AWS expands Amazon EVS for faster VMware cloud migration

Amazon Web Services has expanded its Amazon Elastic VMware Service (EVS) to facilitate smoother VMware cloud migrations. This service enables businesses to operate VMware Cloud Foundation within an Amazon Virtual Private Cloud while preserving their existing VMware tools and practices. Since its launch a year ago, Amazon EVS has now expanded to cover 22 AWS regions, supporting VCF versions 9.0 and 9.1 on Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud bare-metal infrastructure.

The primary drivers for adoption include data center exits, disaster recovery needs, and the scarcity of new on-premises hardware, according to Andy Reedy, senior manager of EC2 product management at AWS. Reedy mentioned that the primary use case they frequently hear from customers is data center evacuation, with almost weekly inquiries about moving out of a data center due to expiring contracts.

He also highlighted that the lift-and-shift VCF-to-VCF model is the fastest route to transition from a data center to a cloud environment. Unlike the fully managed VMware Cloud on AWS, Amazon EVS allows customers to maintain direct control over their VCF environments, enabling them to leverage scalable AWS infrastructure while retaining familiar skills and processes.

Amazon EVS functions as a self-managed solution, where customers log in and control the VCF environment, deploying it similarly to how they would in their on-prem data center, but utilizing AWS cloud infrastructure. As hardware limitations complicate VCF adoption, Amazon EVS can also supplement on-premises environments when extra capacity is required.

Customers can independently decide whether each application should remain unchanged, migrate to the cloud, or undergo further modernization, based on Reedy. This approach offers a menu of options tailored to each workload's best practices. Reedy noted that for VMware workloads, customers don't necessarily have to refactor or change the applications themselves; they can still benefit from cloud infrastructure without making changes to the applications.