AWS recently launched a preview of Amazon Elastic VMware Service (Amazon EVS), a new, native AWS service for customers to run VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) within their Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC).
With Amazon EVS, customers can utilize VMware Cloud Foundation license portability to run VMware workloads alongside other applications in AWS. According to the company, the service simplifies the deployment and enables quick migration of VMware-based virtual machines to AWS, using the same VCF software as on-premises.
Steven Jones, a general manager of Commercial Applications with EC2, writes:
Customers can set up a complete VCF environment in just a few hours using EVS’ guided configuration and automated deployment, allowing them to move, extend, and scale applications on AWS. EVS provides customers with the flexibility and control to configure highly optimized infrastructure for their specific workloads, extending on-premises networks and migrating workloads without changing IP addresses, retraining staff, or rewriting operational runbooks.
While a respondent on a Reddit thread commented:
AWS could sell VMWare Cloud (VMC) on AWS until Broadcom acquires VMware; at this point, only Broadcom could be the seller of record for VMC. At that point, VMC was all but dead, as Broadcom moved to push VCF in its various forms hard and couldn’t care less about the vision of VMC (multi-cloud management of VMware’s SSDC stack).
And:
GCP and Azure have taken advantage of this gap with their services (Google Cloud VMware Engine and Azure VMware Solution, respectively), which were VCF-based from the start. This is AWS’ response—they take the VCF bits and run them fully managed by them with no VMware involvement in the service's day-to-day operations. It's a sad day for VMC, its team, and its vision. Prudent of AWS.
AWS states it allows VMware customers to run their workloads in the cloud. Hence, possible migration pathways and partnerships are expanding to meet their needs. While some customers prefer Broadcom’s VMware Cloud on AWS managed service, others want a first-party AWS offering for easy access to AWS’s scalability and familiar VMware tools. However, on another Reddit thread, a respondent wondered what the benefit of levering EVS would be:
We're currently assessing a migration from VMware on-prem to AWS. So far, I haven't found anything I could do in VMware that I can't do in AWS. The only reason I could think of not just running directly on AWS would be familiarity with the VMware platform, which doesn't seem like a great reason unless you have a considerable staff and are heavily invested in VMware training for them already.
Lastly, the Amazon Elastic VMware Service will be released in preview at re:Invent 2024.
