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HBRIEN M. POSEY
ybrid cloud is nothing new. It has been used in one form or another for several years, and I can recall the concept being discussed at a tech conference way back in 2001. Even so, I think that I probably speak for most IT pros when I say that, to date, the hybrid cloud has not pro- vided the seamless experience that we might have hoped for. However, VMware seems poised to change all of that with its
VMware Cloud on Amazon Web Services (AWS).
VMware, through its strategic partnership with AWS, is poised to deliver the one thing sorely lacking in the hybrid cloud space: seam- less consistency. At first, the idea of collectively using VMware and AWS software to build a completely seamless hybrid cloud seems like a pipe dream.
Although both companies are very good at what they do, VMware and AWS have their own ways of doing things. The procedure for creating a new VMware virtual machine (VM), for example, is quite a bit different from the procedure used for creating a new AWS EC2 instance. Even so, VMware and AWS have worked together to create a hybrid cloud solution that’s not only seamless, but should have
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almost no learning curve for experienced VMware admins.
As its name implies, VMware Cloud on AWS natively runs VMware software on the AWS public cloud. Like any other cloud service, access to the VMware Cloud is subscription- based. Customers can choose between a small (four host), medium (32 host) or large (64 host) deployment in the AWS region of their choosing. The subscription fees can be billed hourly (on demand), or on an annual or multi-year basis, with the subscription fees being billed to either the customer’s credit card or to their VMware account.
MINIMAL LEARNING CURVE
Because the VMware Cloud runs native VMware software, the cloud environment is managed through vCenter, in exactly the same way that any other VMware environ- ment would be managed (an architectural overview is provided in Figure 1). The primary
Learn how it works, and what scenarios are the best fit for this hybrid solution.
VMware Cloud on Amazon Web Services:
A PRIMER