What is VMware ?
VMware is a virtualization and cloud computing software provider based in Palo Alto, California. Founded in 1998, VMware is a subsidiary of Dell Technologies. EMC Corporation originally acquired VMware in 2004; EMC was later acquired by Dell Technologies in 2016. VMware bases its virtualization technologies on its bare-metal hypervisor ESX/ESXi in x86 architecture.
With VMware server virtualization, a hypervisor is installed on the physical server to allow for multiple virtual machines (VMs) to run on the same physical server. Each VM can run its own operating system (OS), which means multiple OSes can run on one physical server. All of the VMs on the same physical server share resources, such as networking and RAM.
Diane Greene, Scott Devine, Mendel Rosenblum, Edward Wang and Edouard Bugnion founded VMware, which launched its first product -- VMware Workstation -- in 1999. The company released its second product, VMware ESX in 2001.
VMware products
VMware products include virtualization, networking and security management tools, software-defined data center software and storage software.
VMware Cloud on AWS
VMware Cloud on AWS brings together VMware’s software-defined data center (SDDC) software with elastic bare-metal infrastructure from Amazon Web Services to deliver a consistent operating model and application mobility for private and public clouds. Fortinet solutions for VMware Cloud on AWS give you a seamless security posture across the hybrid cloud by extending existing FortiGate security policies from on-premises vSphere deployments to workloads running in VMware Cloud on AWS.
FortiGate VM delivers additional security capabilities for hybrid clouds by providing secure site-to-site VPN connectivity for application mobility between on-premises VMware environments and VMware Cloud on AWS. It also ensures deep packet inspection and segmentation of users and data migrating between private and public clouds.
In addition, VMware customers can choose from over a dozen other Fortinet virtual appliances for VMware vSphere on-premises that can be deployed on VMware Cloud on AWS without refactoring, ranging from web security to email security to advanced threat protection and more.
Fortinet solutions enable hybrid cloud security for VMware Cloud on AWS with:
- Site-to-site VPN connectivity for application mobility between clouds
- Segmentation of persistent connections to deliver end-to-end security
- Unmatched breadth of security portfolio and flexible deployment options
- Centralized management and consistent policies across your data center and public cloud deployments
- Extensible management interface - APIs for cloud automation and orchestration
Amazon Web Services plans to expand the availability of VMware Cloud on AWS from 16 AWS regions to all 21 of its cloud computing regions by the end of next year.
The jointly developed, integrated hybrid cloud service allows organizations to seamlessly migrate their on-premises VMware vSphere-based workloads to the AWS cloud.
AWS started with two regions when the service became generally available in August 2017.
“Every quarter we would release one region, then in 2018 we started releasing three regions every quarter,” Rima Olinger, AWS’ global alliance lead of VMware Cloud on AWS, said in a meeting at Amazon’s Seattle campus last week. “Our regional expansion has moved at a very, very fast pace. This is compared to what you see as single or two regions with other competitors. We are way ahead of the curve.”
Customers across industries are accelerating adoption of both AWS Cloud and VMware infrastructure. Many of them want the ability to integrate their on-premises data center environments with AWS using their existing tools and skill sets within a common operating environment based on familiar VMware software. VMware Cloud on AWS delivers on this promise by providing a unified infrastructure framework that bridges the gap between
private and public clouds. VMware Cloud on AWS delivers a seamlessly integrated hybrid cloud that extends on-premises vSphere environments to a VMware SDDC running on Amazon EC2 elastic, bare-metal infrastructure and is fully integrated as part of the AWS Cloud. VMware Cloud on AWS enables Enterprise IT and Operations teams to continue
to add value to their business in the AWS cloud, while maximizing their VMware investments, without the need to buy new hardware. This offering enables for customers to quickly and confidently scale up or down capacity, without change or friction, for any workload with access to native cloud services. VMware Cloud on AWS is powered by VMware Cloud Foundation™, the unified VMware SDDC platform that integrates VMware vSphere, VMware Virtual SAN and VMware NSX virtualization technologies. This service is optimized to run on dedicated, elastic, bare-metal AWS infrastructure and is delivered, sold and supported by VMware and its partners. The service provides access to the broad range of AWS services, together with the functionality, elasticity, and security customers have come to expect from the AWS Cloud.
Use Cases
VMware Cloud on AWS provides a seamlessly integrated hybrid cloud offering addressing use cases that align to a customer’s cloud strategy
Use Case 1: Cloud Migrations
Accelerate cloud migration without complex conversions and run your applications on VMware Cloud on AWS, a consistent and enterprise-class cloud service that brings the best of VMware technologies to AWS, the world’s largest and most experienced public cloud. Once in the cloud, you can utilize other VMware cloud services and native AWS services to modernize applications as needed.
Ideal for customers who want to move to the cloud without having to
- Re-architect applications: Application specific: Want to move specific applications to the cloud due to specific business needs
- Data center wide evacuations: Want to consolidate data centers and move completely to the public cloud
- Infrastructure refreshes: Are doing infrastructure refreshes (e.g., due to hardware end of life, infrastructure software upgrade etc.) and want to leverage the opportunity to move to the public cloud
Use Case 2: Data Center Extension
Extend your data center with VMware SDDC-consistent on-demand, agile capacity in AWS, the world’s largest and most experienced public cloud, to meet the needs of your business.
Ideal for customers who want to expand their on-premises footprint with cloud
capacity for specific needs:
- Footprint expansion:
Have geographic capacity needs (such as data sovereignty rules or the need to be closer to their end users) and do not want to invest in building out a new data center
Need capacity for new projects without having to invest in over-provisioning or building new capacity on-premises
- On-demand capacity:
Have capacity constraints on-premises to handle seasonal spikes in demand
Want to handle unplanned temporary capacity needs
- Test/Dev: Have a need to perform test and development activities in a cloud environment that is operationally similar to on-premises environments
Use Case 3: Disaster Recovery
Disaster recovery, delivered as a service for VMware Cloud on AWS, delivers on-demand site protection with native automated orchestration, failover and
failback capabilities.
Ideal for customers who want:
- New DR: Implement a DR solution for the first time
- Replace Existing DR: Reduce their secondary DR site costs by moving DR operations to the cloud or by modernizing existing DR solutions
- Complement Existing DR: Protect additional workloads with a cloud-based DR solution for specific applications
