AWS Guest Post: VMware Cloud on AWS GovCloud (US)

This is part one of a two-part series on VMware Cloud on AWS GovCloud (US), authored by AWS. 

By Perry Peterson, Partner Development Manager, AWS

VMware Cloud on AWS GovCloud (US) has officially been announced. This is an important announcement for our public sector customers that have sensitive workloads requiring ITAR compliance, FedRAMP, or Department of Defense accredited cloud services.

VMware Cloud on AWS is a differentiated, jointly engineered solution that is delivered, managed, and supported by VMware. It enables organizations to rapidly adopt a hybrid cloud strategy by delivering seamless, large-scale application and workload migration for vSphere-based environments. VMware Cloud on AWS is suited for organizations looking to leverage the cloud for use cases ranging from datacenter evacuation, datacenter expansion, disaster recovery, or the desire to have access to AWS-native services through a high-bandwidth, low-latency, and highly redundant connection. Public sector agencies can leverage the familiar VMware software-defined data center (SDDC) software stack on premises and in the cloud, all while meeting the necessary security and data privacy requirements.

Today, VMware Cloud on AWS has achieved the following certifications and compliances across the AWS US East & West, London, and Frankfurt Regions:

• ISO 27001, 27017, 27018
• SOC 1, SOC 2, SOC 3
• GDPR Compliant
• HIPAA BAA
• CSA STAR Self-Assessment

With the announcement of VMware Cloud on AWS GovCloud (US), federal agencies will soon have the ability to store sensitive data and run DoD IL 4/5 workloads with the new service. The new service will be a dedicated deployment of VMware Cloud on AWS running in AWS GovCloud (US), Amazon’s cloud region designed to host sensitive data, regulated workloads, and address the most stringent U.S. government security and compliance requirements. The VMware team will expand their existing VMware Federal Global Support Services team to support the service. The ultimate goal will be to achieve FedRAMP-High accreditation and be compliant with DoD accreditation requirements in the coming months.

Once achieved, government agencies will be able to seamlessly extend their vSphere-based infrastructures into the public cloud without the need to re-platform, re-write, or re-architect applications. VMware Cloud on AWS GovCloud (US) will also allow access to AWS-native services already being leveraged today.

As of June 2018, the VMware team has completed the setup of VMware Cloud on AWS in AWS GovCloud (US) and plans to make the new service generally available in the second half of 2018. FedRAMP-High status is currently being targeted, and the long-term view will be to achieve ITAR compliance, obtain a provisional authority (PA) by the Defense Information Systems Agency for Impact Level 4/5 workloads, and leverage FedRAMP efforts to comply with Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS) requirements.

From a feature and functionality perspective, VMware Cloud on AWS GovCloud (US) will offer the same fundamental features as the generally available offering today. VMware is committed to delivering the same experience customers receive with the current VMware Cloud on AWS offering to its AWS GovCloud (US) counterpart. It is deployed from the same codebase and same software stack (ESXi, vSphere, NSX, and VSAN) as the commercial service so that updates can be done frequently. This will remain a completely managed service where VMware will deliver, manage, and support the underlying infrastructure. There will be minor differences around on-boarding, authentication, and a few minor features like in-product support and tutorials that currently use third-party support software. However, the overall experience will be almost identical between the two services.

VMware Cloud on AWS GovCloud (US) will allow public sector agencies to securely deploy a hybrid cloud solution by seamlessly extending their vSphere-based infrastructures to AWS’s global infrastructure while maintaining operational consistency and leveraging existing tools in use today. For more information around the new service and a roadmap of certification and feature releases, please leverage the following websites: https://cloud.vmware.com/govcloud and https://cloud.vmware.com/govcloud/stay-informed.

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Perry Peterson is a Partner Development Manager at AWS focused on supporting the VMware Cloud on AWS service in the SLED segment. From a partner perspective, he has supported VMware and AWS for the past several years where he has played an integral role in helping resellers define and establish their private and public cloud practices.  He currently holds two VMware Certified Professional certifications (Datacenter Virtualization, Network Virtualization) as well as several AWS accreditations. You can follow Perry on twitter @ppeterson87.