Cloud Migration VMware Cloud on AWS

VMware Cloud on AWS Delivers More…of Everything!

VMware Cloud on AWS continues to roll on with its fourth major quarterly update. And the hits just keep on coming as the engineering teams continue to drive to deliver an industry-defining hybrid cloud service that gives our customers the software-defined data center (SDDC) experience from the leader in private cloud, VMware, running on the leading public cloud provider, AWS. Bringing together the best of VMware and AWS, VMware Cloud on AWS provides customers an operationally consistent and familiar way to run, manage and secure applications in a hybrid cloud with access to a broad range of innovative and comprehensive AWS services as well as robust disaster protection.

This release continues to expand global coverage and introduces new capabilities to enhance enterprise readiness and consumption options.

So without further ado, let’s look at was ist neu!

Now Open for Business in AWS Europe (Frankfurt) Region

Our European and multi-national customers can now turn up full SDDCs on VMware Cloud on AWS in the AWS Europe (Frankfurt) region. This brings our service to a second major European geography and a member of the European Union, increasing total availability to four AWS regions in nine months.

Kickstart a VMware Cloud on AWS Experience with New Single Host SDDC Option

Customers have asked VMware for a way start their VMware Cloud on AWS experience with a smaller configuration. Prior to this release, the minimum cluster size was four hosts.

Today we are introducing a single-host, time-bound offering for customers to kickstart their VMware Cloud on AWS on experience at a low, predictable price. This new consumption option is designed for customers who want to prove the value of VMware Cloud on AWS in their environments before scaling to 4+ host configurations for production environments.

The service-life for the Single Host SDDC is limited to 30-day intervals. During the time period the single host is active, customers can easily scale to 4+ hosts and enjoy the full set of VMware Cloud on AWS capabilities 2 without loss or interruption to their work. Customers can purchase the Single Host SDDC using standard VMware credit funds and U.S. based credit cards in all available regions. Support for international credit cards is coming soon.

Here are some of the highlights of this offering:

  • Kickstart the VMware Cloud on AWS hybrid cloud experience with a 30-day time-bound, single-host configuration, at less than 1/4th the price of 4 host VMware Cloud on AWS offering.
  • Seamlessly scale-up at any time: At the completion of your time-bound offering, your single host SDDC will reset – service life is limited to 30-day intervals. However, you can easily scale-up to the minimum 4-host purchase and continue your cloud expansion without losing any of your data before the time period ends.
  • Start to prove the value of VMware Cloud on AWS with single host capabilities:
    • Accelerated on-boarding with expert support. Single Host SDDC receives the same unlimited 24/7 VMware Global Support Services as well as 24/5 live chat support.
    • Migration capabilities between on-premises and VMware Cloud on AWS: VMware Hybrid Cloud Extension for large-scale rapid migration, VMware vMotion for live migration and lastly cold migration.
    • Hybrid Linked Mode support: Single logical view of on-premises and VMware Cloud on AWS resources.
    • All-Flash vSAN storage: All Flash vSAN configuration, using flash for both caching and capacity, delivers maximum storage performance.
    • Disaster Recovery: Evaluate VMware Site Recovery, the cloud-based DR service optimized for VMware Cloud on AWS. VMware Site Recovery is purchased separately as an add-on service on a per-VM basis.
    • Seamless high-bandwidth, low latency access to native AWS services.

Sign up to be notified when Single Host SDDC is available

Independently Audited for GDPR-Readiness & Security Standards Compliance

The European Union General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR, went into effect on 25 May 2018. The GDPR attempts to unify data protection laws in Europe and certain of its rights and protections are having a global impact. This law sets a new standard for protection of an individual’s personal data and provides individuals specific rights to control the processing of their personal data. VMware Cloud on AWS has been independently verified by Schellman and validated to comply with GDPR requirements. Read more about our GDPR readiness in this blog.

To help customers comply with HIPAA, VMware offers a Business Associate Agreement (BAA) to all interested customers. The BAA provides fair and reasonable terms for healthcare providers, insurers and other organizations. VMware has completed an independent third-party examination of VMware Cloud on AWS against applicable controls of HIPAA. Current or potential customers interested in the VMware Cloud on AWS HIPAA BAA may contact their VMware representative.

Lastly, VMware Cloud on has achieved a list of well-defined and industry standard security certifications including ISO 27001, ISO 27017, ISO 27018, SOC 1 (SSAE18 / ISAE 3402), SOC 2 and SOC 3.

For more details on these certifications read, VMware Cloud On AWS Meets Industry-Standard Security And Compliance Standards.

VMware Horizon 7 for VMware Cloud on AWS Now Available

Customers can now rapidly scale Horizon 7 desktops and apps to VMware Cloud on AWS. VMware Horizon 7 for VMware Cloud on AWS delivers a seamlessly integrated hybrid cloud for virtual desktops and applications.  It combines the enterprise capabilities of VMware Cloud on AWS, with the leading capabilities of VMware Horizon – for a simple, secure and scalable solution. Now, customers can easily extend desktop services to address on-demand capacity, protection of desktop workloads and AWS cloud co-location for latency-sensitive applications without buying additional data center resources. For more information, read this blog post here.

Increased Availability For Mission-Critical Applications

In our previous blog post, we had previewed Stretched Clusters for VMware Cloud on AWS. We are pleased to announce that this capability is now available. This feature enables developers to focus on core application requirements and capabilities, instead of infrastructure availability. Built into VMware Cloud on AWS, the capability facilitates zero RPO infrastructure availability for mission-critical applications. It enables zero-RPO failover of workloads within clusters spanning two AWS Availability Zones. In addition, customers can also vMotion or live migrate workloads between hosts in a stretched cluster across two AWS availability zones. Watch this demo and read this blog post to understand more about Stretched Clusters for VMware Cloud on AWS.

 Accelerated Time to Protection With Enhancements To VMware Site Recovery

This release continues to expand on the capabilities of VMware Site Recovery, an add-on cloud service that delivers disaster recovery as a service to our customers.

Multi-site Disaster Recovery (DR) topology support: Fan-out from on-premises: This capability increases disaster recovery flexibility by extending primary data center protection to VMware Cloud on AWS alongside traditional on-premises DR sites with a unified management tool. Customers can now protect workloads to VMware Cloud on AWS as well as to traditional, on-premises secondary sites from a single, on-premises vCenter Server instance. Multiple instances of VMware Site Recovery Manager can now run with a single instance of vCenter Server on-premises and enable multi-target DR (including to VMware Cloud on AWS) on a per workload level.

Replication Seeding: This capability accelerates time to protection by leveraging previously replicated base disks of virtual machines as the seed for the new replication. Replication for VMs that have been protected in the past are now able to use previously replicated base disks as a seed, instead of requiring an initial full sync.

Backward compatibility with prior vCenter Server versions: Simplifies DR protection by pairing VMware Site Recovery with sites running earlier versions of vCenter Server. Building on previous releases, VMware Site Recovery is compatible with multiple versions of vCenter Server, allowing you to protect sites running vCenter Server versions 6.7, 6.5 and 6.0U3.

Enhancements To Hybrid Management and Ongoing Operations

  • vCenter Cloud Gateway (Preview): vCenter Cloud Gateway is a new on-premises virtual appliance that enables customers to obtain a single logical view and hybrid management of both on-premises & VMware Cloud on AWS resources from on-premises. This is an on-premises appliance that allows customers to configure vCenter Hybrid Linked Mode to link their on-premises vCenter(s) to the Cloud SDDC vCenter, and to manage the on-premises and Cloud SDDC resources from a single plane of glass (vSphere Client) running in their data center.
  • SDDC Save and Restore (Preview): This feature that reduces configuration time by allowing customers to save their VMware Cloud on AWS SDDC configurations upon deletion and re-deploy an SDDC using these saved configurations if they need to at a later date.

Continued Broadening of 3rd Party Technology Partner Solutions

VMware has been working with our VMware Technology Alliance Partners to test and validate solutions in cloud migration, data protection, DevOps, security, networking, key management system and many more categories. Newly validated partners include Druva Technologies, Griddable.IO, Infinidat, JetStream Software, Loadbalancer, PrimaryIO and Quest Software. To learn more about our joint solutions on VMware Cloud on AWS, please visit the VMware Solution Exchange.

In summary

Our journey continues. Over a short period of nine months, we have completed four releases of VMware Cloud on AWS. As always, this is just the beginning – stay tuned for more updates

Resources:

Disclaimers

1- Feature(s) released in preview are intended to gather feedback. May not be available to all applicable customers or in all AWS regions. The information in this document is for informational purposes only and may not be incorporated into any contract. There is no commitment or obligation that items in ‘Preview’, ‘’Developing’, and ‘Planning’, will become ‘Available’.

 2– Any features or operations that require more than 1 host running inside of VMware Cloud on AWS will not work with the Single Host SDDC. These include but are not limited to High Availability (HA), Stretched Clusters across multiple AZ, vMotion between VMware Cloud on AWS environments, Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS). If the single host fails, the data on your SDDC will be lost (FTT=0). VMware does not currently offer patching and upgrades for the Single Host SDDC. You may provision no more than one Single Host SDDC at a time.

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