Introduction to VMware Cloud on AWS

In today's world where cloud computing is a key strategy for many organizations, having the right deployment is essential. Some organizations implement private clouds within their own local data center, others host their entire infrastructure on the public cloud. However, many organizations have a need to implement a hybrid cloud architecture, combining elements of both the public and private clouds. VMware Cloud on AWS provides a simple and effective method of establishing a hybrid cloud environment.

VMware is a leading vendor when it comes to the virtualization of resources such as compute, storage, and network infrastructure. As a result, many organizations have used or currently utilize VMware within their own data center to manage and optimize their environment, often in their own private clouds.

VMware Cloud on AWS allows you to seamlessly transition your VM workloads to the AWS cloud to take advantage of the benefits that a public cloud can provide such as:

• On-demand resourcing
• Scalability
• Flexibility
• High availability
• Security
• Utility-based metering
• Regional expansion

This integration with AWS also opens up the potential to allow for communication between your VMs and the many services and features that AWS provides. This means your apps and resources in VMware Cloud on AWS can take advantage of AWS object storage such as S3, NoSQL databases such as DynamoDB, EC2 instances, and much more.

The service itself runs on bare-metal architecture allowing the continuation of ESXi hypervisors running the same suite of VMware software and management products as you do on-premises. Both environments can be controlled by VMware vCenter to allow ease of management.

This lesson takes an introductory look at VMware Cloud on AWS, providing an overview of what it is, how it can benefit your business, its underlying architecture, its integration with AWS and its service, and much more.

Learning Objectives

By the end of this lesson you will:

• Be able to explain the components of the Software Defined Data Center provided by VMware
• Understand what the VMware Cloud on AWS service is
• Have an understanding on how VMware Cloud on AWS could provide benefits to you and your business
• Have an awareness of how VMware Cloud on AWS connects to your AWS account and how you could provide communication between that and your SDDC
• Understand how maintenance and support is provided across the service
• Be able to explain a range of different use cases that you as a business could utilise the service for
• Understand how much the service is likely to cost

Intended Audience

This lesson would be of benefit to:

• Business managers looking to understand what VMware Cloud on AWS can provide the enterprise
• VMware and AWS Architects looking to understand how VMware Cloud on AWS works in conjunction with the AWS public cloud and VMware’s private on-premise architecture
• Anyone who wants to gain an introductory understanding of the VMware Cloud on AWS service

Prerequisites

This introductory lesson does not go into detail about how to configure and implement the VMware Cloud on AWS service, instead it’s designed to provide you with enough information to understand what it is and what it’s used for. However, as a prerequisite to this lesson, it would be advantageous, but not essential to have a basic understanding of:

• Cloud computing, including deployment models such as public, private, and hybrid clouds (which you can learn about in our What Is Cloud Computing? lesson)
• Virtualisation principles, such as what a hypervisor is (check out our Introduction to Virtualization Technologies lesson)
• VMware vSphere products
• AWS Virtual Private Clouds and their configuration (AWS VPCs are covered in detail in our AWS Networking and Content Delivery course)

This lesson includes

9 lectures

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