Hot on the trail of recent announcements from the Broadcom takeover of VMware, this blog explores the VMware Cloud on AWS (also known as VMC on AWS) solution, what the solution is used for, what impacts the recent changes will have on customers and how Cevo can assist existing and emerging customers with AWS native solutions.
It is super important to know and understand the drivers behind why customers used VMC on AWS in the first place and work backwards from those use cases to uncover the “why” cloud native has been a challenge in the first place.
What Is VMC on AWS?
The VMC on AWS solution was created jointly with VMware and AWS for creating a hybrid cloud solution for rapid realisation of cloud benefits, consistent infrastructure, and operations across on-premises and clouds, bi-directional portability of workloads, and enterprise-grade infrastructure capabilities and performance. The solution is a managed cloud offering that provides dedicated VMware vSphere-based Software Defined Data Centres (SDDC) that are hosted within AWS facilities. As an overview:
- The service utilises facilities and hardware that are owned and managed by AWS.
- The service provides dedicated, private cloud environments in the form of an SDDC.
- Hosts of an SDDC are dedicated to that SDDC. These hosts are exclusive to the SDDC until such a time that they are removed from the SDDC (either manually removed by the customer or replaced due to host failure), at which time they are released into the overall pool of AWS available capacity.
- SDDCs are deployed within a VMware-owned AWS account, not a customer-owned AWS account.
- SDDCs have high-speed access to native AWS services hosted within a separate customer-owned AWS account.
- Native AWS services are billed to the customer-owned AWS account and are not managed by VMware.
What Does VMC on AWS Look Like?
The solution looks like this:
As the solution is connected to an AWS VPC, this allows Virtual Machines (VM’s) running in VMC on AWS can access AWS services directly to support a truly connected hybrid cloud offering. For example:
This integration also allows access to other services such as RDS managed databases like below:
The solution can work with some truly complex networking requirements by integrating seamlessly with AWS native solutions such as Transit Gateway, Direct Connect and even CloudFront and Web Application Firewall (WAF). For example:
One of the biggest advantages was the ability to extend existing VMware private cloud solutions running on-premises seamless integration with VMC on AWS – effectively extending the SDDC into AWS. Quite remarkable as a holistic product.
As demonstrated above the solution is hugely versatile and allowed customers to continue using existing tooling and processes without the heavy uplift of going AWS cloud native.
With the uncertain licensing costs and financial viability of the solution, now is the time to dive deep into the old use cases and determine if any pre-existing challenges still exist today. Now with the modernisation program funding its suited to re-platforming and making more invasive changes to software, a funding type that wasn’t available previously. Coupled with the higher cost to run on VMware (and about to increase further) the economics are fundamentally changed from when they previously reviewed this step.
What Has Changed Since Broadcom Acquisition of VMware?
Since the Broadcom buyout of VMware, several changes were made in quick succession, resulting in some uncertainty in the market for both the VMware partner ecosystem as well as customers utilising partner solutions.
The most recent announcement affected AWS from reselling new VMware licenses under the VMC on AWS solution as of 30th April 2024. Existing contracts will no longer be renewed beyond April 2026. This has resulted in the need for existing VMC on AWS customers to consider alternative hosting and solution options with an equally fast decision process. To really understand the impact this has on existing and potentially new customers considering VMC on AWS for their use cases, we first need to understand the positioning of VMC on AWS and what challenges the solution sought to solve for.
What Made Customers Choose VMC on AWS?
Several customer scenarios are explored below to highlight the reasons VMC on AWS as a solution attributed to strategic or tactical advantages to customers.
Scenario #1: Easy Lift and Shift
Organisations may want to move an application from on-premises to the cloud without making significant changes to the code for various reasons, including but not limited to complying with time-pressed cloud initiatives, consolidating hosting environments after acquisitions, and leveraging a hardware refresh window to move to the public cloud while deriving instant business value. This provided advantages such as:
Advantage | Description |
Bi-directional and non-disruptive application migration | Utilises VMware native migration tools with seamless migration in any direction |
Consistent infrastructure delivered as a service | VMware Software-Defined Data Center (SDDC) technologies with vSphere at its core – no conversions or re-architecture of workloads are required when moving to the cloud |
Consistent operations and management | VMware Hybrid Linked Mode capability allows customers to link their VMware Cloud on AWS vCenter instance with an on-premises VMware vCenter Single Sign-On domain, which enables customers to manage all vSphere workloads in a unified tool regardless of where they are instantiated |
Consistent architecture | Workloads remain unchanged |
Consistent software licensing | VM’s have consistent licensing model |
Support for legacy operating systems | Not all legacy operating systems are supported in the cloud. Some legacy applications have business critical functions not easily transported to new operating systems and re-architecting onto cloud native solutions might be too disruptive. |
Scenario #2: Modernisation of existing applications
The use of VMC on AWS enabled modernising without extreme pressures of re-architecting. Customers could modernise a component of an application (such as the database) easily without needing to make the entire application use cloud-native services. This significantly eased the pressure on the organisation operating model by limiting the knowledge needed for cloud adoption to a smaller subset of skills – a major disruptor to cloud-native adoption (especially in organisations used to moving at a slower pace). Customers could skill up on a particular cloud technology combined with AWS fundamental knowledge that required minimal skills uplift to operate and maintain.
Scenario #3: Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) for existing workloads
There can be multiple scenarios for disaster recovery of existing workloads:
- Customers implementing a DR solution for the first time;
- Customers looking to reduce existing DR site costs by moving their DR operations to the cloud or wanting to modernise their existing DR solutions;
- Customers protecting additional workloads and complementing their existing DR strategy with a cloud-based DR solution for specific applications.
There are many DRaaS solutions natively available on public cloud platforms or provided by third-party vendors in the marketplace of public cloud platforms. VMware Site Recovery, disaster recovery delivered as a service for VMware Cloud on AWS, made this super easy by tightly integrating seamlessly between on-premises and VMC on AWS.
Scenario #4: New application build-out
For building the next generation applications, different developers may have different preferences in terms of tools they would like to use. Each of the top public cloud platforms has established a comprehensive set of software development tools as well as specialised services that differentiate it from other cloud platforms. If AWS is the preferred cloud platform for building the next generation applications, VMC on AWS provides organisations with a simple and consistent way for their applications to access native AWS services by offering high bandwidth, low latency connectivity to those services, while enabling rapid, on-demand capacity provisioning to support development efforts.
Scenario #5: New application in production
If one of the following applies to certain applications, VMC on AWS would have been an excellent choice:
Consideration | Description |
Bi-directional portability is key | VMC on AWS uniquely allows customers to move their VM workloads across cloud platforms without re-formatting or re-writing the applications and with little to zero downtime |
Storage performance matters | VMC on AWS hosts are built on local SSD/ NVMe storage, which is the fastest and lowest latency storage tier that ensures optimal performance of demanding workloads. This storage tier is not available on every native public cloud platform. |
As is plain to see – VMC on AWS served a great deal of customers well and remained relevant in an ever-changing cloud landscape. With the demise of the solution, now is the time to dive deep into the old use cases and determine if any pre-existing challenges still exist today.
How Cevo Can Help Transition Away From VMC on AWS
Broadcom’s acquisition of VMware has led to an end of AWS’s rights to re-sell VMware Cloud (VMC) subscriptions, add-on services, and renewals, effective April 30, 2024. As a result, customers will no longer be able to purchase or renew these offerings.
To help customers navigate this transition, Cevo offers specialised expertise in migrating from VMC to AWS native services. Our VMware Cloud Exit Assessment is our first step in understanding your unique requirements and developing a tailored migration strategy. This assessment provides valuable insights into your business and technical needs, evaluates your readiness for migration, identifies necessary skillsets, and estimates anticipated costs, ensuring a smooth and successful transition to AWS.
Cevo VMware Cloud Exit Assessment
Using our deep cloud expertise and knowledge of both AWS and VMC on AWS, Cevo’s VMware Cloud Exit Assessment assists customers with:
- Strategically plan an exit from VMware Cloud (VMC)
- Understand key considerations and risks for a successful transition
- Define the target platform and the architecture to support native workloads
- Assess skills and requirements for managing the new environment
- Gain insight into how Cevo CoOps can support in managing your future state
The 2-week assessment comprises of the following:
Migration readiness
- Application readiness and replication
- Application dependencies
- Tools and approach
Migration approach
- Define high-level migration approach
- Application mitigation where required
(OS uplift) - Migration timing and waves
Skills and training
- Assess current VMC skills vs AWS skills
- Identify gaps and training needs
- Plan enablement pathways
Cost analysis
- Analyse current VMC costs and projected AWS costs
- Estimate migration costs
Risk assessment and mitigation
- Identify key business and technical migration risks
- Define risk mitigation approach
Platform readiness
- Plan AWS landing zone readiness for Cloud Native workloads
- Assess security requirements and compliance needs
Operational readiness
- Define operational approach for new AWS environment
- Provide Cevo CoOps offering to flexibly manage environment as needed
Data platforms
- Assess target data platforms and identify the ideal target pathway
- Highlight opportunities to modernise and leverage cloud native services
Find out more here.
