Hello, my die-hard storage people, we have some very exciting and important enhancements coming for VMware Cloud Flex Storage, and we’d like to update you all on this news today. What we’ll be discussing here today will also be discussed in many of the sessions we have available in VMware Explore Las Vegas 2023, so please read our blog here that goes into more detail on those sessions!
When we launched VMware Cloud Flex Storage at VMware Explore US last year, we embarked on a journey to deliver an enterprise-class cloud storage and data management solution. Our vision was to deliver a multi-cloud solution that supports a broad range of applications and to deliver a seamless and consistent experience across clouds. Since then, enterprises of many sizes have been adopting VMware Cloud Flex Storage to easily scale storage without adding hosts, while realizing significant cost savings.
Figure 1: VMware Cloud Flex Storage Service as it currently stands.
With the improvements we are going to discuss here today, which we expect to become available in Q4 FY24, we are greatly expanding the set of workloads we support, including mission critical workloads. The two key areas that will help us support higher application tiers and criticality are going to be increasing the scalability of the service and strengthening its resiliency.
Figure 2: New service updates for VMware Cloud Flex Storage
INCREASE SCALABILITY
Expanded Cloud Storage Capacity with Elastic Growth
In this upcoming release, VMware Cloud Flex Storage will deliver petabyte scale disaggregated storage for VMware Cloud on AWS.
Currently, we support up to 400TiB usable capacity per filesystem and per SDDC. We will soon increase the maximum capacity from 400TiB to 800TiB per datastore. That’s double the current capacity! The filesystem will seamlessly expand as the storage usage goes up.
In addition, we currently allow only one datastore per SDDC, and this datastore can be mounted on multiple clusters in that SDDC. With the upcoming update, we will be supporting up to 4 datastores per SDDC, which means customers can have up to 3.2 petabytes of storage on our cloud file system in one SDDC!
Summary Points:
- Seamlessly scale up to 3.2 Petabytes of storage in a single SDDC to meet higher storage needs.
- Streamline operations by managing multiple datastores in a single SDDC, while enjoying the consistency and simplicity of VMware Cloud.
STRENGTHEN RESILIENCY
Ensured Performance for Enterprise Mission Critical Workloads
To date, customers have been running storage-intensive applications such as virtualized file servers, backup repositories, database archives, data warehouses, etc., on VMware Cloud on AWS using VMware Cloud Flex Storage, while leveraging local instance storage powered by vSAN for applications requiring higher performance and lower latency. To enable broader application support for VMware Cloud on AWS customers, we plan to deliver reliable read performance needed to support enterprise mission critical applications on VMware Cloud Flex Storage. With these updates, VMware Cloud on AWS customers will be able to leverage VMware Cloud Flex Storage to run a broader set of workloads including many mission critical applications.
Summary Point:
- Run enterprise mission critical applications with consistent high performance.
ADDITIONAL ROUTES TO MARKET
We would also like to announce that VMware Cloud Flex Storage is now available via AWS Strategic Resell and VMware’s Cloud Service Provider program. This is fantastic news since this provides our customers and partners more avenues by which they can consume this solution.
With the availability of AWS Strategic Resell, customers can purchase VMware Cloud Flex Storage directly from Amazon Web Services. With this route to market, customers are billed directly by AWS. They can also take advantage of programs offered by AWS, such as the Enterprise Discount Program.
VMware Cloud Flex Storage is now also available to our Cloud Service Providers, allowing them to deliver a broadened technology portfolio and a differentiated managed service experience to our customers.
We can’t wait for you all to get your hands on these upcoming updates! For more information on this announcement and for more information on VMware Cloud Flex Storage, please visit the VMware Cloud Flex Storage Product Page. And, if you would like to speak with one of our VMware Cloud Flex Storage team members to explore your options and begin your journey with this product, please reach out to us via email: [email protected].
