VMC on AWS: How is VMware’s stack joint-ventured with AWS infrastructure?

Let’s say you are a SaaS-based company, and your entire infrastructure is on-prem, based on VMware technology in physical data centers in multiple locations. For example, you might have several huge ESX clusters that provide traditional storage over fiber channels and a platform that consumes infrastructure services through vRA (vRealize Automation, VMware’s cloud management platform). Your platform team created massive CI/CD pipelines to develop and deliver the product’s features as fast as possible, with minimum errors. When they build their pipelines, they consume services either from vRA or vCenter. In other words? Hundreds of thousands of lines of code rely on these two technologies to consume infrastructure as part of the CI/CD pipeline.

Here’s the problem: in the co-locations, you have no room to expand or add more workloads (i.e., physical servers). You need to add more compute in order to accommodate the production workload that just keeps growing and to provide the power for your developers to continue to develop.

You needed to find a solution that would allow you to expand the data center without necessitating major modifications to the platform that would alter how the CI/CD pipelines consume infrastructure. VMC on AWS is here to help.

On top of AWS global infrastructure, VMware provides an environment that is completely dedicated on dedicated hosts; on top of that, they build the VMware SDDC stack. The same building blocks and technologies that the customers know and use on their on-prems – such as the hyper-visor of Vsphere running the ESX-I, the software-defined security networking of NSX, the software-defined storage of vSAN – are all present and managed through vCenter. Further, VMware provides the SDDC console and exposes the same set of APIs that customers know and use on-prem, both on the console and on the vCenter itself. In doing so, VMware is able to provide connectivity from the cloud environment to the on-prem environment through either Layer 2 or Layer 3 connectivity for the same on-prem automation and CI/CD pipeline, the same look and feel, the same development and automation methodologies that the client uses with vRA. This way, you can expand to the cloud and leverage its benefits, such as elasticity, global infrastructure, and scale. You can do it using the same tools and methodologies that you’re using in your on-prem environment.

Are there any prerequisites? Only a vSphere environment with VMs in a VMware form factor. Is there a learning curve? No, this is a fully managed service, so the entire process of provisioning and all of the Day 2 operations are covered by VMware SRE teams. When you want to provision a new SDDC, you just click a button, and everything is done automatically for you. Everything related to maintenance, security patches, software upgrades, and failed hardware in the environment is taken care of by VMware SREs with guaranteed SLAs. Plus, the fact that the SDDC is located within the AWS ecosystem conveys unique advantages both from a technology perspective and a commercial perspective. Since the SDDC is in the same availability zone as the native environment, any traffic that comes from the AWS native environment to the virtual environment in VMware is free of charge and not metered, passing through a high bandwidth/low latency link. This is ideal for optimizing performance for latency-sensitive workloads like big data analytics, etc.

If you’re using vRA and are in need of data center extension or full workload migration (lift and shift) from the data center to the cloud, VMC on AWS can help you avoid re-platforming your application, redesigning your CI/CD pipelines or reconfiguring any automation mechanisms you created on-prem, in an environment that is comfortable, familiar and has you totally covered.

Written by: Lir Shif, VP, Solution Architect