Announcing VMware Cloud on AWS Outposts and VMware Cloud Foundation for EC2
Expanding its partnership with VMware, Amazon Web Services (AWS) has announced launching its own datacenter hardware on premises through AWS Outposts.
Announced at AWS re:Invent 2018, AWS Outposts is designed to bring AWS cloud hardware on-premises i.e. to customer’s own data centers. With this move, AWS can now be seen as embracing the hybrid cloud ecosystem.
With Outposts, customers can now put AWS into their own datacenters using the AWS hardware. The new offering include configurable compute, racks, storage and will be fully managed. This will allow customers to run compute and storage on premises and easily connect to the AWS cloud capabilities.
Running AWS infrastructure on-premises via AWS Outposts will be a truly consistent hybrid experience for the customers.
AWS Outposts will come in two variants:
Variant 1: In this the VMware Cloud on AWS Outposts will permit you to continue using the same VMware control plane and APIs for running your infrastructure.
It will bring VMware SDDC capabilities – compute, storage and the networking infrastructure on-premises. Here, the service will be managed from the same console as the VMware Cloud on AWS.
Variant 2: Through AWS native variant available in AWS Outposts, customers can use same APIs and control plane which they used to run in the AWS Cloud, but now on-premises.
Andy Jassy, CEO of AWS feels that the customer wants to work exact same in cloud and on-premises.
Two years back, AWS struck a partnership VMware, and ever since the companies have tried to find ways to make this partnership more valuable to their customers. By bringing the AWS Cloud on prem in conjuncture with VMware, AWS will sell its own hardware, install it for the customers and will even manage it.
Companies will also be able to run other software with native AWS Outposts. VMware also announced its new integrated offering – VMware Cloud Foundation for EC2. The new offering will include several VMware technologies and services from VMware.
The announcement comes soon after the launch of AWS Transit Gateways, which will provide a single way to manage the network resources, both in cloud and on-premises.
The new service is under a public preview and the actual release is expected to be announced in the second half of the upcoming year.
