiar skills, tools, and processes for managing hybrid cloud environments
    • Seamless workload portability: Move workloads bi-directionally between VMware on-premises, VMware Cloud on AWS Outposts and VMware Cloud on AWS and optimize workload placement as per the business needs
    • Ability to easily extend infrastructure capacity to cloud in minutes as needed (for non-constrained workloads)
    • A unified hybrid control plane with single pane of glass view to manage resources across end-to-end hybrid cloud environment
    • Direct access with 200+ native AWS services available in the local AWS region via Elastic Network Interface or VMware Transit Connect
    • Build once, deploy anywhere: Truly consistent developer experience with same APIs, developer tools and automation tools across the hybrid cloud environments
    • Seamless connectivity between VMware Cloud on AWS Outposts to VMware Cloud on AWS via AWS Direct Connect private or public virtual interface, or the public Internet and between VMware Cloud on AWS Outposts and existing on-premises environment via VMware managed local gateway
    • Fast, cost-effective and low risk migration at scale across hybrid cloud environment with VMware HCX
    • Robust ecosystem: Extend the capabilities through a robust set of 300+ opensource and third-party solutions validated for use on VMware Cloud on AWS Outposts SDDCs

Now let’s look at the use cases of VMware Cloud on AWS Outposts

Key use cases:

  1. Data/App Locality: For Cloud first organizations, who want to leverage the cloud (“as-a-service”) model, but at the same time, want to keep data on-premises for variety of reasons. Typical scenarios include:
    • Low latency: 
      1. For latency sensitive applications or real time applications, want to enable proximity to data and physical systems to address WAN latency sensitivity. Examples: video transcoding apps, high-frequency trading, and exchange platforms.
    • Local data processing:
      1. Need to host workloads processing large volumes of data locally due to WAN bandwidth constraints or high data transfer costs 
    • Data sovereignty/compliance:
      1. Need to run specific applications locally due to data residency requirements such as data sovereignty rules, country specific regulation or compliance etc.
      2. Want to use VMware Cloud on AWS Outposts as a DR target due to inability to fail over to VMware Cloud on AWS due to data residency requirements
  2. Data center elasticity/resiliency: For Cloud fit organizations, who want to leverage hybrid cloud model in order to address static data. Center limitations. Typical scenarios include:
    • Infrastructure scaling: 
      1. Need to circumvent internal resource and process constraints or need to rebalance CapEx-OpEx costs in data center by on-demand scaling of infrastructure capacity to the cloud for non-constrained workloads
      2.  Want to cache data locally for fast response but use cloud for long term storage or for data analytics needs. 
    • Workload resiliency:
      1. Want to perform host-level HA with automated failover to VMware Cloud on AWS in case of a disaster event*
    • Cloud ready infrastructure:
      1. Want to use VMware Cloud on AWS Outposts as test bed for short term projects before moving to cloud
      2. Want to use VMware Cloud on AWS Outposts as training or development environment for cloud native applications
  3. Data Center/App Modernization: For ‘Digital First’ organizations who want to accelerate their digital transformation initiatives by modernizing infrastructure and applications. Typical scenarios include:
    • Infrastructure modernization
      1. Want to perform infrastructure refreshes in on-premises environment and want to leverage the opportunity to replace current hardware with modern infrastructure stack (HW EOL, Infra software upgrades to major versions – pre-vSphere 6.0, etc.) 
    • Application modernization
      1. Want to modernize existing applications or build modern hybrid applications leveraging regional AWS native cloud services 
      2. Want to containerize applications with Kubernetes support across hybrid cloud environments*
    • Branch office/large edge modernization
      1. Want to setup managed IT infrastructure and modernize operations at large branch offices or edge locations with centralized management plane, e.g., Infrastructure setup at big retail stores, manufacturing plants Telco edge locations, etc.*

*Based on future availability

Regional availability:

VMware Cloud on AWS Outposts can be shipped to the United States. VMware Cloud on AWS Outposts must be connected to an AWS region where VMware Cloud on AWS is supported (AWS US East (N. Virginia), AWS US West (Oregon)). Minimum connectivity requirements are 1GB and at least 150ms of latency between region and rack location.

Please contact your AWS or VMware representative if you are interested in ordering VMware Cloud on AWS Outposts outside of the US or you can send us an email to [email protected]

What’s included in the package? And how will it be priced?

VMware Cloud on AWS Outposts will come with the following components:

  • AWS Outposts 42u rack
  • Dedicated Nitro-based EC2 metal servers with local SSD storage (as per the order)
  • VMware SDDC software – vSphere, vSAN, NSX-T, vCenter Server
  • VMware HCX 
  • VMware Global Support and 24×5 IM Chat support

VMware Cloud on AWS Outposts is priced as a package on a per configuration basis. The configurations start with 3-hosts configuration and goes up to 8-hosts configuration. The dark capacity is included in package/pricing at no cost to the customer. It is available to purchase as 3-yearsubscription option. Please visit the pricing page for the latest information on pricing

Where can I get more technical details?

To learn more about what’s under the hood in terms of compute, storage and networking, AWS Outposts rack configuration, details around connectivity to AWS VPC and connectivity to local VPC, deployment and networking requirements, order flow steps etc., please check out this Technical deep-dive blog on VMware Cloud on AWS Outposts

How to learn more and get started with VMware Cloud on AWS Outposts?

Disclaimer: The overview of new technology represents no commitment from VMware to deliver these features in any generally available product. Features are subject to change, and pricing and packaging for any new features/functionality/technology discussed or presented, have not been determined

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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