ICYMI: vExperts Share Their Tips on Low-Cost Cloud Migrations with VMware Cloud on AWS with vRealize Cloud Management in #vRealizeChat

Authored by Haley Kilroy

Every few weeks, VMware Cloud Management vExperts meet on Twitter to talk hot topics like the cloud operating model and networking for modern applications. On August 12, 2021 the team came together once again to discuss low-cost cloud migrations with VMware Cloud on AWS with vRealize Cloud Management. It was a fun and informative conversation covering a variety of questions from migration considerations, benefits and more.

Here’s what you might have missed…

Hello and welcome to the #vRealizeChat!🙋Today’s topic is low-cost #Cloud Migrations to @vmwarecloudaws with #CloudManagement. ☁️

Before we dive in, please introduce yourself and where you’re tweeting from. Don’t forget to use #vRealizeChat in your responses…Let’s go!👏 [Introductory Tweet]

• Bill Roth: Hi folks: @BillRothVMware from here. I run the corp cloud economics group at VMware. What the heck is cloud economics? Check out here… and/or here…
• Martijn Smit: Nice timing on the account lock, Twitter! Joining in the fun of the #vRealizeChat
• John Dias: Happy Thursday everyone from Baton Rouge, Louisiana! Grab a cuppa ☕️ and join our #vRealizeChat
• Thomas Bryant: Hey hey! I’m Thomas Bryant and I do Product Marketing here at @VMware in @vmwarecloudmgmt
• Anders Hudson: in San Jose CA
• Sehjung Hah: from the Palo Alto office, product marketing for vRealize Network Insight and tweeting from home
• Tuan Loc Nguyen: from the NSX Team

Q1) Before we get into the how, let’s first ask the why…🤨 93% of enterprises have a #MultiCloud strategy and 83% have a #HybridCloud strategy.

Why are so many organizations making the move? 👀 #vRealizeChat [link]

For those who need a reminder…

#HybridCloud ➡ includes a private cloud and is typically managed as one entity.

#MultiCloud ➡ includes more than one public cloud service, which often perform different functions.

More in the @VMware glossary. https://bit.ly/2WOZz2L [link]

• Bill Roth: Companies are making the move b’cuz it make economic sense….but you’d expect an economist to say that. One reason is that cloud usage comes up organically in an org, and people use what they know. Also, dual sourcing to play vendors off against each other.
• John Dias: IMO it’s about agility. These days things can change quickly, and you don’t have 📅  weeks or  📅  monthsto react – often only days or even ⌚️ hours. #HybridCloud / #MultiCloud provides the flexibility organizations need.
• Thomas Bryant: Companies are looking for more agility. As most organizations look to accelerate development and speed of delivery, they see cloud as a frictionless way to get there.
• Anders Hudson: Tons of reasons why multiple public clouds could be in play, and I’m looking at making things work with siloed budgets as my least favorite. Not sure if I would call that a strategy
• Sehjung Hah: Customers always will focus on their primary business and for apps that can go to cloud, they will. For certain critical apps they may want them closer to their edge or on-premises for various business or performance reasons.

Q2) When do you know it’s time to migrate to the cloud?⏰ #vRealizeChat [link]

• Bill Roth: When your datacenter leases expire; when you’re tired of dealing with server rooms; when you need flexible capacity…the hyperscalers can deliver compute and storage at a lower costs than almost any company.
• John Dias: Out of capacity ❓ Hardware refresh  ❓ Business continuity needs ❓ Just some of the triggers for considering #cloud migration.
• Thomas Bryant: Out of datacenter space? DR letting you down? Need more capacity? New apps need cloud only capabilities? It’s time to consider migration.
• Anders Hudson: It’s time to migrate, if you aren’t there you are already in trouble.
• Sehjung Hah: When the performance and cost of running that application is better than on-premises https://bit.ly/3sC7Tic

Q3) How can teams migrate to the #cloud cost-effectively? 💰 #vRealizeChat [link]

• Bill Roth: Move your @VMware workloads to @vmwarecloudaws. We’re the fastest way to get to the cloud. In 1700 economic analysis, our average savings is 12.41 months over Public cloud. Get a @VmwareCloudEcon analysis today. http://vmctco.vmware.com
• Martijn Smit: It’s all about planning. Make sure the workloads are cloud suitable (refactor if needed) and make sure you know what you’re getting into. Map out requirements (and 💵) before jumping or be surprised.
• John Dias: Proper planning saves ⏱ and money 💸. Understand your capacity, usage, application boundaries and dependencies, resize and optimize with #vRealize BEFORE you migrate. Then validate and maintain post-migration.
• Thomas Bryant: Cost effectively means you need to make your app efficient BEFORE you move to save💰, understand what you need to move 🔎, AND have KPIs 💯 for what it should look like when you get there.
• Anders Hudson: #vRealizeChat Think of you cloud migration as just another pricing model, you may actually save money based on your needs.
• Sehjung Hah: Look into removing the manual work by using machine learning App Discovery with vRealize Network Insight https://bit.ly/3syd4PZ

Q4) What are some of the common challenges associated with #cloud migration? How does @vmwarecloudaws mediate them? 💡 #vRealizeChat [link]

• Bill Roth: Tons: First, mistaking acquisition cost for total cost. Second, under-estimating the migration difficulty. Third, not have a sufficiently expansive view of Risk. See @benchmarkguru series on Risk https://bit.ly/3ssevQ9
• Martijn Smit: Refactoring workloads is a hard thing to do. It’ll take time (money), which needs to be considered. By moving to @vmwarecloudaws– you don’t have to refactor. Just make sure it fits.
• John Dias: Migration doesn’t have to mean retooling 🧰 , retraining 📖 , and re-aligning personnel 👨‍💼with @vmwarecloudaws. Leverage existing expertise and processes! And #vRealize keeps an eye on your entire cloud footprint seamlessly.
• Thomas Bryant: #1 is always trying to figure out what services your application you migrate actually uses, then it’s who owns the services and securing 👮 the connectivity from public to private.
• Sehjung Hah: Planning is key, take a look at this ebook on how to plan a migration from a network view https://bit.ly/3sssvcD

Q5) Ok, so what changes when teams pair @vmwarecloudaws with #vRealizeCloudMgmt? #vRealizeChat [link]

• Bill Roth: Super agree. Check out vRealize Operations as a way to optimize your current virt. environment. It will show you all your over- and under-provisioned VMs and Mem and Storage you can save. Easy way to save money: Right size with @vRealizeOps before you move the cloud.
• Martijn Smit: Nada. Naught. Nil. Same tools, different location. Whether it’s automation, operations, or cost management – same interfaces, same skills.
• John Dias: In addition to flexibility and workload mobility? How about cost management, advanced troubleshooting, proactive capacity analytics, network assurance, automated self-service … I could go on!
• Thomas Bryant: Nirvana!? You can leverage the same people 🕺, processes 🔄, and tooling 🧰 to accelerate cloud adoption
• Sehjung Hah: Having an end-to-end view of all environments including VMware Cloud on AWS and other infrastructure is key to making applications run smoothly like peanut butter, watch this demo video https://youtu.be/to4sp06CZrI

Q6) In your opinion, which is the most useful capability of #vRealizeCloudMgmt for #VMWonAWS?🤔 #vRealizeChat [link]

• Bill Roth: A6) Oops. Gave it away. I 💘 @vRealizeOps based right-sizing. Your 21 day path to a better virtualization environment. See previous answer.
• Martijn Smit: See A5. 😜  If we’re talking features, it’s the capability to visualize the entire cloud, whether it’s private, hybrid, or multi-☁️. Even if you have apps spanned across multiple clouds (yes, they exist, although 🦄).
• John Dias: My vote is for cost analysis in @vRealizeOps using your #VMWonAWS billing for accurate cost breakdown to the VM level and ability to control and manage your cloud spend. You don’t want to be caught by surprise with costs in cloud!
• Thomas Bryant: I’d have to go with @vmwnetinsight to get going. Understanding what to migrate, and how it interacts with other services. You don’t want to fall down on the job #VMWonAWS
• Sehjung Hah: Building migrations waves are so much simpler when VMware Cloud on AWS working with vRealize Network Insight as there is less application refactoring required. Watch this video https://youtu.be/V5Y0OX226Xo

Q7) What advice would you give to a team whose goal is to extend some apps to operate on #cloud? ☁️#vRealizeChat [link]

• Bill Roth:Consider it carefully, and make sure you analyze your full risk profile. See @benchmarkguru’s series on Risk. Also, make sure you fully understand your workload profile across time (which you can do with @vRealizeOps just saying….) https://bit.ly/3kak3Lr
• Martijn Smit: Do it. But make sure you have everything mapped out: compute, storage, network requirements. Don’t skimp on planning, you’ll regret it fast.
• John Dias: Make sure u understand how ur apps are using the network. @vmwnetinsight provides app discovery 2 intelligently learn about ur apps and recommends firewall rules to protect them in the cloud. This will give u confidence that ur apps will run well in the cloud.
• Thomas Bryant: Start by understanding your apps. If you don’t know what actually makes up your app, you are going to have a bad day.
• Sehjung Hah: Make sure you are not leaving any VMs for that app behind. Definitely use app discovery to fully understand the app before moving to cloud. For no surprises, read this blog. https://bit.ly/3B7CAin
• Tuan Loc Nguyen: What advice would you give to a team whose goal is to extend some apps to operate on #cloud? ⏰

Q8) Let’s talk money! 🤑 38% of enterprise teams pairing @vmwarecloudaws and #vRealizeCloudMgmt reported reduced IT operating costs. 🤩 What are the drivers behind these savings? #vRealizeChat [link]

• Bill Roth: Easy. Rightsizing and better operational visibility. @vRealizeOps can even alert you to problems you’ll see in the future. When moving to cloud, right-sizing can save you around 17% on average, based on the latest @VMwareCloudEcon research.
• Martijn Smit: No more employees getting out of bed in the middle of the night to press that storage unit power button. Also, check out @BillRothVMware’s numbers.
• John Dias: You can’t reduce IT operating costs if you can’t see 🔭 your IT operating costs! Detailed billing analysis and cost breakdowns ➕ capacity optimization result in real savings in @vmwarecloudaws SDDCs. Running @vmwarecloudaws without #vRealizeCloudMgmt? Bad idea!
• Thomas Bryant: As I mentioned before, teams can leverage the same tools, processes and people. Capacity when you need it, no technical debt, faster speed of business!
• Sehjung Hah: Copy paste with minimal work. Also save on managing a network for transition to VMware Cloud on AWS with vRealize Network Insight. Look at the ROIs in the Forrester TEI Study https://bit.ly/3z6t8ew

Q9) What’s your best advice for teams who decide to migrate to the cloud with #VMWonAWS with #vRealizeCloudMgmt? #vRealizeChat [link]

• Bill Roth: Right-size first, with @vRealizeOps. Get a good sizing from the VMC Sizer, then by all means use HCX. Our average is about 12 minutes per VM. Yes minutes! (DM me for more details)
• Martijn Smit: Sounding like a broken record, but; plan! plan! Plan!
• John Dias: You’ve made the right decision – now execute on your vision by leveraging ALL components of #vRealizeCloudMgmt together for consistent, end-to-end operations before, during and after migration!
• Sehjung Hah: With success, continue to move more workloads to VMware Cloud on AWS and monitor both old and new environments with vRealize Network Insight https://bit.ly/3svrcd1

Q10) Quick, if #VMWonAWS and #vRealizeCloudMgmt were a famous duo, who would they be? We’ll start. #vRealizeChat [link]

• Bill Roth: My first thought was Abbott and Costello, but I could not say who was who. Holmes and Watson (Cumberbatch edition), with Watson as @vmwarecloudaws (steadfast, reliable, battle-hardened), and #vRealizeCloudMgmt as Holmes; super smart and analytical. [link]
• Martijn Smit: [link]
• John Dias: [link]
• Sehjung Hah: Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers dancing together #vRealizeChat [link]

And that’s a wrap on our #vRealizeChat, we hope to see you in the next one! Have a topic you want to tweet about? Send us a DM at @vmwarecloudmgmt.

In the meantime, see the many ways you can boost your hybrid cloud with VMware Cloud on AWS with vRealize Cloud Management:.

• 5 Ways to Boost Your Hybrid Cloud Management
• Low-Cost Migrations to VMware Cloud on AWS with vRealize Cloud Management
• Extending Your Data Center to VMware Cloud on AWS with vRealize Cloud Management
• Managing Application Modernization on VMware Cloud on AWS with vRealize Cloud Management
• Why vRealize Cloud Management is Unique
• Future Ready Guide with SaaS Cloud Management
• 5 Things to Know About Hybrid Cloud Management
• Hybrid Cloud Pathfinder learning journey

Looking for more resources? Find more information about the vRealize portfolio:

• VMware vRealize Cloud Management 
• vRealize Cloud Universal 
• VMware vRealize Operations 
• VMware vRealize Automation 
• VMware vRealize Network Insight 
• VMware vRealize Log Insight