VMware Unveils Flexible New Architecture for VMware Cloud on AWS to Accelerate Cloud Migration and Support Modern AI/ML Workloads

VMware Cloud on AWS to offer both hyperconverged and disaggregated storage options to support an even wider array of enterprise use cases

Amazon EC2 M7i instances with custom 4th Gen Intel® Xeon® Scalable processors will empower customers to drive better total cost of ownership (TCO) by allocating and scaling compute and storage independently

LAS VEGAS / AWS re:Invent 2023 (November 28, 2023)—Today at AWS re:Invent 2023, VMware by Broadcom announced a next-generation architecture for VMware Cloud on AWS enabled by an Amazon EC2 M7i bare-metal instance featuring custom 4th Gen Intel® Xeon® Scalable processors (code named Sapphire Rapids). This diskless instance combined with scalable and flexible storage options will enable customers to better match application and infrastructure requirements. VMware Cloud on AWS customers will be able to leverage this instance to accelerate cloud migrations, recover from disasters and ransomware attacks faster, and build and deploy modern AI/ML workloads, all with a lower total cost of ownership.

VMware Cloud on AWS is a jointly engineered managed service that combines VMware Cloud Foundation with Amazon EC2 elastic, bare-metal infrastructure to enable customers to run business-critical applications across private, public and hybrid cloud environments, with optimized access to AWS services. The service delivers the same architecture and operation experiences on-premises and in the cloud, enabling IT teams to more rapidly extend, migrate, protect, and modernize vSphere-based applications on AWS using familiar VMware tools. VMware Cloud on AWS is delivered and supported by VMware and its partner community, and sold by VMware, AWS, and their respective partner networks. With the new Amazon EC2 M7i instance, along with flexible storage options, customers can move to the cloud easier and modernize enterprise applications faster.

“In today’s digital first world, business outcomes are tied to faster innovation and greater efficiency. Customers need the latest technology that is agile, flexible, scalable and resilient, and can be optimized according to changing business needs,” said Narayan Bharadwaj, vice president and general manager, VMware Cloud on AWS, VMware. “We’re bringing the best innovations from within VMware, AWS and across our ecosystem, including Intel and NetApp, and combining them with the proven enterprise capabilities of VMware Cloud Foundation and EC2, to accelerate our customers move to the cloud.”

“VMware Cloud on AWS helps customers move their vSphere-based environments to the AWS cloud with speed and confidence,” said David Brown, vice president, AWS Compute & Networking Services, AWS. “With support for our general purpose m7i.metal-24xl instance together with flexible storage options, we are making it even easier to move to VMware Cloud on AWS. Customers across any industry will be able to reduce costs while scaling to meet global business demands and increase innovation with cloud-native services.”

Flexible, Scalable Storage Options to Address More Enterprise Workload Requirements

Advanced analytics and AI require massive data sets that can grow rapidly, requiring storage solutions that can elastically scale to deliver high performance and resiliency at low TCO . By combining the diskless M7i instance with scalable and flexible storage options for VMware Cloud on AWS such Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP and VMware Cloud Flex Storage, customers can scale storage elastically and independently from compute to maximize utilization. In use cases where customers need less amount of compute and memory resources, m7i.metal-24xl instances provide a cost-effective solution with a 4:1 ratio of memory to vCPU. For I/O intensive workloads requiring high performance and low latency, customers can continue to leverage existing i3en and i4i instances featuring a hyperconverged storage architecture.

A Faster Path to Innovation

Amazon EC2 M7i instances are powered by custom 4th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors, which are only available on AWS and offer the best performance among comparable Intel processors in the cloud. M7i instances are ideal for application servers and secondary databases, gaming servers, CPU-based machine learning (ML), and video streaming. Using M7i instances with disaggregated external storage options, customers can experience the transformative power of Artificial Intelligence (AI) through superior privacy, security, performance, scale and TCO. Intel Xeon processors with Intel® Advanced Matrix Extensions (Intel® AMX) deliver significant out-of-box performance improvements spanning multiple frameworks, end-to-end data science tools, a broad ecosystem of smart solutions. and optimized AI models.

“VMware and Intel have collaborated closely to bring VMware enterprise-class software to the AWS cloud infrastructure, enabling customers to seamlessly run business-critical applications for private, public and hybrid cloud environments,” said Lisa Spelman, Intel corporate vice president and general manager Xeon Products and Solutions. “VMware Cloud on AWS with Amazon EC2 M7i instances powered by 4th Gen Intel Xeon processors with built-in Intel® Acceleration Engines offers businesses and developers efficient, high-performance computing resources in the cloud and a much-needed market alternative for customers with growing AI workload demand.”

Accelerating Partners’ VMware Cloud on AWS Managed and Consulting Services

The rapid growth in cloud has created opportunities for partners selling and supporting cloud solutions and services. Enterprises are increasingly looking for pay-as-you-go cloud services, and the accelerating pace of innovation makes it difficult for enterprises to keep abreast of the latest technology. Customers are looking to AWS and VMware partners to be their trusted advisors for accelerating their cloud migrations. Partners can respond to these changes by advising customers through consulting services and providing managed services on and with VMware Cloud on AWS.

Presidio is a leading IT solutions provider assisting clients in harnessing technology innovation and simplifying IT complexity to digitally transform their businesses and drive return on IT investment. The Presidio VMware Cloud on AWS Lifecycle Services, available on AWS Marketplace, can provide customers best-in-class cloud consulting services that assess customers’ cloud readiness and provide a roadmap for execution.

Mark Vaughn, senior director, VMware Cloud Practice at Presidio, said, “This new architecture and instance type will help more customers realize the value of VMware Cloud on AWS. Customers with specific CPU, memory and storage needs will no longer have to over purchase infrastructure to match the needs of their applications or use cases. This will reduce barriers to moving workloads to the cloud faster, which in the long run will be better for their business.”

Availability

Amazon EC2 M7i instances are expected to be available for VMware Cloud on AWS in Broadcom’s Q1FY24.

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VMware makes no guarantee that services announced in preview or beta will become available at a future date. The information in this press release is for informational purposes only and may not be incorporated into any contract. This article may contain hyperlinks to non-VMware websites that are created and maintained by third parties who are solely responsible for the content on such websites.

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Media Contact: Roger T Fortier, VMware by Broadcom, roger.fortier@broadcom.com