Migrating VMware workloads to public cloud providers such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Platform (GCP), and Microsoft Azure represents a significant strategic shift for enterprises seeking to leverage the extensive benefits of cloud computing. These can include cost savings, improved scalability, enhanced performance, and access to advanced technologies.
The process involves moving existing applications and data to the cloud and rethinking how IT infrastructure is managed, secured, and scaled to meet evolving business demands. The acquisition of VMware has triggered a shift towards migrating VMware workloads to the cloud, driven by strategic realignment and enhanced service offerings.
Migrating VMware Workloads to the Cloud: Seven immediate headwinds
Buying VMware products from hyperscalers’ marketplaces can help enterprises avail the same cost structures that Broadcom reserves for the top 2,000 accounts. Moving VMware workloads to the cloud seems to be the most obvious choice; however, the following inherent challenges can lead to complications:
- Compatibility and Interoperability: Ensuring that the cloud platform is compatible with the VMware environment is essential. Compatibility issues can lead to problems during the migration process, such as data loss or corruption. Additionally, it is crucial to ensure that the cloud platform is interoperable with the existing on-premises infrastructure to avoid disruptions in business operations.
- Data Migration Complexities: Data migration can be complex, especially when dealing with large volumes of data and dependencies between virtual machines. A well-planned migration strategy considering these dependencies is essential to avoid data loss or inconsistencies.
- Compatibility and Performance Optimization: Post-migration, ensuring that the workloads are compatible with the cloud platform and optimized for performance is essential. This can involve adjusting the configuration of virtual machines and resources to ensure they function correctly in the cloud environment.
- Network Connectivity and Security: Network connectivity and security are essential to ensure reliability and security in the cloud to avoid data breaches or other incidents.
- Addressing Data Migration Challenges: The migration could be impacted depending on data transfer speeds, latency, and consistency. These challenges can lead to data loss, corruption, or inconsistencies and must be considered for a smooth migration.
- Minimal Disruption to Business Operations: Finally, ensuring business continuity during the migration process is essential. This can involve scheduling migration during off-peak hours or devising a phased migration plan.
Migrating VMware Workloads to AWS, Azure, GCP: Factors to Consider
The ideal cloud service provider to run VMware workloads depends on enterprises’ contextual capabilities, such as budgets, skilled resources, and business-critical applications to be refactored or rearchitected.
We offer a comparative analysis of each hyperscaler’s environment for a high-level assessment of their compatibility.
VMware Cloud on AWS
AWS’ VMware Cloud on AWS allows users to run VMware workloads on AWS infrastructure and migrate them using VMware HCX tools. AWS Direct Connect and VPN integration enable secure connectivity between on-premises data centers and VMware Cloud on AWS. This solution integrates with AWS services, providing elasticity, scalability, and pay-as-you-go pricing capabilities.
Microsoft Azure – Azure VMware Solution (AVS)
AVS is a service that lets users run their VMware workloads on Azure without refactoring, rearchitecting, or retraining. It uses dedicated VMware clusters on Azure hardware, which are managed by Microsoft. AVS integrates with Azure Networking for seamless connectivity. It automates deployment and configuration, streamlining migration, while Site Recovery ensures continuity. AVS leverages Azure Virtual Networks and Blob Storage, and ExpressRoute and VPN ensure secure connectivity.
GCP – Google Cloud VMware Engine
Google Cloud VMware Engine provides a dedicated VMware environment on high-performance Google Cloud Platform (GCP) infrastructure. It allows users to run VMware workloads natively on GCP with VMware software-defined data center stack. The service offers seamless migration of the VMware environment to GCP without re-platforming and ensures operational consistency. It also facilitates live migration of VMs with minimal downtime using VMware HCX integration. Direct Peering and VPN options provide secure connectivity. The service offers automated deployment, elastic scaling, and access to GCP’s advanced networking and storage services.
Migrate VMware Workloads to the Cloud with Minimal Business Disruption
For three and a half decades, Persistent has been a digital transformation partner for leading enterprises globally. As the only mid-cap IT company to be a Gartner-ranked Challenger in its 2023 Magic Quadrant for Public Cloud and IT Transformation Services, Persistent uses the VMware migration toolkit that helps clients move their VMware workloads to the cloud. We also have accelerators described below that save on effort and resources required for migration & modernization of VMware environments.
- Persistent Intelligent Cloud Automation Stack: An enterprise-grade library of reusable components creates a new cloud infrastructure according to client policies without requiring specialized skills in the cloud of choice.
- Persistent Intelligent Provisioning On-Demand: Provides a fully automated Infrastructure Provisioning Framework featuring a self-service interface, security support, and multi-cloud provisioning.
- Persistent Intelligent Optimization Licensing Assessment: This helps save on third-party software licensing costs and run resources more efficiently. It also reduces time spent analyzing the existing infrastructure details and the next phase of the cloud journey. Potential software savings could be up to 50%, depending on switching to cloud-native equivalent services.
Our toolkit helped a leading energy utility provider migrate its VMware application to AWS 46% faster, leading to a 53% reduction in operating costs and an 83% improvement in unplanned downtime. Read more about our migration and modernization success stories here.
Learn more about our VMware migration suite of solutions.
