VMware Cloud on Amazon Web Service - Detailed view of Foundational Blocks on VMware Cloud

VMware Cloud on Amazon Web Service allows users to expand their on-premises data centres and conveniently migrate application workloads without any need of converting machine image formats or undergoing a re-platform process. 

Now the users don’t have to provide several hardware resources to manage host failures. You can now increase the usage of the cluster resources as host failure replacement that takes minutes, not weeks or days. The users can also take advantage of prompt demand capacity to meet unplanned, seasonal or temporary demand by actively adding a host to the cluster. Customers can now with the latest VMware launch of Disaster Recovery Service with VMware Site Recovery accelerate time-to-protection, decrease the expense of managing additional physical data centres and simplify disaster recovery operations. 

VMware Cloud on Amazon Web Service now allows customers to operate VMware Software Defined Data Center stack which consists of vCenter, vSphere, NSX, and vSAN straight on bare-metal Amazon Web Service infrastructure while retaining the security and elasticity that customers demand. Customers can utilise the existing the VMware skills at the same time taking the full advantage of running VMware workloads in the cloud. In this article, we will be learning in depth about the foundational blocks that make up this service.

Compute:

Software Defined Data Center Cluster contains up to 10 vSphere clusters varying in size from 4 to 32 hosts. Each Host includes 512GB of memory and contains dual CPU sockets that are crowded by a custom-built Intel Xeon Processor E5-2686 v4 CPU package. They contain 18 crores per socket for a cluster core count of 144. Users can remove and add a host with an API call or with just a simple click of a button. 

Storage:

Primary Storage for the Software Defined Data Center Cluster is backed by the VMware’s Virtual SAN is an all-flash configured. Each ESXi host contains NVMe Flash storage. With minimal 4 ESXi host cluster operating Virtual SAN provisions 21 TB storage with all the virtual machines that is secured against a single host failure. Data encryption at rest is created without any user participation. 

Networking:

VMware NSX is the network visualization platform that allows customers to build a multi-tier virtual network. It enables customers to separate the physical devices from the network functions. In VMware Cloud on Amazon Web Services, the users can also utilise the NSX to build their own logical networks. There are always two logical networks for every cluster by default one for the compute workloads and one for the management workloads. The communication between the logical networks is gained by utilising gateways. The management Gateway uses VMware NSX Edge to allow users to connect to the vCenter Server Instance. Customers can now set up firewall rules to build IPSEC VPN and DNS for the management gateway. The customer gateway uses an NSX Edge instance and a distributed logical router to allow egress and ingress of VM network traffic. 

Connection:

The gateways discussed also sets up connectivity from the SDDC cluster to on-premises environments. An IPSEC layer 3 Virtual Private Network can be configured to securely connect the on-premise vCenter server with the management factor operating in the cloud SDDC cluster that allows capability such as a hybrid linked mode for consolidated management. A separate layer 3 IPSEC VPN is configured to generate connectivity between the VMs operating in the cloud SDDC cluster and the on-premises workloads. Customers can also benefit from their existing Amazon Web Service Direct Connect connection with VMware Cloud on Amazon Web Service. This can be done by building a hosted private Virtual Interface for the VMware Cloud on Amazon Web Service. Presently, VMkernel traffic is borne over the private VIF. For all other traffic, the customers can now use the Virtual Private Network connection already established. 

Availability:

VMware vSphere High Availability provisions high availability for VMs by benefitting resources and hosts of a cluster to reserve capacity. In case of any host failures, the workloads can failover. VMs on the failed host is restarted on different hosts if there is any event failure. VMware takes full responsibility and to carry out the host failure remediation. 

Hybrid Linked Mode:

vCenter Hybrid Linked Mode now offers a single pane of glass to manage and view cloud environments and on-premises environments. This will enable you to link the VMware Cloud on Amazon Web Service vCenter to on-premises vCenter to offer a hybrid management interface for on-premises and cloud resources. The users have to run vSphere 6.5 or later version to utilise this feature.