VMware Cloud on AWS provides dedicated, single-tenant infrastructure with support for 4 to 16 host vSphere clusters, delivered on AWS elastic, bare-metal AWS infrastructure based on the next-generation Storage Optimized High I/O instances and featuring low-latency Non-Volatile Memory Express (NVMe) based SSDs. You can scale capacity by adding and removing hosts from clusters (4-16 hosts per cluster). VMware Cloud on AWS runs the VMware software stack directly on host servers without nested virtualization. You can move existing workloads between your VMware environment and VMware Cloud on AWS through cold migration or VM template migration.
You can quickly create new VMware SDDC clusters on AWS Cloud through a web-based console or by utilizing a RESTful API. VMware manages and operates the service including VMware SDDC software components and the modern web-based console. VMware delivers service status with notifications, enterprise-class 24x7 service support & site reliability operations, and support center with FAQs, forums & chat support. VMware delivers scheduled SDDC software updates and emergency software patches with notifications, and auto-remediation of hardware failures.
VMware Cloud on AWS provides the VMware SDDC software stack to the elastically scalable AWS Cloud, including vSphere, vSAN, NSX, and vCenter. Each SDDC consists of 4 to 16 hosts, each with 36 cores, 512 GiB of memory, and 15.2 TB raw (roughly 21 TB usable capacity in an initial 4 host cluster) of NVMe storage. You can deploy a fully configured VMware SDDC Cluster in under a few hours, and scale host capacity up and down in minutes.
Each SDDC cluster utilizes an “all flash” vSAN storage solution built on NVMe instance storage. Each ESXi host has NVMe storage. An initial 4 host cluster running vSAN provides 15.2 TB raw storage (roughly 21 TB usable capacity). You can manage your storage SLAs on a per-application basis through your existing Storage Policy-Based Management provided by vSphere. You can also take advantage of advanced data services, including Quality of Service, snapshots, erasure coding, and APIs for third-party data protection (vADP).
VMware Cloud on AWS provides separate, dedicated networks for management and application traffic, connected through the VMware NSX networking platform, and provides support for networking multicasting. ESXi hosts are connected to an AWS VPC through AWS Elastic Networking Adapter (ENA), which supports throughput up to 25 Gbs.
VMware Cloud on AWS lets you benefit from AWS security-first approach, including IPSec VPN connectivity between your on-premises environment and VMware Cloud on AWS. You can utilize Network Address Translation (NAT) to establish connectivity for workloads running in your private subnet with VMware Cloud on AWS, and leverage network ACLs to control traffic to and from the subnet.
VMware Cloud on AWS supports custom-sized VMs, runs any OS supported by VMware, and makes use of single-tenant bare-metal AWS infrastructure so that you can bring your Windows Server licenses to the cloud.
Support for leading ISV partner solutions across categories including Data Protection, DevOps, Cloud Migration and Security. For details, see the VMware web site here.
