There are a number of things to think about before bringing a VMware Cloud on AWS SDDC into your business.
- How do I connect everything together?
- Which applications and workloads should I move?
- How do I manage performance, cost and capacity?
All of these are GREAT questions and for answers to these check out a blog I wrote last week. But there is a question you need to ask yourself first, “How much VMware Cloud on AWS do I need?” This blog post will help answer that question for you.
vRealize Business for Cloud 7.3.1 comes with an easy to use VMware Cloud for AWS Assessment tool which can quickly give you the number of hosts you will need, their estimated cost and a simple cost comparison to your current private cloud environment. Simply connect vRealize for Business to your vCenter and then click on What if Analysis and choose VMC Assessment to get started.
The assessment tool supports the two main ways customers like yourself want to move workloads into the cloud. One way is by choosing specific apps or VMs to move and the other is retiring old HW and moving over entire clusters at a time. These two methods can be combined to create a very specific assessment for your business needs. To assess applications, simply chose the SELECT APPLICATION drop-down and you will get a list of the applications in your vCenter environments. This list is generated by pulling in the vCenter folders and tags, a method many customers use to group applications and services in their cloud. If you want to move a full set of VMs by cluster just use the lower drop-downs and select the datacenter, cluster, VMs, or other object to move. Once you have gathered all of the workloads to be migrated click the Run scenario button top start the assessment.
The assessment results are displayed and show you everything you need to understand about your VMware Cloud on AWS opportunity. It is split into two sections, on the left is your private cloud information and on the right the VMware Cloud details.
The Private Cloud section shows the number of workloads (e.g. VMs) to be migrated and the total Allocated Capacity of resources these VMs have been provided for CPU, memory and storage. It also shows the Actual Utilized Capacity of these workloads which is then used to provide an estimated Total Cost Per Month for these workloads in your private cloud environment. This pricing takes into account the amortized cost of the hardware components, the power requirements, cooling costs, support & labor, and other factors to run these workloads in your private cloud based on their actual utilized capacity.
On the right side the VMware Cloud on AWS section shows how many hosts we will need to house these workloads based on their actual utilized capacity. In this example, we will need four hosts which is the current minimum number of hosts for a VMware Cloud on AWS cluster. The blue bars in each host show how much of the hosts capacity will be taken up by the migrated workloads. In this example, it indicates we will need approximately two-thirds of the host’s capacity. Pricing is provided for the costs of four VMware Cloud on AWS hosts for On-Demand and One and Three Year subscription models on the far right column. The Total Cost Per Month shows us the cost of the migrated workloads in the VMware Cloud on AWS environment or how much of the host’s capacity will these VMs need. Since these VMs will take up about two-thirds of the four host’s capacity their price is two-thirds of your subscription price.
Now it’s as simple as comparing your Total Cost Per Month between the public and private clouds. You can see that these workloads are cheaper if moved to VMware Cloud on AWS and a LOT cheaper at the 3 year subscription model.
The costs of your migrated workloads will of course be different, but the overall process described above will be the same. The VMware Cloud on AWS Assessment is best run as a part of your overall SDDC public cloud story. Speak to a VMware sales engineer today and see the power VMware Cloud on AWS can bring to your business.
