Tag Archives: AWS

VMware Cloud on AWS – What’s New – April 2026

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What’s New?

A new node type is now available for deployment with VMware Cloud on AWS. The i7i.metal-24xl instance type is now generally available for both new and existing SDDCs and cluster deployments on SDDC version 1.26v2. Exciting? Confusing? Let’s dive in.

Specifications

The key specifications of the i7i.metal-24xl are as follows:

Specification i7i.metal-24xl
Processor 5th Gen Intel Xeon (Emerald Rapids)
Hyperthreaded Cores 96
Physical Cores 48
Memory 768 GiB DDR5 (5600 MT/s)
Local NVMe Storage 6 x 3.75 NVMe SSDs
Usable Capacity* vSAN OSA ~ 13 TB*
vSAN ESA ~ 20 TB*
Network Bandwidth 56.25 Gbps

*Note that the capacity of individual nodes will be dependent upon RAID configurations, FTT settings, and factors such as compression. You can check out the VMC Sizer to work out how much capacity a particular cluster configuration will give you.

Where Can I Deploy It?

The i7i.metal-24xl instance type is available today for purchase and deployment in the following AWS Regions:

Geography AWS Regions
Americas US East (N. Virginia), US East (Ohio), US West (Oregon), US West (N. California), Canada (Central)
Europe Europe (Ireland), Europe (London), Europe (Frankfurt), Europe (Stockholm), Europe (Milan)
Middle East Middle East (Bahrain)
Asia Pacific Asia Pacific (Singapore), Asia Pacific (Sydney), Asia Pacific (Melbourne), Asia Pacific (Tokyo), Asia Pacific (Seoul), Asia Pacific (Osaka), Asia Pacific (Mumbai), Asia Pacific (Hyderabad)

Deployment Considerations and Constraints

The i7i.metal-24xl can be deployed in a new SDDC, or deployed as a secondary cluster in an existing SDDC. Note that the i7i instance type is only available for SDDCs running on version 1.26v2. In-place cluster conversions are also supported, with support for converting i3, i4i, and i3en hosts to i7i.metal-24xl. Note that clusters running virtual machines on Virtual Machine Hardware version 21 are not eligible for conversion from i4i to i7i, due to hardware compatibility limitations. Also, if you are converting stretched clusters, these will be converted as OSA stretched clusters, as there is no current support for ESA stretched clusters in VMware Cloud on AWS, nor is there support for converting OSA to ESA in-place.

To better understand your sizing requirements, you can contact your account team to provide a conversion estimate. You can also run the VMC Sizer on your own SDDCs to provide an estimate.

 

Thoughts

The announcement was published on April 1st, but this is no joke. This instance type is a welcome addition to the VMware Cloud on AWS catalogue. Customers looking for a cost-effective replacement for their i3.metal hosts, or a smaller Pilot Light footprint for use with VMware Live Cyber Recovery will be happy, as will customers with processing requirements that want to take advantage of a modern CPU like the Emerald Rapids. The good news is that nothing else changes – your VMware Cloud on AWS service continues as before, managed by Broadcom, and evolving in line with your requirements. You can read the announcement blog post here, and the release notes are here.

VMware Cloud on AWS – What’s New – January 2026

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I posted last month about what’s new in VMware Cloud on AWS, particularly as it related to the host usage API and changes to the VMC Sizer tool. It’s a new calendar year, but the team hasn’t stopped, delivering some new updates via a soon to be rolled out VMware Cloud on AWS software bundle. More detail can be found in the VMware Cloud on AWS Release Notes located here, and there’s a great blog post from the team here.

 

What’s New?

The default version for all new SDDC deployments is now 1.26, and it will be rolled out across the fleet in the next little while. A key component of this release is vSphere 8.0 Update 3. This a long-term support release of vSphere, and delivers improved performance and reliability. Notable, also, is the NSX version – in this update it goes to 4.2.3.1. I’ve linked to it before, but check out the timeless classic “Correlating VMware Cloud on AWS SDDC Versions With Their vSphere Components” for more information. So, an update is great, but what do you really get? Let’s dig in.

Support for vSAN Express Storage Architecture

This is the big one – support for vSAN Express Storage Architecture (ESA) is now generally available for VMware Cloud on AWS. Note that “vSAN ESA is supported only for i4i.metal host types on newly deployed single availability zone SDDCs and for new secondary i4i.metal clusters on existing SDDCs that have been upgraded to 1.26”. So, no brownfield support, but there’s still scope to do some pretty cool stuff.

New vSAN ESA features include:

  • Native snapshots for faster backups;
  • A storage pool architecture that reduces fault domains and improves data availability; and
  • For smaller customers, supports for a RAID-5 storage policy starting from 3 hosts gives customers more storage capacity on smaller clusters.

Bring Your Own Keys (BYOK): VMC Now Includes VM Encryption

VMware Cloud on AWS now supports customer-managed VM Encryption through an external KMIP-compliant Key Management Systems (KMS). What does that mean? You can now use your own keys for workload VM encryption – while the VMC control plane continues to use the AWS KMS (managed by Broadcom) for vSAN encryption.

VM Hardware Version 21

VM Hardware Version 21 is pretty cool, offering support for:

  • 256 Disks per VM – Massive storage capacity through 64 disks across 4 vNVMe adapters;
  • NVMe 1.3 – Enhanced performance for Windows 11 and Windows Server 2022 deployments.
  • NVMe for Windows Server Failover Clustering (WSFC) – High-performance shared storage for mission-critical clustered applications.
  • Latest Guest OS Support – Compatibility with RHEL 10, Oracle Linux 10, Debian 13, and FreeBSD 15.

The blog post has an excellent comparison of Version 20 and Version 21.

VMware Tools 12.5.4

VMware Tools 12.5.4 offers improved driver compatibility, enhanced VM performance, and provides better integration with the underlying VMC infrastructure.

 

Thoughts

Software updates aren’t always headlining news, but support for ESA on VMC (finally) is news that’s sure to make quite a few customers happy. I’ve no doubt they’re sick of hearing how cool it is from their on-premises counterparts and are keen to be part of the action. The updates to VMware Tools and VM Hardware version support are also minor, but important updates to the platform.

VMware Cloud on AWS – What’s New – December 2025

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I posted last month about what’s new in VMware Cloud on AWS, particularly as it related to stretched cluster and HCX enhancements. The team has been working hard on some more new features, and I thought I’d cover them off briefly here. More detail can be found in the VMware Cloud on AWS Release Notes are here, and there’s a great blog post from the team here.

 

What’s New?

New Host Usage Report API

Have you been wondering what’s going on with resources in your VMC on AWS environment? Wonder no more. All the cool cloud kids are using APIs, and VMC on AWS is no different. Now you can retrieve daily host usage reports for any date range and filter by region, instance type, SKU, and other attributes – all via the API. There’s no need to call me and ask for a report on what’s happening, nor do you need to log a ticket to get access to the information. Here’s what a sample query looks like.

curl -H 'Authorization: <value>' https://{api_host}/api/activityanalytic/{org_id}/hosts/{freq}/usage-report?start_date=value&end_date=v

Check out the documentation here.

Redesigned VMware Cloud on AWS UI

The VMware Cloud on AWS UI has also had a facelift, and the interface is more streamlined and easier to navigate. You can access it at https://vmc.broadcom.com.

VMC Sizer & Cluster Conversion Updates

Ever since I started working with VMware Cloud on AWS, I’ve been a huge fan of the VMC Sizer tool. It’s so much better than trying to build solution estimates with a spreadsheet and a dream. If you’re an existing I3.metal customer, you’ve likely (hopefully) been planning a migration to I3en.metal or I4i.metal nodes. The conversion estimates can be a bit of a mystery, and have frequently required involving people like me and folks from the SRE team to provide these estimates. The product team has been working to make the process more streamlined, while giving customers improved visibility into why the numbers are the way they are. The output from sizing estimates now provides clear reasoning behind why a specific number of hosts is required, and this is based on 6 elements (compute, memory, storage utilisation (with both conservative and aggressive options), vSAN storage policies, and NSX Edges). It’s never been a simple matter of saying two I3.metal hosts equals one I4i.metal host, and now the sizer output reflects this more clearly.

The following constraints should be noted:

  • Final host counts and sizing will be validated during the actual cluster conversion. Sometimes you end up with more, sometimes you end up with fewer hosts.
  • Customers should re-run sizing evaluations after any significant configuration, resource, or other changes. Please don’t add another 30TiB workload to your cluster and expect the same result.
  • No RAID policy changes are made during conversion. This is especially notable if you’re using custom storage policies in your environment.
  • Subscription estimates provided as part of this workflow are for planning purposes only and do not represent guaranteed final requirements.
  • Actual subscription needs may be higher than estimated, requiring additional subscription purchase post-conversion. You’re given a small window to make good on this.
  • Refunds or subscription reductions will not be provided if estimates exceed actual needs.

 

Thoughts

As I mentioned in my previous post, VMware Cloud on AWS is not going anywhere, and the product and engineering teams continue to innovate and work hard to ensure that users get the best value from their investment in the VMware Cloud on AWS solution. The Host Usage Report is extremely useful, and for those customers concerned about cluster conversions, the improvements to the VMC Sizer should improve the confidence in the sizing process.

VMware Cloud on AWS – What’s New – November 2025

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I posted a little while ago about what’s new in VMware Cloud on AWS, particularly as it related to stretched cluster enhancements. The team has been working hard on a few new features, and I thought I’d cover them off briefly here. More detail can be found in the VMware Cloud on AWS Release Notes are here.

 

What’s New?

Improved Stretched Cluster Scale Down Support

When working with stretched clusters in VMC previously, there was a rule that, once a stretched cluster grew to 6 hosts, they couldn’t be reduced back down below that number. As requirements change over time, and customers look at alternative solutions and deployment topologies, this has become something of a blocker in terms of flexible deployment options. To combat this challenge, customers can now scale down from 6 or more hosts to 4 hosts (2 hosts per Availability Zone) or 2 hosts (1 host per Availability Zone). Why would you need to do this? You might have had a stretched cluster with I3.metal nodes deployed in it and you’ve recently converted that cluster to I4i.metal nodes. You very likely won’t need as many I4i nodes as you did I3s, so this gives you the option to reduce the cluster to an appropriate size. There are, of course, some constraints:

  • Firstly, if you’re using a “Large” (as opposed to Regular or Medium) management appliance deployment in your primary cluster, you can’t scale down below 6 hosts (3 per site).
  • Secondly, if you’re using custom CPU counts, and that count is 8, you can only scale down to 4 hosts (2 per site).
  • Finally, if you’re trying to scale down your cluster and that would leave the cluster with insufficient resources for your management and workload VMs, you won’t be able to do it. That is, you can’t make away resource constraints.

Note that if you are scaling down to 4 or 2 hosts, the Elastic DRS (EDRS) policy will be changed to “Storage Scale Up Only”. This ensures that EDRS won’t scale in your cluster leaving you with availability issues.

Have a stretched cluster and want to remove hosts? You can use this documentation to get it done. I’ve also covered the process here.

HCX version 4.11.3 Now Available for VMware Cloud on AWS

It is recommended that customers upgrade to HCX 4.11.3 as soon as possible to avoid support issues. It’s important to note that the “WAN optimization feature is no longer available. Before upgrading, users must deselect and remove all existing WAN-OPT appliance services from all Service Meshes and compute profiles. The upgrade will not proceed until the WAN-OPT appliance is removed from all Service Meshes as well as all compute profiles deployed in a given HCX connector / cloud system”. You can find out what’s new in HCX in the Release Notes.

 

Thoughts

Stretched clusters have been a great solution for VMC customers, but have, at times, denied customers the ability to make use of flexible deployment models. The addition of non-stretched clusters in stretched cluster SDDCs in September, and the ability to scale down below the current threshold of 6 hosts, should help customers make the most of their stretched clusters while still enjoying the ability to work with a more flexible topology. I’m also a big fan of HCX, particularly supported versions of HCX. VMware Cloud on AWS is still around, and still doing a great job of hosting VMware-based workloads on AWS infrastructure. The team continues to make enhancements to the product, and I’m looking forward to talking about what’s coming next month as well. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out and I can help, or point you to someone who can.

VMware Cloud on AWS – What’s New – September 2025

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It’s been a little while since I’ve posted about what’s new in VMware Cloud on AWS. There have been plenty of enhancements made to the platform, along with a streamlining of capabilities. The more things change, so to speak. That said, I thought I’d put up a short post that covers off some of the key enhancements made available to customers via the SDDC 1.24v5 update that’s currently being rolled out across the fleet. And if you’re trying to work out what on Earth I mean when I refer to 1.24v5, etc., here’s a handy document that’ll help you match up VMware Cloud on AWS releases and the corresponding vSphere components. The VMware Cloud on AWS Release Notes are here.

 

What’s New?

Non-Stretched Secondary Cluster Support in Multi-Availability Zone Stretched Cluster SDDCs

It’s a bit of a mouthful, but let me dig in. I’ve posted about the utility of stretched clusters previously (and I’m thinking of writing about it again based on some conversations in the past month). Stretched clusters have historically been a cool way to ensure that your workloads are protected across multiple Availability Zones in the event that one or more components (or hosts or even the whole Availability Zone) go away. One of the constraints with VMC on AWS stretched clusters, however, has been that an SDDC with a stretched cluster could only ever contain stretched clusters – there was no opportunity to mix topologies within the SDDC construct. So, one organisation I know of has its production workloads running on a stretched cluster on one SDDC, and its non-production workloads running on another SDDC. While it’s not the end of the world, it makes things slightly more fiddly from a management perspective, and duplicates some of the work required when it comes to firewall configurations, user creation, workloads mobility, and so forth. The VMC team has recognised this, and has now announced that VMC on AWS will have support for secondary non-stretched clusters in the same SDDC as stretched clusters.

There are, of course, a few caveats to be mindful of. Firstly, you need to be on 1.24v5. Secondly, the primary cluster needs to be a stretched cluster – you can’t add stretched clusters to non-stretched SDDCs. Thirdly, you can’t convert stretched to non-stretched and vice versa. Once the clusters are configured the way they are, you’ll need to keep them that way. Fourthly, the non-stretched clusters can only be deployed in one of the Availability Zones in which you’ve deployed your stretch cluster. You couldn’t, for example, deploy a stretched cluster in AZ1 and AZ2, and deploy a non-stretched cluster in AZ3, while hoping to keep this all in the same SDDC. Finally, the minimum non-stretched cluster size is three hosts, not two.

Default and Maximum Virtual Machine Hardware Version Increased

From the release notes, “[t]he default virtual hardware version has been increased from Virtual Hardware 14 (vSphere 6.7 compatibility) to Virtual Hardware 19 (vSphere 7.0 U2 compatibility). The maximum virtual hardware version has been increased from Virtual Hardware 19 (vSphere 7.0 U2 compatibility) to Virtual Hardware 20 (vSphere 8.0 compatibility)”. This really helps with compatibility with newer Windows and Linux guest operating systems while still providing the (crucial) ability to move workloads between VMware hosts on various cloud and on-premises platforms.

Increased NFS Throughput

Of note with the 1.24 release, “the MTU on VMK0 has been increased to 8500”. It’s reported that this increases large block throughput by up to 20% for NFS Datastore workloads. This is becoming increasingly important as customers look to leverage NFS-based storage solutions like FSx for NetApp ONTAP for less latency-sensitive storage workloads that don’t need to be hosted on vSAN.

 

Thoughts

While I’m excited about the General Availability of Amazon Elastic VMware Service, that doesn’t mean that VMware Cloud on AWS is dead. The VMware Cloud on AWS product and engineering teams have continued to work on releasing innovative features and important, incremental improvements. The encouraging thing about this is that they are listening to customers, particularly around things like mixed cluster topologies, and continuing to adapt the solution architecture to satisfy those requirements. This is a good thing for both existing and potential customers. If you looked at VMware Cloud on AWS three years ago and ruled it out, I think it’s worth looking at again.

Amazon Web Services – Elastic VMware Service – A Few Notes …

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Amazon Web Services (AWS) recently announced the general availability of its Elastic VMware Service (EVS). This is a brief post covering what the service is, how it can be consumed, and why it might be of interest.

 

What Is It?

EVS is a service that provides the ability to run VMware Cloud Foundation (5.2.1) on AWS bare-metal instances (specifically I4i.metal). It’s a by-the-book consolidated architecture (running management and workload domains together), and contains the following VCF management components:

  • ESXi hosts;
  • vCenter Server instance;
  • SDDC Manager;
  • vSAN datastore;
  • Three-node NSX Manager cluster;
  • vSphere cluster; and
  • NSX Edge cluster.

Storage is provided by vSAN (and selected third-party storage integrations), with two discrete network layers being delivered: the Amazon VPC and the VMware NSX overlay network. You can read more about the architecture here.

To consume the service, you’ll need 4 nodes to get started, along with at least 2 VPC Route Servers, and AWS Enterprise Support. There’s a pricing calculator on the AWS website. You’ll also need to procure VCF licensing from Broadcom or an authorised reseller.

 

Where Is It Available?

The initial launch Regions are:

  • US East (North Virginia)
  • US East (Ohio)
  • US West (Oregon)
  • Asia Pacific (Tokyo)
  • Europe (Frankfurt)
  • Europe (Ireland)

Availability in more Regions is planned for the future.

Other Considerations

Storage

You can leverage NetApp’s FSx for NetApp ONTAP service to provide additional storage for the cluster. There’s some useful guidance here and here. If you like it more orange, Pure Storage’s Cloud Block Store is also available for use with EVS. You can read that announcement here.

Clusters

Cluster sizes are currently limited to between 4 (minimum) and 16 (maximum) nodes. There is currently no support for stretched clusters. This will likely change in the future.

Add-ons

Services that VMware Cloud on AWS users may be familiar with, such as vDefend Advanced Threat Protection, and VMware Live Cyber Recovery, are not currently available with EVS.

Planning and Deployment

Much like VMC on AWS (and most other cloud service deployments, for that matter), there’s a bit of planning you’ll need to do before you jump on the console. There’s a handy checklist that takes you through all of the requirements here. It’s also worth noting that, unlike VMC on aWS, this isn’t a managed service, so some of the VPC constructs you see with VMC on AWS aren’t used with EVS. For example, there’s no shadow VPC deployed for EVS – it’s all done out of the customer account. And features like EDRS aren’t available, you need to manage your capacity yourself, in much the same way as you would do with an on-premises VCF deployment.

 

Thoughts

EVS is the same as VMC on AWS in the sense that it’s running VMware software on top of AWS bare metal servers. There are plenty of differences though, some of which I’ve covered above. I imagine many of the constraints around additional product integrations and scalability will be removed in the near future as the product evolves, and we’ll no doubt see some changes when it comes to partners offering managed services wrapped in with EVS. It’s been a while coming, but now that it’s here, I’m interested to see how the market responds. There are probably plenty of questions I haven’t answered, but there’s a useful FAQ document here.

NetApp Cloud Storage Announcements – February 2025

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NetApp recently made some announcements around its cloud storage capabilities as part of a larger series of product announcements. I thought I’d share some notes and some brief thoughts here.

 

Azure NetApp Files

New capability – Cost optimisation

New capability – Resilience

There’s also preview support for backing up large volumes and performing single file restores from backup.

 

Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP

There’s a new AWS CloudFormation package Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP that unlocks advanced ONTAP operations, including:

  • SnapMirror creation (including ClusterPeer and SVM Peer);
  • iSCSI (LUN and iGroup) creation;
  • CIFS Share creation;
  • Snapshot and Snapshot Policy creation; and
  • Advanced Volume creation.

[image courtesy of NetApp]

 

Thoughts

Why am I writing about FSx for NetApp ONTAP on my weblog? And why should you be interested in a few minor enhancements to this and to Azure NetApp Files? How do these technologies even make sense when the benefits of public cloud are right there? Why would organisations not just use the hyperscaler-native storage solutions available to them? It’s for the same reason that numerous organisations have adopted VMware Cloud on AWS and Azure VMware Solution, sometimes your applications need something different to what the public cloud can offer, at least until those applications have undergone some kind of transformation. I have plenty of customers in my day job taking advantage of FSx for NetApp ONTAP with their VMware Cloud on AWS deployments because the linear scalability of hyper-converged infrastructure has proven problematic for storage-heavy workloads. Additionally, they get the benefit of being able to leverage the NetApp tools they know and love, just in a cloud context. It’s great to see NetApp continue to add features and functionality to both Azure NetApp Files and FSx for NetApp ONTAP. If you’re struggling with shifting storage-dense workloads to public cloud while needing to stay within the confines of a VMware-based solution, these offerings can really help the economics make sense, even for enterprises, not just the t-shirt and jeans cloud-native types.

VMware Cloud on AWS – A Few Notes

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If you’ve been following along at home, you may have noticed that the blog has been a little quiet recently. There were a few reasons for that, but the main one was that I joined VMware this year as a Cloud Solutions Architect focussed on VMware Cloud on AWS. It’s an interesting role, and an interesting place to work. I’ve been busy onboarding and thought I’d share some brief notes on VMware Cloud on AWS. I still intend to talk about other things on this blog too, but figured this has been front of mind for me recently, and it might be useful to someone looking to find out more. If you have any questions, or want to know more about something, I’m happy to help where I can. And it doesn’t need to be a sales call.

 

Overview

In short, VMware Cloud on AWS is “an integrated cloud offering jointly developed by Amazon Web Services (AWS) and VMware.” The idea is that you run VMware’s SDDC stack on AWS bare metal hosts and enjoy the best of both worlds – VMware’s software and access to a broad range of AWS services. I won’t be covering too much of the basics here, but you can read more about it on the product website. I do recommend checking out the product walkthroughs, as these are a great way to get familiar with how the product behaves. Once you’ve done that, you should also check out the solutions index – it’s a great collection of information about various things that run on VMware Cloud on AWS, including things like SQL performance, DNS configuration, and stuff like that. Once you’ve got a handle on the platform and some of the things it can do, it’s also worth running through the Evaluation Guide. This will give you the opportunity to perform a self-guided evaluation of the platform’s features and functionality. There’s also a pretty comprehensive FAQ that you can find here.

 

Hardware

Node Types

There are 2 types of nodes available at this time: i3.metal and i3en.metal. The storage for nodes is provided by VMware vSAN.

i3.metal i3en.metal
Intel Xeon Broadwell @ 2.3GHz, 36 Cores (Hyper-Threading Disabled) Intel Xeon Cascade Lake @ 2.5GHz, 48 Cores (Hyper-Threading enabled providing 96 Cores)
512 GiB RAM 768 GiB RAM
10 TiB NVMe (RAW) 45 TiB NVMe (RAW)
High IOPS High IOPS, High Bandwidth

Custom Core Counts

One of the neat things is support for custom core counts on a per-cluster basis. You still pay full price for the hosts, but the idea is that your core licensing for BigDBVendor, or whatever, is under control. Note that you can’t change this core count once your hosts are deployed.

Other Cool Features 

Elastic DRS lets you expand your SDDC as required, based on configured thresholds for CPU, RAM, and storage. You can read more about that here.

 

Configuration Backups

If you’re using HCX, you might want to back up your HCX Manager. You can read more on that here. There’s also a VMware Fling that provides a level of SDDC import / export capability. You can check that out here. (Hat tip to my colleague Michael for telling me about these).

 

Sizing It Up

If you’re curious about what your current on-premises estate might look like from a sizing perspective, you can run it through the online sizing tool. This has a variety of input options, including support for RVTools imports. It’s fairly easy to use,  but for complex scenarios I’d always recommend you get VMware or a partner involved. Pricing for the platform is also publicly available, and you can check that out here. There are a few different ways to consume the platform, including 1-year, 3-year, and on-demand options, and the discounting levels vary according to the commitment.

Note that there are a number of other capabilities sold separately, including:

  • VMware Site Recovery
  • VMware Cloud Disaster Recovery
  • VMware NSX Advanced Firewall
  • VMware vRealize Automation Cloud
  • VMware vRealize Operations Cloud
  • VMware vRealize Log Insight Cloud
  • VMware vRealize Network Insight Cloud
  • VMware Tanzu Standard

 

Lifecycle

One of the things I like about VMware Cloud on AWS is that the release notes for the platform are publicly available, and provide a great summary of new features as they get rolled out to customers.

 

What Now?

I’ve barely scratched the surface of what I’d like to talk about with VMware Cloud on AWS, and I hope in the future to post articles on some of the stuff that gets me excited, like migration options with HCX, and using VMware Cloud Disaster Recovery. In the meantime, the team (it’s mainly Greg doing the hard work, if I’m being honest) is running a series of webinars next week. If you’re interested in VMware Cloud on AWS and want to know more, you could do worse than checking these out. Details below, and registration is here.

Design and Deploy a VMware Cloud on AWS SDDC
28 February 2022, Monday
9:30am IST | 12:00pm SGT | 1:00pm KST | 3:00pm AEDT
Join us as we walk through the process of Architecting and Deploying a VMware Cloud on AWS SDDC. We will cover: SDDC sizing for an application, sizing of the management CIDR block, connectivity design, VPN vs direct connect, basic networking and dependencies
Application Migration to VMC on AWS

1 March 2022, Tuesday
9:30am IST | 12:00pm SGT | 1:00pm KST | 3:00pm AEDT
In this session we will demonstrate the process of migrating a live application. Topics include: walk through the HCX architecture, HCX deployment process, HCX configuration, extending an L2 network, mobility (location) aware networking, migration types – conversation
Disaster Recovery – Protecting VMC on AWS or On-Prem Based Applications

2 March 2022, Wednesday 
9:30am IST | 12:00pm SGT | 1:00pm KST | 3:00pm AEDT
Listen to experts demonstrate the process of Architecting and Deploying a VMware Cloud Disaster Recovery (VCDR), with VMC on AWS to protect an application. We will cover: walk through the VCDR architecture, VCDR deployment process, considerations around VCDR, building a protection group, building a DR plan, executing DR and discuss failback options

Random Short Take #53

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Welcome to Random Short Take #53. A few players have worn 53 in the NBA including Mark Eaton, James Edwards, and Artis Gilmore. My favourite though was Chocolate Thunder, Darryl Dawkins. Let’s get random.

  • I love Preston’s series of articles covering the basics of backup and recovery, and this one on backup lifecycle is no exception.
  • Speaking of data protection, Druva has secured another round of funding. You can read Mellor’s thoughts here, and the press release is here.
  • More data protection press releases? I’ve got you covered. Zerto released one recently about cloud data protection. Turns out folks like cloud when it comes to data protection. But I don’t know that everyone has realised that there’s some work still to do in that space.
  • In other press release news, Cloud Propeller and Violin Systems have teamed up. Things seem to have changed a bit at Violin Systems since StorCentric’s acquisition, and I’m interested to see how things progress.
  • This article on some of the peculiarities associated with mainframe deployments in the old days by Anthony Vanderwerdt was the most entertaining thing I’ve read in a while.
  • Alastair has been pumping out a series of articles around AWS principles, and this one on understanding your single points of failure is spot on.
  • Get excited! VMware Cloud Director 10.2.2 is out now. Read more about that here.
  • A lot of people seem to think it’s no big thing to stretch Layer 2 networks. I don’t like it, and this article from Ethan Banks covers a good number of reasons why you should think again if you’re that way inclined.

Random Short Take #47

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Welcome to Random Short Take #47. Not a great many players have worn 47 in the NBA, but Andrei “AK-47” Kirilenko did. So let’s get random.

  • I’ve been doing some stuff with Runecast in my day job, so this post over at Gestalt IT really resonated.
  • I enjoyed this article from Alastair on AWS Design, and the mention of “handcrafted perfection” in particular has put an abrupt end to any yearning I’d be doing to head back into the enterprise fray.
  • Speaking of AWS, you can now hire Mac mini instances. Frederic did a great job of documenting the process here.
  • Liking VMware Cloud Foundation but wondering if you can get it via your favourite public cloud provider? Wonder no more with this handy reference from Simon Long.
  • Ransomware. Seems like everyone’s doing it. This was a great article on the benefits of the air gap approach to data protection. Remember, it’s not a matter of if, but when.
  • Speaking of data protection and security, BackupAssist Classic v11 launched recently. You can read the press release here.
  • Using draw.io but want to use some VVD stencils? Christian has the scoop here.
  • Speaking of VMware Cloud Director, Steve O has a handy guide on upgrading to 10.2 that you can read here.