{"id":17896,"date":"2025-08-07T14:00:42","date_gmt":"2025-08-07T04:00:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.penguinpunk.net\/blog\/?p=17896"},"modified":"2025-08-07T16:22:45","modified_gmt":"2025-08-07T06:22:45","slug":"amazon-web-services-elastic-vmware-service-a-few-notes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.penguinpunk.net\/blog\/amazon-web-services-elastic-vmware-service-a-few-notes\/","title":{"rendered":"Amazon Web Services &#8211; Elastic VMware Service &#8211; A Few Notes &#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.penguinpunk.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/Amazon_Web_Services_Logo.svg_.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-17897\" src=\"https:\/\/www.penguinpunk.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/Amazon_Web_Services_Logo.svg_-300x180.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"180\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.penguinpunk.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/Amazon_Web_Services_Logo.svg_-300x180.png 300w, https:\/\/www.penguinpunk.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/Amazon_Web_Services_Logo.svg_-1024x614.png 1024w, https:\/\/www.penguinpunk.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/Amazon_Web_Services_Logo.svg_-768x460.png 768w, https:\/\/www.penguinpunk.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/Amazon_Web_Services_Logo.svg_.png 1280w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Amazon Web Services (AWS) recently <a href=\"https:\/\/press.aboutamazon.com\/aws\/2025\/8\/aws-announces-general-availability-of-amazon-elastic-vmware-service\">announced the general availability<\/a> of its <a href=\"https:\/\/aws.amazon.com\/evs\/\">Elastic VMware Service (EVS)<\/a>. This is a brief post covering what the service is, how it can be consumed, and why it might be of interest.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>What Is It?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>EVS is a service that provides the ability to run <a href=\"https:\/\/www.vmware.com\/products\/cloud-infrastructure\/vmware-cloud-foundation\">VMware Cloud Foundation<\/a> (5.2.1) on AWS bare-metal instances (specifically <a href=\"https:\/\/www.penguinpunk.net\/blog\/vmware-cloud-on-aws-i4i-metal-a-few-notes\/\">I4i.metal<\/a>). It&#8217;s a by-the-book <a href=\"https:\/\/techdocs.broadcom.com\/us\/en\/vmware-cis\/vcf\/vcf-5-2-and-earlier\/5-2\/getting-started-with-vcf-5-2\/cloud-foundation-architecture.html\">consolidated architecture<\/a> (running management and workload domains together), and contains the following VCF management components:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>ESXi hosts;<\/li>\n<li>vCenter Server instance;<\/li>\n<li>SDDC Manager;<\/li>\n<li>vSAN datastore;<\/li>\n<li>Three-node NSX Manager cluster;<\/li>\n<li>vSphere cluster; and<\/li>\n<li>NSX Edge cluster.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>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 <a href=\"https:\/\/docs.aws.amazon.com\/evs\/latest\/userguide\/architecture.html\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>To consume the service, you&#8217;ll need 4 nodes to get started, along with at least 2 VPC Route Servers, and AWS Enterprise Support. There&#8217;s a <a href=\"https:\/\/aws.amazon.com\/evs\/pricing\/\">pricing calculator<\/a> on the AWS website. You&#8217;ll also need to procure VCF licensing from Broadcom or an authorised reseller.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Where Is It Available?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The initial launch Regions are:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>US East (North Virginia)<\/li>\n<li>US East (Ohio)<\/li>\n<li>US West (Oregon)<\/li>\n<li>Asia Pacific (Tokyo)<\/li>\n<li>Europe (Frankfurt)<\/li>\n<li>Europe (Ireland)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Availability in more Regions is planned for the future.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Other Considerations<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><em>Storage<\/em><\/p>\n<p>You can leverage NetApp&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/aws.amazon.com\/fsx\/netapp-ontap\/\">FSx for NetApp ONTAP<\/a> service to provide additional storage for the cluster. There&#8217;s some useful guidance <a href=\"https:\/\/docs.aws.amazon.com\/evs\/latest\/userguide\/config-fsx-nfs-datastore.html\">here<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/repost.aws\/articles\/ARHmqQl7P6Tv23QojGkdiZbg\/attaching-amazon-fsx-for-netapp-ontap-nfs-datastore-s-as-secondary-storage-for-an-amazon-elastic-vmware-service-environment\">here<\/a>. If you like it more orange, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.purestorage.com\/products\/cloud-block-storage\/cbs.html\">Pure Storage&#8217;s Cloud Block Store<\/a> is also available for use with EVS. You can read that announcement <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.purestorage.com\/solutions\/pure-storage-cloud-service-for-evs\/\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><em>Clusters<\/em><\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p><em>Add-ons<\/em><\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p><em>Planning and Deployment<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Much like VMC on AWS (and most other cloud service deployments, for that matter), there&#8217;s a bit of planning you&#8217;ll need to do before you jump on the console. There&#8217;s a handy checklist that takes you through all of the requirements <a href=\"https:\/\/docs.aws.amazon.com\/evs\/latest\/userguide\/evs-deployment-prereq-checklist.html\">here<\/a>. It&#8217;s also worth noting that, unlike VMC on aWS, this isn&#8217;t a managed service, so some of the VPC constructs you see with VMC on AWS aren&#8217;t used with EVS. For example, there&#8217;s no shadow VPC deployed for EVS &#8211; it&#8217;s all done out of the customer account. And features like EDRS aren&#8217;t available, you need to manage your capacity yourself, in much the same way as you would do with an on-premises VCF deployment.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Thoughts<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>EVS is the same as VMC on AWS in the sense that it&#8217;s running VMware software on top of AWS bare metal servers. There are plenty of differences though, some of which I&#8217;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&#8217;ll no doubt see some changes when it comes to partners offering managed services wrapped in with EVS. It&#8217;s been a while coming, but now that it&#8217;s here, I&#8217;m interested to see how the market responds. There are probably plenty of questions I haven&#8217;t answered, but there&#8217;s a useful FAQ document <a href=\"https:\/\/aws.amazon.com\/evs\/faqs\/\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>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. &nbsp; What Is It? EVS is a service that provides the ability to run VMware Cloud Foundation (5.2.1) [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1027,874,1377,4],"tags":[1117,1456,1457,1286,1144,786,1383,1287],"class_list":["post-17896","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aws","category-cloud","category-vmconaws","category-vmware","tag-aws","tag-elastic-vmware-service","tag-evs","tag-vcf","tag-vmconaws","tag-vmware","tag-vmware-cloud","tag-vmware-cloud-foundation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.penguinpunk.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17896","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.penguinpunk.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.penguinpunk.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.penguinpunk.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.penguinpunk.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17896"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.penguinpunk.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17896\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17900,"href":"https:\/\/www.penguinpunk.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17896\/revisions\/17900"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.penguinpunk.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17896"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.penguinpunk.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17896"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.penguinpunk.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17896"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}