VMware Cloud: VMware at Your Service on AWS, Azure and GCP

Written by Yifat Perry, Technical Content Manager | Jan 26, 2021 5:00:00 AM

What is VMware Cloud?

VMware Cloud is a platform that lets you run VMware apps on the public cloud. VMware has partnered with the following Infrastructure as a Service providers, letting organizations move virtualized workloads to dedicated environments on each cloud:

AWS
Microsoft Azure
Google Cloud
IBM Cloud
Oracle Cloud
170 other cloud providers that are VMware Cloud Verified

VMware Cloud supports cloud migration and hybrid cloud deployments, especially for organizations that already have VMware running on-premises. It lets you centrally manage workloads across on-premises environments and public clouds. It helps organizations understand how and where workloads are running, and apply a unified operating model for virtualized applications in a multi cloud environment.

In this article, you will learn:

VMware on AWS
VMware on Azure
VMware on Google Cloud
VMware Cloud with NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

VMware on AWS

This service allows organizations to use familiar VMware tools to run software-defined data centers (SDDC) on public clouds. It runs on dedicated bare-metal machines in Amazon, and integrates with:

vSphere—virtualization platform
NSX—SDN network virtualization
vSAN—storage virtualization
vCenter—central management for virtualized workloads

VMware Cloud on AWS enables lifting and shifting VMware workloads to the Amazon cloud. It enables the following capabilities:

Tight integration with AWS services—EC2, S3, RDS, and more.
Fast networking—virtual private cloud (VPC) with an elastic networking adapter (ENA) that supports up to 25 Gbps. To support workloads with heavy North-South traffic, NSX is integrated with AWS Direct Connect, to allow fast communication between Amazon and the local data center.
Fast storage—all flash storage with NVMe to provide maximal performance for VMware vSAN, with management of storage SLAs per application, quality of service, and data protection through third-party solutions (VADP).
Disaster recovery—supports VMware technologies like Site Recovery Manager, enabling replication of entire software defined data centers to Amazon.
Multiple migration options—you can migrate VMware workloads to Amazon using HCX, vMotion, and “cold migration”, which involves simply moving VMs from an on-premises host to a cloud machine, but requires some downtime.

VMware Cloud on AWS Outposts

AWS Outposts is a hybrid cloud service that lets you run AWS solutions in on-premises data centers. VMware Cloud can be deployed on Outposts, allowing organizations to run SDDCs with all VMware components in a fully managed environment. The service can also be provided by Amazon partners in a facility collocated with Amazon data centers.

Key capabilities of the service include:

Smooth portability of workloads, whether they are running on vSphere or VMware Cloud Foundation.
Cloud bursting of workloads to dedicated, bare-metal AWS resources.
Enables consumption of services in an on-demand model in the on-premises data center.
Allows self-service provisioning of VMware technology in a cloud model.
Fully integrates with all aspects of the existing on-premises data center, including security and management.
Provides seamless access to Amazon services from on-premises workloads.

Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) on VMware

Amazon RDS is a database service that supports several database engines, including Oracle, PostgreSQL, MySQL, and SQL Server. RDS on VMware enables organizations to deploy databases as a service (DBaaS), as part of a VMware SDDC. It can:

Manage databases in the local data center using a DBaaS model.
Migrate databases to VMware Cloud on AWS.
Fully automate database management, for on-premises environments as well as cloud infrastructure.

Learn more our guide to VMware on AWS

VMware on Azure

The Azure VMware solution lets you create a “private cloud” within Azure, containing vSphere clusters built on dedicated bare metal Azure infrastructure. It supports the same VMware technologies as VMware on AWS (see the previous section)

The solution lets you migrate workloads from on-premises data centers, deploy new VMware virtual machines (VMs) in Azure, and implement Azure services in private cloud environments.

Azure provides continuous testing and validation of the environment with every upgrade or update of VMware technologies. The private cloud in Azure is a fully managed VMware compliant environment.

An Azure VMware private cloud has the following characteristics:

A minimum deployment of three hosts. You can add more hosts, reaching up to 16 hosts in each cluster.
Uses bare metal hyperconverged Azure infrastructure hosts with up to 576 GB of RAM, and dual Intel 18 core 2.3GHz CPUs.
Hosts are equipped with 15.36 TB of fast SSD storage that can be used by vSAN, with 3.2 TB of NVMe storage that can be used for vSAN cache.
Connectivity between the on-premises data center and Azure can be supported by the Azure ExpressRoute service, or regular VPN.
VMware vSphere role-based access control. vSphere SSO LDAP can be integrated with Azure Active Directory (Azure AD).

Learn more in our guide to VMware on Azure

VMware on Google Cloud

Google Cloud VMware Engine, like the AWS and Azure offerings described above, is a dedicated environment within Google Cloud that is optimized for VMware, and tightly integrated with VMware tools and technologies.

The service has the following key features:

Simple user experience, allowing you to set up a VMware SDDC in four clicks, directly from the Google Cloud Console.
Google Cloud provides integrated support for VMware Engine together with all other Google Cloud services.
Dedicated 100 Gbps networking with 99.99% availability and high throughput, configured on VPC subnets.
All-flash NVMe storage for VMware vSAN, with 19.2 TB storage capacity for each node.
Compute instances based on 2nd Generation Intel Xeon Processors with 2.6 GHz normal performance and 3.9 GHz burst performance and 768 MB RAM.
Compute and storage managed as a single tenant, not shared by other Google Cloud users.
The networking bandwidth to other hosts in a VMware vSphere cluster is also dedicated. This means that you get not only the privacy and security of a dedicated environment, but also highly predictable levels of performance.

Learn more in our guide to VMware on Google Cloud

VMware Cloud with NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP, the leading enterprise-grade storage management solution, delivers secure, proven storage management services on AWS, Azure and Google Cloud. Cloud Volumes ONTAP supports up to a capacity of 368TB, and supports various use cases such as file services, databases, DevOps or any other enterprise workload, with a strong set of features including high availability, data protection, storage efficiencies, Kubernetes integration, and more.

Learn more in this VMware Cloud Services Introduction.

Learn more about how Cloud Volumes ONTAP helps to address the challenges of VMware Cloud, and read here about our VMware Cloud Case Studies with Cloud Volumes ONTAP.

Learn More About VMware Cloud

There’s a lot more to learn about VMware Cloud. To continue your research, take a look at the rest of our blogs on this topic:

VMware on Azure: One-Step Migration to the Cloud
Learn what is Azure VMware and how the architecture works. Understand basic concepts like private clouds, clusters, vSAN clusters, and how it works in terms of Azure Storage integration. Discover options for dedicated hosts, access and security.

VMware on Google Cloud: A Deployment Roadmap
Google Cloud VMware Engine provides management for simplifying VMware deployments on Google Cloud. Using VMware Engine, you can easily migrate your resources. This article discusses key techniques and considerations for successful deployments.

VMware on AWS: Architecture and Service Options
VMware Cloud on AWS enables organizations to manage their resources on AWS using familiar VMware tools. The solution also provides migration capabilities for shifting local workloads to AWS, as well as integration capabilities for various AWS services.

This article briefly explains the architecture of VMware Cloud on AWS and reviews other VMware services available on AWS.

VMware Kubernetes: Running Kubernetes with vSphere and Tanzu
Recognizing the rising popularity of containerization, VMware provides various ways to run Kubernetes. This article explains the main functionality of key services—vSphere and Tanzu—which you can leverage setting up Kubernetes on VMware.

VMware Cloud Case Studies with Cloud Volumes ONTAP
VMware Cloud (VMC) extends on-premises data centers to the public cloud. This can be extremely useful when managing hybrid architectures, provided teams know how to overcome certain challenges such as backup, high availability, overprovisioning of resources, and security. Cloud Volumes ONTAP provides the data management features and tools required to optimize VMC deployments and make the most of hyper-converged infrastructure.

This article explores the benefits and challenges of using VMC, and demonstrates how several companies have used Cloud Volumes ONTAP to enhance VMware Cloud workloads.

VMware Cloud Services: A New Option for Hybrid Cloud Management
Hybrid cloud deployment is becoming more and more important to enterprise IT: it both expands the on-prem data center into the cloud, and provides an alternative to avoid cloud vendor lock-in. VMware, as a mainstay of many data centers, is approaching this challenge with VMware Cloud services.

VMware Cloud on AWS: How Fujitsu Saves Millions Using Cloud Volumes ONTAP
When Fujitsu, one of the most trusted technology companies in the world, needed to cut the costs of VMC on AWS for one of its clients, they turned to Cloud Volumes ONTAP for help. The results saved the client and Fujitsu millions.

VMC on AWS Vs. Cloud Volumes ONTAP
VMC on AWS offers users a way to bridge the gap between on-prem and cloud VMware deployment. But with the flexibility of Cloud Volumes ONTAP, users can cut the costs of VMC on AWS significantly.

Migrate from VMware to Azure: The Basics and a Quick Tutorial

Microsoft offers the Azure VMware Solution, a technology that can help you migrate on-premises VMware workloads to the Azure cloud. Learn about the solution’s features and common use cases, and see how to migrate workloads from VMware to Azure, step by step.

See Additional Guides on Key IaaS Topics

Together with our content partners, we have authored in-depth guides on several other topics that can also be useful as you explore the world of IaaS.