A year of expanding choice for VMware customers on AWS

A little over a year ago, we made Amazon EVS generally available. It was a milestone for customers running VMware workloads who wanted more options in the cloud, while keeping the investments they’d already made in their people, tooling, and operational workflows. With Amazon EVS, you can run VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) on Amazon EC2 bare-metal instances that integrate with your AWS environment. Your teams can continue using VMware solutions while gaining the capabilities and global reach of AWS.

Over the past year, we’ve added support for new VCF versions, launched deployment automations, and expanded support for new EC2 instances. We’ve also shared guidance for configuring VCF9 Memory Tiering, NSX Federation, and introduced new Windows Server License entitlement options. With these additions, we’re working to give you more control over how you deploy, operate, scale, and protect your VMware workloads running on AWS.

Here’s a deeper dive into what we brought to you in our first year:

Deploy VCF 9 your way

Earlier this year, we announced support for VCF 9.0 and 9.1 on Amazon EVS. With VCF 9, Amazon EVS provisions the EC2 bare-metal infrastructure in your VPC while you maintain control of the architecture and configuration through the native VCF Installer. This level of control extends across the complete VCF lifecycle, allowing you to use the same VCF capabilities with Amazon EVS that you use on premises.

For teams that prefer an automated installation, we’ve launched the Amazon EVS Deployment Orchestrator in the Solutions for Amazon EVS GitHub repository, which includes end-to-end automation for deploying a fully configured VCF 9 environment on Amazon EVS. We’re excited to continue adding new solutions for planning, deployment, migration, and operations going forward.

Scale with the new i7i.metal-48xl, more AWS Regions, and larger environments

In April, we expanded EC2 instance options with support for i7i.metal-24xl, and today we’re announcing support for i7i.metal-48xl. This new instance has 96 physical cores, 1.5 TB of memory, and 45 TB of local NVMe storage, giving you a larger footprint for demanding VMware workloads.

Powered by fifth-generation Intel Xeon Scalable processors, i7i instances deliver up to 23% better compute performance and more than 10% better price performance than i4i instances. The higher core count and larger memory footprint of i7i.metal-48xl help you run more VMs per host and grow your environment with fewer hosts.

In addition, we’ve also expanded Amazon EVS to 22 AWS Regions, helping you place workloads closer to end users and align deployments with business objectives or data sovereignty requirements. We’ve also increased the maximum environment size from 16 to 32 hosts. Within one environment, you have the option to build a single large cluster, several smaller clusters, or whatever combination fits your needs.

Increase cluster density with Memory Tiering

VCF 9 introduced Memory Tiering, which lets a host use local NVMe storage as additional memory. A cluster can address up to twice the effective memory with the same number of hosts, helping you increase VM density and reduce hardware and licensing costs. We support Memory Tiering on both i4i and i7i instance families. Our Memory Tiering deep dive explains how the feature works and covers sizing and activation for Amazon EVS.

Simplify Windows Server licensing

Windows Server licensing can be a friction point when you plan a VMware migration. Amazon EVS Windows Server Licensing gives you two options for running Windows VMs. Customers with eligible Windows Server licenses and portability rights can bring those licenses directly to Amazon EVS. For VMs without portability rights, you can add Windows Server license entitlements through Amazon EVS and pay only for what you use on a per vCPU hour basis. You can add or remove entitlements as your environment changes, allowing you to license individual VMs and avoid the cost of licensing entire hosts.

Protect and recover VMware workloads with Amazon EVS

Amazon EVS gives you a flexible way to protect and recover VMware workloads in AWS using the same VMware tools and processes your teams already know. You can deploy a recovery environment on demand, bring workloads online without modification, and scale capacity to meet your recovery objectives. Our disaster recovery guide for VMware workloads on Amazon EVS compares recovery approaches and protection options so you can balance recovery time, recovery point, cost, and operational requirements for each workload.

Extend networking and security across sites

We’ve also announced support for NSX Federation, which can bring on-premises NSX environments and Amazon EVS environments under a single control plane. This lets you extend network segments and security policies across locations, creating a unified networking fabric between your data center and AWS. For customers who need large-scale Layer 2 extension, unified Distributed Firewall policies, or simplified disaster recovery failover, NSX Federation provides a long-term networking and recovery foundation that complements HCX migration workflows. Our NSX Federation deep dive explains how the two technologies work together and where each one fits.

One year of broader customer choice

Everything we’ve shipped this year supports our goal of giving you more control, choice, and flexibility in Amazon EVS while preserving the VMware tools and operational workflows your teams already know. If your organization uses VMware, we want Amazon EVS to be the best place in the world to run your VMware-based workloads.

What’s next: See Amazon EVS at VMware Explore 2026

If you want to see the latest innovations in action, we’ll be at VMware Explore 2026 in Las Vegas, August 31 through September 3, at The Venetian. Add our sessions to your schedule today.

Breakout session [CLOB2172LVS] Amazon EVS with VCF 9: Expanding choice and flexibility for VMware on AWS – Wednesday, September 2 | 3:15 PM to 4:00 PM | Level 3, San Polo 3505

20-minute theater session [CLOQT2319LVS] 20-minute guide to running VMware Cloud Foundation 9 on Amazon EVS – Monday, August 31 | 5:30 PM to 5:50 PM | The Hub Theater

Whether you’re at VMware Explore or not, we’d love to hear what you’re working on. Visit the Amazon EVS product page to get started or connect with your AWS account team to plan your next move.