This post was co-authored by Alex Zuo, Product Manager

VMware Cloud on AWS is the only hybrid cloud solution that allows VMware vSphere customers to modernize, protect, and scale mission-critical applications leveraging AWS, the world’s leading public cloud. With the inclusion of VMware Hybrid Cloud Extension in the base offering, we’ve made it extremely easy to migrate applications at scale to VMware Cloud on AWS. Once you are there, VMware’s enterprise-class SDDC capabilities coupled with the elasticity, breadth, and depth of AWS infrastructure and services makes VMware Cloud on AWS the ideal platform for your enterprise applications.

This week at AWS Summit in New York City, we will be showcasing new advancements in this industry-defining hybrid cloud service. So let’s jump in and see what’s in store.

Migrate, run, and scale Oracle and Microsoft applications with confidence on VMware Cloud on AWS

VMware Cloud on AWS provides the performance, availability, and scale required to support the most resource intensive applications, including Oracle databases, middleware, and applications, and Microsoft SQL Server. VMware vSphere, vSAN, and NSX running on Amazon EC2 dedicated, elastic, bare-metal infrastructure delivers the predictable, high-performance infrastructure required for these workloads. Application uptime and availability are enabled through capabilities built directly in the service such as vSphere HA, DRS, auto host remediation, and Stretched Clusters for zero-RPO infrastructure availability. Elastic DRS will allow customers to optimize their Oracle or Microsoft environments for either cost or performance through automatic scaling and load balancing of workloads. To give you a sense of what can be achieved running Oracle or Microsoft on VMware Cloud on AWS, here are a few statistics to consider:

Oracle Database performance in VMware Cloud on AWS environment is the same as in an on-premises vSphere environment –VMware Cloud on AWS cluster was able to sustain 370 thousand transactions per minute with scaling from 1 VM to 12 VMs

For Microsoft SQL Server workloads, testing showed database performance scaled very well – when running 16, 8-vCPU VMs, VMware Cloud on AWS was able to sustain 6.7 million database TPM.

Beyond just the technical capabilities we are providing, customers can reap the benefits of the technical capabilities, hands-on experience, and commercial arrangements we’ve established over the years for running Oracle and Microsoft running on vSphere. To help you evaluate if moving your Oracle or Microsoft environments to VMware Cloud on AWS would be a strategic fit, we’ve created a set of assets to help you out:

VMware Cloud on AWS customer adoption

At the AWS NYC Summit, Kit Colbert, CTO Cloud Platform, VMware and Sandy Carter, VP AWS Windows & Enterprise Workloads, discussed the continued adoption of VMware Cloud on AWS across every industry. Customers are able to migrate, run, protect, and scale their applications to deliver their business objectives with VMware Cloud on AWS. Take a look below at some of the organizations adopting VMware Cloud on AWS. Learn more about this in Sandy’s blog

VMware Cloud on AWS Continues Rolling Out New Capabilities

We also continue to deliver value through new capabilities. In June, we introduced powerful new features for enterprise customers in my blog post: VMware Cloud on AWS Delivers More…of Everything! We are accelerate this feature delivery with another set of capabilities that are either available today, or in preview(1), that will allow customers to optimize resource management, enable better connectivity to on-premises environments and improve security within VMware Cloud on AWS deployments. Let us look into each of these areas in a little more detail.

Preview: Optimized Resource Management with Elastic DRS for VMware Cloud on AWS

This capability will allow our users to automate their VMware Cloud on AWS cluster scaling based on their requirements. Elastic DRS will enable automated scaling up or scaling down of hosts and rebalancing of clusters, depending on whether the user optimizes for best performance or lowered cost. It will maintain an optimal number of provisioned hosts so that the cluster utilization is high while maintaining desired CPU, memory and storage performance. Read Frank Denneman’s blog here.

Preview: Improved connectivity options with VMware NSX capabilities for AWS Direct Connect and VPN connectivity

New VMware NSX capabilities enable enhanced hybrid cloud connectivity options that can simplify configuration and improve resiliency. VMware Cloud on AWS now uses AWS Direct Connect for management appliance and workload traffic, eliminating the need for separate VPN tunnels for this traffic. Key capabilities include:

Performance – High BW, low latency connectivity for all traffic types

NSX logical networks and management networks advertised dynamically over AWS Direct Connect Private VIF

Optional IPSec VPN for encrypted traffic

Further, for VPN-based connectivity, new enhancements reduce complexity for networking across sites while improving performance and resiliency.

Simplified VPN deployment – dynamic route sharing via BGP

Dual-homed tunnels across unique VPN endpoints enable inter-site resiliency

Accelerated throughput and performance for IPsec tunnel traffic using DPDK technology

Preview: Micro-segmentation Security & Operational Visibility with VMware NSX:

VMware NSX enables granular control over East-West traffic between application workloads running in VMware Cloud on AWS SDDC. Security policies are dynamically enforced at the VM-level, enabling security that helps customers prevent threats from spreading across network. Users will be able to define policies based on application constructs, such as workload attributes (e.g., VM names) and user-defined tags. Furthermore, these security policies will follow the workloads wherever they are moved inside VMware Cloud on AWS SDDC. These dynamic security policies will provide operational simplicity compared to traditional IP-based firewall rules.

Preview: Consistent Operational Tooling for Monitoring & Security

VMware Cloud on AWS with the new NSX capabilities enables network flow and packet visibility for identifying and troubleshooting issues quickly. These include standard based IPFIX and Port Mirroring features that enable customers to utilize existing network and security tools in VMware Cloud on AWS.

Preview: Enhanced connectivity within SDDCs enables automation and partner solutions

VMware Cloud on AWS provides native connectivity across workloads, management appliances (i.e., vCenter Server), and ESXi hosts, improving performance and throughput and simplifying configuration for automation and backup-restore solutions. For example, PowerCLI scripts that access vCenter Server and automate common VM operations, or partner solutions that are deployed as Proxy VMs connecting to vCenter Server and ESXi for backup-restore operations.

Talk with your VMware representative to find out if you are interested in these new Preview capabilities from NSX.

Get started now:

You can get started with VMware Cloud on AWS with our Single Host SDDC offering for as low as $5.60/hour! That’s a fraction of the price of a 4 host production SDDC offering. This gives you a single host instantiated with industry leading software defined data center technologies vSphere, vSAN, NSX on the AWS Cloud. As a reminder, the Single Host SDDC offering is time-bound to 30-day intervals and is designed for customers who want to prove the value of VMware Cloud on AWS in their environments be it for migrating to the cloud, extending your data center or modernizing your applications with native AWS services. For faster on-boarding, we have now introduced a capability that allows you to delay AWS account linkage, a pre-requisite step for connecting to native AWS services. This offering also allows you a single-click scale up to 4 host configurations for your production needs within those 30 days without any loss or interruption to your work.

Try our Single Host SDDC offering now by clicking here.

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1 -Feature(s) released in preview are intended to gather feedback. May not be available to all applicable customers or in all AWS regions. The information in this document is for informational purposes only and may not be incorporated into any contract. There is no commitment or obligation that items in ‘Preview’, ‘’Developing’, and ‘Planning’, will become ‘Available’.