UNDERSTANDING

VMWARE CLOUD ON AWS

• Brian Adler

• Director, Enterprise Architecture, RightScale

• Kim Weins

• VP Marketing, RightScale

Panelists

• What is VMware Cloud on AWS?

• Technical Architecture

• Who Manages What

• How it Connects to On-Prem and AWS

• Leveraging AWS Services

• How You Get Started

• Limitations

• Pricing Comparison

Agenda

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• AWS provides the datacenters/dedicated servers to VMW

• You buy from VMW, not AWS

• VMW determines all of the pricing and no AWS discounts apply

• You pay for each entire host (not VMs)

• The bill comes from VMW and is separate from your AWS bill

• VMW does all the patching/management of VMware stack

• It’s supported by VMW, not AWS

• It’s a separate “AWS account” than your normal AWS accounts

• There are VMW consoles to manage it, not AWS

It’s Not The AWS You Know

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Technical Architecture

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Source: Presentation at VMWorld

• One host type. Each host has

• 2 CPU (each with 18 cores running at 2.3GHz)

• 512 GB memory

• Local flash storage

• 3.6 TB cache

• 10.7 TB raw storage capacity

• 4 to 16 hosts

• All in AWS us-west-2 (Oregon)

• VMware responsible for failover in host failure using vMotion

Configurations Available to Start

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Host Failure: VMware Does Remediation

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Source: VMware Cloud on AWS Technical Overview

Who Manages What

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Source: VMware Cloud on AWS Technical Overview

Connectivity to AWS and On-Prem

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Source: Presentation at VMWorld

• Enables use of mix of VMware compute/storage/network and

AWS services for application workloads

• AWS Services will run out of your normal AWS accounts

• VMware services are in the “VMware Cloud” AWS account

• Access from VMware SDDC to VPC in AWS Account, through

VPC endpoint for the service desired

• High bandwidth, low latency access to AWS services with no need for

public Internet traversal

Leveraging Other AWS Services

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Hybrid with On-Prem

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Source: Presentation at AWS re:Invent 2016

• Create an SDDC

• Specify 4 to 16 Hosts (all hosts are a set size)

• Only us-west-2 (Oregon) initially – will roll out support for

additional regions over the next few months

• ESXi, vSAN, NSX and vCenter are set up automatically

• Pick a VPC from your “normal” AWS account

• Use Content Library to move content from on-prem to

VMware Cloud on AWS

How You Get Started

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• Two bills

• You pay for entire hosts whether you use them or not

• You can’t control versions or patching of ESXi, vSAN, NSX,

vCenter

• Manually provision hosts (no autoscaling currently)

• For now (VMW says these limitations will go away over time)

• One host size

• One region (Oregon)

• Minimum of 4 hosts, max of 16

• Cold migration from on-prem only

Limitations

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PRICING

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• You pay per dedicated host (4-16)

• On-Demand (Hourly)

• 1 Year Reserved

• 3 Year Reserved

• Price includes hardware, VMware stack, and Support

• Billing

• Separate bill from AWS

• Pay for Data transfer and IP charges separately

• Pay with • Subscription Purchasing Program (SPP) or Hybrid Purchasing Program (HPP) Credits

• Hybrid Loyalty Program

• Up to 25% off based on on-premise licenses

Pricing Model for VMware Cloud on AWS

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• Host Level

• Use VMware Cloud on AWS (VMC) host specs on VMC website

• Match up VMC host to AWS Dedicated Host

• Compare costs

• Instance Level

• Use “Reference VM” specs used to calculate TCO on VMC website

• Assume VMC host is broken down into Reference VMs (not

oversubscribed)

• Match to AWS Instance

• Compare costs without oversubscription

• Consider impact of oversubscription

How We Compared

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VMware Cloud on AWS AWS Dedicated

(i3)

Delta (VMC on AWS as

Compared to AWS)

CPU 2 CPU, 36 cores, 72 vCPU 2 CPU, 36 cores, 72 vCPU

Memory 512 GiB 488 GiB

Local Storage 14.3 TB

10.7 TB + 3.6TB cache 15.2TB

Virtualization VMW Xen or BYOL

Support VMW included Numbers below include

+10% for support

On-Demand Cost Hourly

$8.3681 /hr $6.0401 /hr $2.328 (+39%)

1 Year Pay Upfront Annual

$51,987 /yr $33,706 /yr $18,281 (+54%)

3 Year Pay Upfront 3 years

$109,366 /3yrs $67,147 /3yrs $42,219 (+63%)

Pricing Comparison: AWS Dedicated vs. VMware

Cloud on AWS Host

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VMware Cloud on AWS

Density=8

AWS Instance

i3.2xlarge

Delta (VMC on AWS as

Compared to AWS)

CPU 8 vCPU (4 cores) 8 vCPU (4 cores)

Memory ~64 GiB 61 GiB

Local Storage ~1.3 TB

+ 450 GB cache 1.9 TB

Virtualization VMW Xen

Support VMW Numbers below include

+10% for support

On-Demand Cost Hourly

$1.046 /hr $0.6864 /hr $0.3596 (+52%)

1 Year Pay Upfront Annual

$6,498 /yr $0.742 effective hourly

$3,830 /yr $0.437 effective hourly

$2,668 (+70%)

3 Year Pay Upfront 3 years

$13,671 /3yrs $0.520 effective hourly

* $9,122 /3yrs $0.347 effective hourly

$4,549 (+50%)

Pricing Comparison: AWS Instances vs. VMware

Cloud on AWS VMs (Density=8)

17 *Uses 3yr Convertible RIs for AWS

Digging into VMware Published TCO

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Requires

46-69 VMs

per host.

46 VMs * 2 vCPUs each = 92 vCPUs * .5 cores/vCPU = 46 cores

69 VMs * 2 vCPUs each = 138vCPUs * .5 cores/vCPU = 69 cores

28% oversubscribed

92% oversubscribed

Physical cores = 36

• If your VM CPUs are underutilized such that you can

oversubscribe on VMware, you should be using a smaller,

less expensive instance on AWS.

• If the CPU load varies significantly on the VM, you should be

considering using auto-scaling with smaller instance sizes on

AWS to account for variable.

Notes

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• How to Think About It?

• VMware Cloud on AWS has per host pricing that includes:

• Datacenter costs (space, power, security, etc)

• Infrastructure (hardware, storage)

• VMware stack (ESXi, vSAN, NSX, vCenter)

• Maintenance of hardware and VMware stack

• Support up through VMware stack

• It does not include:

• Bandwidth costs

• What would my equivalent costs be in Datacenter?

• Use 3yr commitment for VMware Cloud on AWS to mirror datacenter

costs

A Framework for Pricing vs On-Prem

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• Think of it as VMware in a hosted facility, not as “nomal” AWS

• Benefits (more flexible than on-prem)

• Environment you know (existing tools and template)

• Easy to move workloads to “cloud”

• Easier to scale up/down than on-prem

• Leverage some AWS services

• Considerations (not as flexible as AWS)

• Not as scalable as AWS/public cloud (host vs. VM level, no auto-scaling)

• VMware “overhead” in cost

• Separate billing “silo” from other AWS services

• Likely more expensive than AWS (if you do AWS right)

Bottom Line:

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• For more information, contact sales@rightscale.com

Q&A

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