Amazon Elastic VMware Service announces support for Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP

AWS announced the public preview of Amazon Elastic VMware Service (Amazon EVS), an AWS-native service to deploy VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) directly in your Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC). With Amazon EVS, you can easily provision, configure, and deploy VMware-based virtual machines on AWS, all while maintaining your familiar VMware experience. Amazon EVS supports a variety of use cases, including data center exits, data center extension, and disaster recovery. With Amazon EVS, you have the option to self-manage or work with AWS Partners to manage workloads. Amazon EVS enables VMware clusters to run on top of bare-metal Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instances running VMware virtualization software.

And now, Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP can be used as an external storage option for Amazon EVS. You can migrate and operate VMware-based workloads in AWS maintaining operational consistency by using the same VCF and NetApp^® ONTAP^® tools you use on premises today.

Amazon EVS brings the VMware software-defined data center (SDDC) to the AWS Cloud, maintaining the existing VMware experience. Amazon EVS extends the virtualization layer seamlessly between the premises and AWS, enabling VMware administrators to move and scale their environments as needed. It meets the need for an AWS service that offers the scale and elasticity of AWS, while retaining familiar VMware software that can be managed with existing skills.

Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP is a fully managed storage service that delivers NetApp ONTAP capabilities natively on AWS. It supports file and block datastores in addition to guest-attached storage options. FSx for ONTAP optimizes TCO, enhances data protection, facilitates operation, and provides a “like-for-like” experience for VMware workloads in the AWS Cloud and in hybrid cloud environments.

Optimizing TCO is a critical factor to consider in hyperconverged VMware environments and can significantly affect a project’s return on investment. One of the advantages of using FSx for ONTAP is that it enables Amazon EVS customers to scale up storage independent of compute. Decoupling storage from compute eliminates operational and cost bottlenecks that have previously made scaling VMware workloads prohibitively expensive.

Amazon EVS and FSx for ONTAP mitigate several challenges of running VMware workloads in the cloud while delivering key benefits:

• Lower TCO. Due to the VMware hyperconverged infrastructure, storage and compute are tightly coupled. The combination of Amazon EVS and FSx for ONTAP lowers TCO by allowing storage and compute to scale independently. Overall storage consumption is also reduced through signature ONTAP storage efficiency technologies.
• Enhance data protection. Existing inefficiencies can’t meet cloud-based architecture demands for backing up, protecting, and recovering VMware instances and data. FSx for ONTAP features such as NetApp Snapshot™ technology enable instant, data-efficient, point-in-time data copies. In addition, NetApp BlueXP™ disaster recovery as a service (DRaaS) enables fast and incremental data replication and efficient backup and restoration for the entire VM stack.
• Simplify hybrid cloud management processes. FSx for ONTAP provides the familiar ONTAP experience in the cloud by delivering all the capabilities commonly used on premises. When you work in a hybrid environment with FSx for ONTAP, you get the benefits of operational consistency at the storage level as well. Amazon EVS with FSx for ONTAP seamlessly enables migration and hybrid cloud workflows, making it easy to extend VMware workloads from existing SDDCs to AWS. When FSx for ONTAP is used as external storage for Amazon EVS, you can extend and expand your file workloads to a large variety of AWS services and solutions.

Andy Reedy, senior manager of Product Management at AWS, shared: "Customers achieve the fastest cloud migrations when they can minimize changes between their source and target environments. Amazon Elastic VMware Service delivers exactly this by enabling customers to run the same VMware Cloud Foundation solution they use on premises, directly in their Amazon VPC.” He explained that “by adding Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP, customers can now replicate their external storage architectures in the cloud, leveraging FSx for ONTAP’s high-performance, scalable storage capabilities. This combination not only simplifies and accelerates cloud migrations but gives customers the flexibility to scale their storage independently as their business needs evolve."

According to Pravjit Tiwana, senior VP and general manager of Cloud Storage at NetApp, “The primary problem Amazon Elastic VMware Services with Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP solves is easing the bursting and migration of VMware workloads to the cloud, using standard VMware tools.” Because “migration is typically part of the customer’s modernization journey,” he said, “for many organizations, the leap to rehosting or refactoring can be daunting and obstructive. Amazon EVS with FSx for ONTAP breaks down this large leap into a manageable step, facilitating smoother transitions to the public cloud and enabling organizations to modernize their core estate without immediate, extensive changes. FSx for ONTAP enables the disaggregation of compute and storage and advanced data management capabilities that substantially lower the total cost of ownership and improve protection and reliability.”

Robin Gardner, who is a chief commercial officer at Xtravirt, system integrator, leading Broadcom partner, and an AWS partner, added: “With Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP, Xtravirt can rapidly unlock data mobility and flexibility for Amazon EVS environments. For customers wishing to break down traditional storage silos and enable their data architects to deliver critical business insights, this will be a compelling proposition. We look forward to enabling more organizations to extend their VMware infrastructure with Amazon EVS and NetApp, ensuring they benefit from modern data management, simplified business continuity, and much more.”

Want to learn more? Explore Amazon EVS and find out more about Amazon EVS with FSx for ONTAP.

Additional resources:

• Blog: “Using Amazon Elastic VMware Service with Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP”
• AWS What’s New Post: Amazon Elastic VMware Service now integrates with Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP

This blog was co-authored with Assaf Levy, VP of Engineering at NetApp.