When it was first released in 2017, VMware Cloud on AWS offered customers a fully managed VMware solution on bare metal AWS infrastructure, providing customers with a way to drastically reduce the time, cost and complexity involved in migrating workloads to the public cloud. With both on-demand and subscriptions available, customers can quickly scale their VMware Cloud on AWS environments up and down as needed to meet their long- and short-term business and financial goals, while also enjoying a predictable cost model that provides them with financial peace of mind.
VMware Cloud on AWS was originally architected with local instance storage with vSAN in order to maximize capacity, lower TCO and to meet the high-availability, high-performance, low latency needs of mission critical workloads. As customers continued to expand their adoption of the solution, the types of target workloads and use cases also grew to include storage heavy workloads and full data center evacuations. In addition, another important requirement for customers was to be able to scale their storage independently of compute. As a result, we launched VMware Cloud Flex Storage.
To balance the disparity between compute, storage, and contain costs, most of our customers are leveraging both local and external storage solutions in their on-premises environments. VMware Cloud Flex Storage was created to complement vSAN and provide customers with the ability to continue leveraging the same strategy they do on-prem, in the cloud, providing them with more flexibility to scale their storage in a cost-effective manner.
It is the same VMware Cloud on AWS solution our customers already know and love, we have simply added an external storage option, that allows customers to more cost effectively scale storage independently of compute. It is extremely simple to deploy and start consuming VMware Cloud Flex Storage, and the pricing model offers the same predictable costs that customers have come to expect with VMware Cloud on AWS, with both on-demand and subscription options and the predictability of per TiB pricing.
Now, exactly what kinds of savings are we talking about? Well, that all depends on your storage and capacity needs. Let’s walk through a few examples, based on some actual customers.
CUSTOMER 1
This first customer was looking to exit their existing datacenter and move all workloads to VMware Cloud on AWS but had some storage-heavy workloads associated with their backups and CCTV footage. After being introduced to the VMware Cloud Flex Storage offering, they concluded that those workloads were a fit after all.
They were able to realize savings in the following areas:
- By leveraging VMware Cloud Flex Storage, we were able to reduce the costs of infrastructure by almost 38%, which brought the cost within their budget.
- They were able to move all workloads from their existing datacenter, allowing them to eliminate the costs associated with owning, managing, and maintaining a datacenter.
- Lastly, they were able to reduce their core count by an additional 20% from what they had on-prem which would provide an additional opportunity for savings during their upcoming license renewals.
CUSTOMER 2
The second customer’s deadline to exit their existing colocation datacenter was quickly coming up and they had a strict budget. They were evaluating several options but ideally wanted to leverage VMware Cloud on AWS. Their storage-heavy workloads were causing stress on the budget. By leveraging just 30 TiB of VMware Cloud Flex Storage, they were able to reduce the number of hosts needed, aligning better with their existing compute and storage needs.
They were able to realize savings in the following areas:
- Leveraging VMware Cloud Flex Storage allowed them to reduce their infrastructure costs by 31.44%, bringing their preferred solution within their budget.
- They were able to fully exit their colocation datacenter, on time, avoiding any additional month-to-month costs.
CUSTOMER 3
The third customer had a small VMware Cloud on AWS environment and was trying to “run lean” to keep costs down. They moved their log files over to their new VMware Cloud Flex Storage datastore and that allowed them to stay well within their budget.
They were able to realize savings in the following areas:
- Leveraging VMware Cloud Flex Storage allowed them to eliminate the On-Demand Host costs while also providing a 17.34% savings over the cost of adding a 3-year subscription for an additional host.
- Customer is looking at leveraging VMware Cloud Flex Storage to move more storage heavy workloads to VMware Cloud on AWS in the future to further reduce the time and costs associated with managing their on-prem environment.
This customer had a small environment, but this use case is not just for customers looking to keep their SDDC footprint small. VMware Cloud Flex Storage datastores are bound to the SDDC rather than the cluster, so enterprise customers who have multiple clusters in which their storage growth is outpacing their compute needs can leverage a single VMware Cloud Flex Storage datastore to help consolidate their storage, which reduces their host count and boosts savings.
VMware Cloud Flex Storage has emerged as a powerful strategic solution that provides customers with an easy, familiar & cost-effective path to VMware Cloud on AWS for their storage-heavy workloads. Our customers will experience the same reliability, predictability, and familiar operating model that they have come to know and expect with VMware solutions.
We have a variety of resources for you to learn more about VMware Cloud Flex Storage, size your target workloads with VMC Sizer and look at list pricing estimates with the VMware Cloud on AWS Pricing Estimator. Already a VMware Cloud on AWS Customer? Reach out to your VMware Account Team, or click on the VMware Cloud Flex Storage tile in your Cloud Service Console to request access, and we will reach out, to help you get started.
