Fully Managed On-Premises Cloud Offering VMware Cloud on AWS Outposts

Amazon Web Services and VMware announced a new set of offerings that will provide customers with a consistent hybrid cloud experience.

AWS announced AWS Outposts, fully managed and configurable server and network installations built with AWS-designed hardware, to bring AWS on-premises to customers’ data centers.

VMware announced VMware Cloud on AWS Outposts, a VMware Cloud on AWS environment running on Outposts, for customers who want to benefit from a fully managed VMware environment on-premises running on AWS Outposts.

It will be a jointly engineered on-premises as-a-service offering, that is powered by VMware Cloud Foundation. It will integrate VMware’s enterprise-class Software-Defined Data Center software that includes vSphere, vSAN, NSX along with vCenter Management, and will run on next-generation, dedicated, elastic Amazon EC2 bare-metal Outposts infrastructure, delivered on-premises with optimized access to local and regional AWS services.

Key use cases envisioned for VMware Cloud on AWS Outposts:
1. Local Cloud: Customers will be able to leverage the cloud model for those applications or data that need to remain on-premises such as applications with low latency or local data processing needs or composite applications tightly integrated with existing enterprise backend systems. Some example of such workloads or applications are:
• Data and compute intensive workloads such as relational databases that will remain on-premises
• Highly scalable, distributed workloads, which require storage optimized hosts along with VMware’s VSAN storage capabilities
• Workloads with stringent security requirements where you prefer to control where your data resides and where it is managed
• High performance workloads such as enterprise data warehouse where both scale and access of data affect the overall system performance
Apart from these use cases, customers will also be able to deploy hybrid applications integrating on-premises resources with access to native cloud services. Finally, they will be able to modernize on-premises applications by integrating with local AWS services or regional AWS services or by leveraging Kubernetes enabled next-generation local infrastructure.

2. Data Center Modernization: Customers will be able accelerate data center modernization by enabling IT staff to focus on higher value tasks rather than focusing on infrastructure lifecycle management. They will also be able to optimize overall infrastructure and operating costs by shifting from cap-ex. to op-ex. financing model. Finally, they will be able to modernize their Virtual Desktop Infrastructure for workloads that need to remain near end user and backend systems

3. Flexible Capacity: Instead of long hardware procurement cycles, customers will be able to scale on-premises infrastructure as per business needs in days/weeks and alleviate the unused/underutilized capacity issue. They will be able to expand IT infrastructure to new regions as well as accelerate infrastructure consolidation by rationalizing on a consistent platform after M&A activities. Finally, they will be able to leverage single fully managed service for private and public cloud infrastructure and seamlessly extend their on-premises infrastructure to VMware Cloud on AWS for burst capacity or Disaster Recovery needs

You can learn more about the use cases here

VMware Cloud on AWS Outposts uses the same SDDC components of vSphere, vCenter, VSAN and NSX as that of VMware Cloud on AWS. Setting up the SDDC on an Outposts will require you to connect it to the VPC running on an AWS region.

In terms of compute, customers will get Nitro Based EC2 Metal Servers in 4, 6, 12 hosts configurations. In terms of storage, customers will get local SSD storage as well as AWS Elastic Block Storage.

Customers will be able to choose from a wide selection of AWS designed hardware including Entry Level, General Purpose, Compute Optimized, Storage Optimized, and Memory Optimized EC2 instance families (e.g. M5a/M5, C5, I3, R5/R5a) and storage options (EBS volumes, local instance storage) to create the ideal configuration for their applications.

NSX-T is included as a part of SDDC. You will have 2 WAN options: You can choose IPSec VPN or AWS Direct Connect as per your needs.

The VMware Cloud on AWS Outposts Beta program lets you try our pre-release software on AWS Outposts infrastructure. Please note that VMware Cloud SDDC stack on AWS Outposts infrastructure is not a commercially release software yet, so it may be limited in its functionalities and features than what you would expect and/or familiar with of a commercially released product.

VMware Cloud on AWS Outposts Beta will come with the following components:
• A single AWS Outposts 42u rack
• 4 Nitro-based EC2 metal servers with local SSD storage
• AWS Elastic Block Storage(EBS) volumes
• Single SDDC
• Single Cluster within the SDDC

We are opening Beta nominations, and a select set of customers in US region that meet the program requirements will be offered the opportunity to participate in the Beta. For those of you outside of this region, exceptions can be made based on your interest, commitment and program fit.

Yes, you will be required to have/setup an AWS account and a VMware VPC in that AWS region prior to commencing the Beta program.

Beta nominations for the service are open now. Customers can sign up for the interest in Beta program here. Please contact your VMware account team to discuss further questions. Please note that by nominating yourself for the Beta program in this form, you are not auto enrolled into the Beta program. After receiving your request, we will contact you with further details.

Yes, this is a customer paid Beta program for a 1-year term commitment. After which, you can choose to renew, refresh or return the infrastructure. The 1-year payment will be made upfront.

VMware will be your main point of contact. A tiger team consisting of VMware Product Managers, Field Sales Engineers, and Product Engineers will monitor and track your beta testing with sufficient and periodic checkpoints.

• Software Support: VMware will provide all software support for the SDDC and will also serve as your main and only point of primary contact. Infrastructure issues, that are not automatically monitored and noted by AWS lifecycle management tools, can be reported to VMware who will contact AWS on your behalf

• Infrastructure Support: AWS will ship, install and configure the VMware Cloud on AWS Outposts rack at your on-premises location after you order the rack. Any subsequent issues with infrastructure will be dealt with by AWS personnel, in person.

Both infrastructure and software are to be purchased for a 1-year term. After 1-year term gets over, you can return the infrastructure. Please see above for details. You are entitled to receive software improvements post Beta leading up to the General Availability of the software, within the 1-year term.