AWS / VMware Partnership - A game changer
On Thursday, Oct 13, Amazon Web Services (AWS) and VMware announced a new partnership, whereby AWS would provide native support for a customers existing VMware workloads to run an AWS and be managed by native VMware tools like vSphere and the vRealize Suite.
This a huge game changer for the already dominate AWS in the Public Cloud space. Here's why
While AWS has the leading market share and offerings in the Public Cloud, everything from the hypervisor they use (Xen) to Storage (EBS/S3) and VM definitions (AMI) while based on open standards were unique to AWS.
At the same time, corporate IT was building their Private Clouds on VMware, which gave then the market share lead in that space.
As customers look to move more and more workloads to the cloud, the challenge was two fold
First, Corp IT staffs know VMware - so ESX, vSphere and Cloud Management Tools. They think about vMotion, vStorage Motion, SRM, etc, etc. Any while there is an AWS Plugin to vSphere, there is no direct method for vMotioning a VM from a company Private Cloud to AWS and back.
Second, Managing AWS is a new set of skills. Understanding, AMIs, EBS, S3, Route 53, VPC, etc takes some time.
What that has created is two worlds. One in AWS, where many "modern" apps live in a DevOps, Object Stored and API managed method and a legacy world of VMs running on ESX Clusters.
So while "new" apps are being created on AWS, legacy apps often hung around in private data centers because it was somewhat painful to move them. For many customers this meant thousands of VMs.
And while there are 3rd party tools like Racemi to help customers perform what are called "Lift and Shift" migrations from Private to Public, it's not the same hybrid model that people were expecting.
Microsoft took a slightly different approach with Azure - creating the Azure Pack software and along with hardware partners created the Cloud Platform Solution (CPS) that allowed customers to build apps on CPS and have a transparent management and migration to Azure.
This has all changed now. With AWS effectively supporting VMware natively, many customers can accelerate their plan to "migrate everything to the cloud" and get out of the data center business altogether.
They won't need consultants or special training or 3rd party tools. Their existing VMware Admins can simply migrate workloads to AWS and begin shutting down hosts.
Now there are a few caveats with this. AWS support for VMware will be based on the latest versions of ESX + vSAN Storage and NSX Software defined networking. So there may be some upgrades, adjustments to be made to existing infrastructures to support the migration. The solution today is in Technical Preview - so there are not yet detailed how-tos on everything. Yet.
Outside of the impact on corporate IT of effectively them moving their work to the cloud and potentially putting themselves out of a job, there is also the impact on other cloud providers - including VMware and EMC/Dell. VMware built their own cloud offering called vCloudAir, EMC has Virtustream and Dell has Dell Cloud. So what happens here - do they all go away ? It will be interesting to see how this plays out over the next 12 - 18 months.
Bottom line is this was a shrewd move on the part of VMware and AWS. It suddenly allows potentially hundreds of thousands of existing VMs to be be easily moved to AWS. And those VMs can then easily access other AWS services, from ioT, to Big Data.
It also creates some new revenue streams for VMware as customers can pay for their AWS time via VMware. Similarly it allows for continued licensing models for VMware. All in all - this new partnership is a real game changer for the industry.
This a huge game changer for the already dominate AWS in the Public Cloud space. Here's why
While AWS has the leading market share and offerings in the Public Cloud, everything from the hypervisor they use (Xen) to Storage (EBS/S3) and VM definitions (AMI) while based on open standards were unique to AWS.
At the same time, corporate IT was building their Private Clouds on VMware, which gave then the market share lead in that space.
As customers look to move more and more workloads to the cloud, the challenge was two fold
First, Corp IT staffs know VMware - so ESX, vSphere and Cloud Management Tools. They think about vMotion, vStorage Motion, SRM, etc, etc. Any while there is an AWS Plugin to vSphere, there is no direct method for vMotioning a VM from a company Private Cloud to AWS and back.
Second, Managing AWS is a new set of skills. Understanding, AMIs, EBS, S3, Route 53, VPC, etc takes some time.
What that has created is two worlds. One in AWS, where many "modern" apps live in a DevOps, Object Stored and API managed method and a legacy world of VMs running on ESX Clusters.
So while "new" apps are being created on AWS, legacy apps often hung around in private data centers because it was somewhat painful to move them. For many customers this meant thousands of VMs.
And while there are 3rd party tools like Racemi to help customers perform what are called "Lift and Shift" migrations from Private to Public, it's not the same hybrid model that people were expecting.
Microsoft took a slightly different approach with Azure - creating the Azure Pack software and along with hardware partners created the Cloud Platform Solution (CPS) that allowed customers to build apps on CPS and have a transparent management and migration to Azure.
This has all changed now. With AWS effectively supporting VMware natively, many customers can accelerate their plan to "migrate everything to the cloud" and get out of the data center business altogether.
They won't need consultants or special training or 3rd party tools. Their existing VMware Admins can simply migrate workloads to AWS and begin shutting down hosts.
Now there are a few caveats with this. AWS support for VMware will be based on the latest versions of ESX + vSAN Storage and NSX Software defined networking. So there may be some upgrades, adjustments to be made to existing infrastructures to support the migration. The solution today is in Technical Preview - so there are not yet detailed how-tos on everything. Yet.
Outside of the impact on corporate IT of effectively them moving their work to the cloud and potentially putting themselves out of a job, there is also the impact on other cloud providers - including VMware and EMC/Dell. VMware built their own cloud offering called vCloudAir, EMC has Virtustream and Dell has Dell Cloud. So what happens here - do they all go away ? It will be interesting to see how this plays out over the next 12 - 18 months.
Bottom line is this was a shrewd move on the part of VMware and AWS. It suddenly allows potentially hundreds of thousands of existing VMs to be be easily moved to AWS. And those VMs can then easily access other AWS services, from ioT, to Big Data.
It also creates some new revenue streams for VMware as customers can pay for their AWS time via VMware. Similarly it allows for continued licensing models for VMware. All in all - this new partnership is a real game changer for the industry.
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