Learn about VMware Cloud on AWS pricing and availability

VMware Cloud on AWS provides a hybrid cloud service for organizations and businesses of many types. Pricing and availability might vary depending on an organization's size, location and preexisting VMware experience.

The traditional hybrid cloud involves creating a full-featured private cloud and then integrating that private cloud with a public cloud. In effect, the goal is to blend public and private clouds in a seamless manner. Many organizations lack the resources to build a private cloud, yet stand to reap significant benefits from integrating an on-premises data center with a public cloud for tasks such as cloud bursting and workload migration.

One solution to the challenges posed by a hybrid cloud is adopting a hybrid cloud service, such as VMware Cloud on AWS. VMware partnered with AWS to create a fully hosted VMware environment in the AWS cloud using VMware tools such as vSphere, vSAN, NSX and vCenter. Rather than forcing businesses to build a private cloud in order to join a public cloud, this public cloud service provides a virtualized platform that closely resembles the virtualized infrastructure of a local data center. Such a service offering enables businesses to more easily integrate with the public cloud and to use public cloud services without the overhead involved in building a private cloud.

As of May 2019, VMware and AWS offer VMware Cloud on AWS in most major global AWS regions. The service might become available in additional regions over time, and VMware will report such additions on the product's roadmap page. VMware sells the service rather than AWS, so new adopters can use VMware's wizard to sign up and start using it.

VMware Cloud on AWS aims to extend an existing VMware environment to the AWS public cloud and effectively create a hybrid environment without manually creating a private cloud first.

The requirements can vary dramatically, depending on the number of VMware tools or services a user currently deploys in the local data center. As a bare minimum, there are no local VMware requirements. Users can employ VMware Cloud on AWS without any local VMware products and can operate the service with only a web browser connection to an AWS account.

However, VMware Cloud on AWS aims to extend an existing VMware environment to the AWS public cloud and effectively create a hybrid environment without manually creating a private cloud first. Thus, the more VMware components already running in the local data center, the easier it is to extend those tools to the AWS cloud. For example, a business running vCenter and vSphere version 6.0 Update 3c or later should be able to handle live migrations of VMs between local and AWS resources. Earlier versions of vSphere enable cold VM migrations. A typical business might easily use even more VMware tools locally, such as vSAN and VMware Site Recovery Manager.

VMware provides several VMware Cloud on AWS pricing schemes designed to fit various business needs. New adopters can experiment and validate the service with a single host priced at $5.60 per hour, but this price might vary in some global regions. The service includes vSphere, vSAN and NSX. VMware offers a small business three-host configuration with vSphere, vSAN, NSX and HA for $5.57 per host, per hour. It offers a larger enterprise-class configuration with four or more hosts, vSphere, vSAN, NSX, HA, multi-cluster support and a service-level agreement for $8.36 per host, per hour. Businesses can reduce costs through one-year and three-year subscriptions.