VMware Cloud Flex Storage was launched in December 2022 (link here to our launch blog), and so far it’s been a successful and important release. It’s also been an exciting time for the team, transitioning from our Early Access program to the general availability of the service. In the time since our launch, we’ve been busy talking extensively to our customers and partners, getting their feedback on their experience thus far in using the service, and launching some additional improvements. We’ve gone ahead and have summarized some of this work, progress, and feedback below.
A Smart and Affordable Solution
As a recap, VMware Cloud Flex Storage offers a new approach to help better align your cloud resources with the needs of your applications and data. With this scalable, elastic and natively integrated storage service for VMware Cloud on AWS, fully managed by VMware, you can flexibility scale storage and compute independently of each other and pay only for the resources you use.
VMware Cloud Flex Storage provides a simple pay-per-utilized GB consumption model. One price and metric allow customers to forecast, plan, and budget their spend with greater accuracy. Customers pay only for the storage they consume. It does not require pre-provisioning of storage increments, which provides more flexibility and granular consumption.
Customer Identified Use Cases
We have been receiving feedback from our customers on their experience using this service. We’ve noted potential areas of growth and improvement, while also taking pleasure in the overall positive response our partners and customers have shared with us on their impressions with the service thus far. We’ve included some of this feedback below in the testimony presented during last year’s Explore session covering VMware Cloud Flex Storage, where our partner AHEAD covered in detail their positive experience using the service, their applications for the service, and whether they would recommend this service to their customers. In addition, we’ve also noted some important use cases that our customers have highlighted to us, which also shows the promise of VMware Cloud Flex Storage as a powerful, cost-effective, and flexible storage solution. Here are some of these identified applications:
Seamless and Cost-Effective Cloud Migration
VMware Cloud Flex Storage delivers true enterprise-class storage. It reduces complexity and time-to-value by supporting the lift and shift of virtual machines without a need to rework the data layer or re-architect the storage design.
Elastic Data Center Extension
Customers who are looking to use VMware Cloud on AWS for data center extension can use VMware Cloud Flex Storage for easy access to additional storage capacity with dynamic scaling of resources. Common scenarios include high-performance burst capacity, on-demand scaling for data analytics, or cost-effective long-term storage of data repositories in the cloud.
Scaling of Storage-Intensive Workloads
VMware Cloud Flex Storage offers a disaggregated storage service that allows them to independently, seamlessly, and optimally scale their performance and storage capacity to fit every workload individually. VMware Cloud Flex Storage is an ideal solution for scaling large volumes of data in an agile, flexible, and cost-effective way.
What’s new in VMware Cloud Flex Storage
With our latest update for VMware Cloud Flex Storage now having launched, we’d like to cover some of the improvements, added features, and benefits this update provides to our customers.
New Region Support
VMware Cloud Flex Storage is now available globally in the Americas, Europe, Africa, and Asia Pacific. We have added Mumbai, Sydney, Singapore, and Tokyo Asia Pacific AWS regions to the service. In total, 17 regions are now supported. The full and current list of supported regions can be found here.
Expanded File Systems per Region
Today VMware Cloud Flex Storage now supports up to 6 file systems per region. Therefore, customers can implement up to 2.4 petabytes of storage capacity per region! This significant storage capacity gives customers the flexibility to grow their VMware Cloud Flex Storage usage within a region, as their data needs grow and without sacrifice.
Compatibility improvements with VMware Cloud Disaster Recovery
VMware Cloud Disaster Recovery and VMware Cloud Flex Storage are now compatible! Customers who wish to protect their VMware workloads can do so while also scaling their storage capacity. Customers can have both services in the same organization as long as the deployments are in different regions. This is an important update, providing customers the flexibility, peace of mind, and added power to to do both critical tasks under one umbrella and through a trusted provider.
See the Product in Action
For more information see the release notes for this release, or visit the VMware Cloud Flex Storage Product Page.
