VMC on AWS Overview
Tags: vmc, aws, vmware, migration
Published: 2021-08-22 12:13:07

VMware Cloud on AWS is a cloud service jointly developed by VMware and AWS. This offering brings the same technologies enterprise customers use on premises (e.g., VMware vSphere® ESXi, vSAN, NSX) into the cloud.

VMware Cloud on AWS (in short VMC) helps customers deploy and accelerate migration of VMware vSphere-based workloads to the cloud while providing robust capabilities and hybrid cloud solutions. VMware Cloud on AWS allows organizations to take immediate advantage of the scalability, availability, security, and global reach of the AWS infrastructure. 

Also this gives customers capability to access native AWS services from the VMWare Cloud on AWS SDDC. The access to AWS native services from SDDC is without incurring any ingress or egress charges.

A key advantage of VMware Cloud on AWS is that it runs ESXi hosts on bare metal EC2 instances on the AWS infrastructure. This helps end users to establish a VMware Cloud on AWS
SDDC and quickly begin deploying workloads to the cloud.

Use cases for VMC on AWS are

1. Cloud Migration: This helps customers to migrate to cloud without converting or re-architecting their existing application stacks.

2. Data Center Extension: VMC is the most viable solution for customers who are looking for expanding data center capacity in a cost-effective way.

3. Disaster Recovery: VMC can be considered as a DR solution for a customers who want combine VMWare disaster recovery with AWS Cloud.

4. Application Modernization: Customers can liverage private access to AWS native services to modernize application with the use of feature rich AWS native services.

The first step for VMC on AWS is to - Deploy a SDDC. Below are the steps to deploy a SDDC.

1. Open https://console.cloud.vmware.com/ - login with your credentials.

2. Under my services, click on the VMWare Cloud on AWS tile.

    ![image](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/zcpb4e4a5l73cjgg4b3a.png)

3. Click on Create SDDC.
    
    ![image](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/ujvz2iheyue74ziw231y.png)
 
4. The first step when creating a new SDDC is to define properties relating to the AWS region you wish to deploy your SDDC to, the deployment and host types for the SDDC, and to give your SDDC a name. Enter the following parameters and click Next:

    **Property**
      Cloud                          <<Custom Name>>
      AWS Region                     << Your AWS Region>>
      Deployment                     << Mult-Host>>
      Host Type                      << I3 ( local SSD)
      SDDC Name                      << Custom Name>>
      Number of Hosts                << 2 >>
    

  
5. In this step, connect to the AWS account(Note this is the customer AWS account - defined/named as sidecar account). Select the AWS account and click next

6. For VPC and subnet, select the VPC and choose the subnet.

7. For the management subnet, define the CIDR or use the default.

8. Review and acknowledge and click deploy SDDC.

9. Once the SDDC is deployed , you can see your new SDDC in the list of SDDCs.

That completes the first section of deploying the SDDC.