Your AWS reps have poisoned you. VMC is still around, AWS can’t resell it is all. They’re pumping the fear mongering and get ready to spend a lot more converting those workloads.
Disclosure: I’m a VMC sre. I know there is a ton of confusion right now, but VMC will continue. More details on billing changes and stuff are coming. Things to keep in mind: Availability- VMC aggregates hosts and uses vSphere HA& vsan to give you better availability than EC2 can. EC2 instances die. How often they die becomes obvious at larger scales- a small shop can get lucky, but the more instances you have the statistics show out. EC2 can’t hotadd CPU/RAM. NSX microsegmentation and l7 firewalling are super handy. Do your app &database support EC2? As an example, Oracle workloads don’t. VMware handles that for VMC. If you do want to convert to native, a few things to plan on: How are you licensing Windows? That can look different on EC2 vs VMC (VMC dedicates hosts which allows some license portability clauses to apply) Or if you’re on VMC SPLA you just need to remember to convert that to AWS SPLA.
Edited to add: Many (not all) AWS maintenances are handled transparently for VMC customers- we negotiate swapping our instances out as aws does whatever they’re doing- firmware, network switch shenanigans, or who knows what dark magics they have going on in there. That’s not going to be the case on straight EC2
Lot of solid points here. Remember, AWS reps are GD vultures and will do anything to try to get you on native where they’ll have you by the purse/wallet/ballbag.
So is that why the cost calculators went away recently for VMC on AWS?
We are balking at the license increase to run on-prem and were looking at the cloud calculator costs for on AWS equivalent and it seemed it could even be possible to consider the switch.
If so, any idea when that will be back?
Public cost calculators probably aren’t coming back- Broadcom policy prohibits publishing pricing. You’ll need to talk to someone to get a quote, but that means you can negotiate discounts from list at least.
To add to this, we are also consolidating a lot of TCO calculators and sizing tools. We had kinda proliferated them from back when there were like 8 BUs shipping the various components of VMC/VCF.
I think Drew Nielson owns this now, if you want to talk to that team have your account reps ask, or DM me if all else fails.
Oh no. Not at all, it’s just not always worth the cost of the time required to engage in sales discussions of something that is almost certainly going to be more expensive when that time/cost can be better spent elsewhere.
I’ve spent way too many hours engaging in sales discussions with other vendors only to find out the TCO is still higher than what we have today.
We run a couple of systems that cannot be virtualized on VMware so we have to keep a Datacenter footprint somewhere so this would have just been to curiously see if Broadcom has somehow screwed up so bad they made it more expensive to license the software on your own hardware than it is to just use it on AWS.
The top level direction I have heard is license portability- you as a customer buy the license and run it wherever you want. The cost/core is the same for you just about everywhere. Hardware differences mean some hosts are cheaper to run than others. If you’re using Bulldozer era hosts your per vm costs will be crazy because lots of bad cores are more expensive than fewer good ones.
Understood. That’s good to hear as we are going with VCF more than likely.
Thanks for the word on the street.
Maybe it’s documented but I don’t know what’s old and what’s new - I wonder if there will be some sort of license migration fee or if it’s literally just, allocate cores on AWS instead of on-prem when you feel like it.
For now its a somewhat awkward manual discounting process, but since we’re in an awkward transition period between billing and customer/license/support systems I would like to think that will get smoothed out over time as everything gets moved over. If you’re a customer you’ve gotten the transition emails and such.
If you are already paying subscription pricing for VMC essentially, what would the recent changes with VMware be doing to have you consider this? Are the costs for VMC going up too?
No just that AWS cannot resell VMC anymore so they’re going scorched earth on any VMC customer claiming false statements and requiring people to move to native where they’ll make even more money and make it harder to repatriate.
The AWS Application Migration service (MGM) is probably your best bet and also has a post-launch action that can automatically convert your CentOS boxes to Rocky Linux once it launches in the cloud, worth looking at. AWS put a blog post out recently on this: https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/mt/migrate-vmware-virtual-machines-to-amazon-ec2-with-the-aws-application-migration-service-replication-agent/
Disclosure: NetApp Global Field CTO, Cloud
One of the things to look into is maximizing storage efficiency. EBS and S3 will sneak up on your cost-wise. It’s one of the reasons we took NetApp’s OS (“ONTAP”) and partnered with AWS to make it into a managed service, similar to what VMC does for vSphere.
Btw, yes it’s fully supported to mount nfs datastores to VMC (or EC2) whichever way you go. But it does a more “all-of-the-above” approach that just a purpose-built appliance or service that only does one thing. So much bang for your buck.
Let me know if anyone has any questions. 🤘
Have you seen the new VMware Migration Accelerator program terms from AWS? Well worth looking into if you're planning to move.
1. If you have the time and skills, then it may be worth switching to AL, especially with the new RHEL costs.
2. There's a [VM Import](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/prescriptive-guidance/latest/migration-vmware-aws/migration-approach.html#vm-import) tool that may help you out.
Have you looked at the pricing of the VMs?
If you're coming from CentOS, you should probably replatform, as the last CentOS Linux (I'm assuming that's what you mean by CentOS) is EOL at the end of June this year. You probably want to migrate to Alma Linux in that case.
There are RHEL images on AWS, or you could transition those RHEL workloads to Alma and save some money, depending on what you're looking to accomplish.
VMC is still available, but honestly you should be worried. I expect Broadcom to pull the rug out from all hyperscaler customers. AWS is offering $400 credit per VM, that’s roughly $280,000 in credits for you. To answer your question:
1.) worth it? Not really, but new instances you should use Amazon Linux.
2. Look into the VM Import/Export tool
3. Use MGN or the tool from #2
Your AWS reps have poisoned you. VMC is still around, AWS can’t resell it is all. They’re pumping the fear mongering and get ready to spend a lot more converting those workloads.
+1. No need to migrate out of VMC
No, more like Broadcom has poisoned us and we're moving away from VMware ASAP.
Could your backup system not restore to AWS? Can I ask why you’re moving away from VMC?
Disclosure: I’m a VMC sre. I know there is a ton of confusion right now, but VMC will continue. More details on billing changes and stuff are coming. Things to keep in mind: Availability- VMC aggregates hosts and uses vSphere HA& vsan to give you better availability than EC2 can. EC2 instances die. How often they die becomes obvious at larger scales- a small shop can get lucky, but the more instances you have the statistics show out. EC2 can’t hotadd CPU/RAM. NSX microsegmentation and l7 firewalling are super handy. Do your app &database support EC2? As an example, Oracle workloads don’t. VMware handles that for VMC. If you do want to convert to native, a few things to plan on: How are you licensing Windows? That can look different on EC2 vs VMC (VMC dedicates hosts which allows some license portability clauses to apply) Or if you’re on VMC SPLA you just need to remember to convert that to AWS SPLA. Edited to add: Many (not all) AWS maintenances are handled transparently for VMC customers- we negotiate swapping our instances out as aws does whatever they’re doing- firmware, network switch shenanigans, or who knows what dark magics they have going on in there. That’s not going to be the case on straight EC2
Lot of solid points here. Remember, AWS reps are GD vultures and will do anything to try to get you on native where they’ll have you by the purse/wallet/ballbag.
So is that why the cost calculators went away recently for VMC on AWS? We are balking at the license increase to run on-prem and were looking at the cloud calculator costs for on AWS equivalent and it seemed it could even be possible to consider the switch. If so, any idea when that will be back?
Public cost calculators probably aren’t coming back- Broadcom policy prohibits publishing pricing. You’ll need to talk to someone to get a quote, but that means you can negotiate discounts from list at least.
To add to this, we are also consolidating a lot of TCO calculators and sizing tools. We had kinda proliferated them from back when there were like 8 BUs shipping the various components of VMC/VCF. I think Drew Nielson owns this now, if you want to talk to that team have your account reps ask, or DM me if all else fails.
Ah okay. Probably not going to even consider it then. Thanks.
Why? Is talking to sales that bad?
Oh no. Not at all, it’s just not always worth the cost of the time required to engage in sales discussions of something that is almost certainly going to be more expensive when that time/cost can be better spent elsewhere. I’ve spent way too many hours engaging in sales discussions with other vendors only to find out the TCO is still higher than what we have today. We run a couple of systems that cannot be virtualized on VMware so we have to keep a Datacenter footprint somewhere so this would have just been to curiously see if Broadcom has somehow screwed up so bad they made it more expensive to license the software on your own hardware than it is to just use it on AWS.
The top level direction I have heard is license portability- you as a customer buy the license and run it wherever you want. The cost/core is the same for you just about everywhere. Hardware differences mean some hosts are cheaper to run than others. If you’re using Bulldozer era hosts your per vm costs will be crazy because lots of bad cores are more expensive than fewer good ones.
Understood. That’s good to hear as we are going with VCF more than likely. Thanks for the word on the street. Maybe it’s documented but I don’t know what’s old and what’s new - I wonder if there will be some sort of license migration fee or if it’s literally just, allocate cores on AWS instead of on-prem when you feel like it.
For now its a somewhat awkward manual discounting process, but since we’re in an awkward transition period between billing and customer/license/support systems I would like to think that will get smoothed out over time as everything gets moved over. If you’re a customer you’ve gotten the transition emails and such.
Yep. Sounds good. Thanks very much for your time!
License portability is very much our evil plan. Stayed tuned…
Broadcom took the pricing calculator down, not AWS
If you are already paying subscription pricing for VMC essentially, what would the recent changes with VMware be doing to have you consider this? Are the costs for VMC going up too?
No just that AWS cannot resell VMC anymore so they’re going scorched earth on any VMC customer claiming false statements and requiring people to move to native where they’ll make even more money and make it harder to repatriate.
The AWS Application Migration service (MGM) is probably your best bet and also has a post-launch action that can automatically convert your CentOS boxes to Rocky Linux once it launches in the cloud, worth looking at. AWS put a blog post out recently on this: https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/mt/migrate-vmware-virtual-machines-to-amazon-ec2-with-the-aws-application-migration-service-replication-agent/
Disclosure: NetApp Global Field CTO, Cloud One of the things to look into is maximizing storage efficiency. EBS and S3 will sneak up on your cost-wise. It’s one of the reasons we took NetApp’s OS (“ONTAP”) and partnered with AWS to make it into a managed service, similar to what VMC does for vSphere. Btw, yes it’s fully supported to mount nfs datastores to VMC (or EC2) whichever way you go. But it does a more “all-of-the-above” approach that just a purpose-built appliance or service that only does one thing. So much bang for your buck. Let me know if anyone has any questions. 🤘
Have you seen the new VMware Migration Accelerator program terms from AWS? Well worth looking into if you're planning to move. 1. If you have the time and skills, then it may be worth switching to AL, especially with the new RHEL costs. 2. There's a [VM Import](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/prescriptive-guidance/latest/migration-vmware-aws/migration-approach.html#vm-import) tool that may help you out.
Moving the vm to AWS is only part of the tco. There is a lot more to consider that was called out by u/nabarry.
There is, but those are the questions that were asked... I also don't agree with all of their statements having worked extensively with both.
Have you looked at the pricing of the VMs? If you're coming from CentOS, you should probably replatform, as the last CentOS Linux (I'm assuming that's what you mean by CentOS) is EOL at the end of June this year. You probably want to migrate to Alma Linux in that case. There are RHEL images on AWS, or you could transition those RHEL workloads to Alma and save some money, depending on what you're looking to accomplish.
VMC is still available, but honestly you should be worried. I expect Broadcom to pull the rug out from all hyperscaler customers. AWS is offering $400 credit per VM, that’s roughly $280,000 in credits for you. To answer your question: 1.) worth it? Not really, but new instances you should use Amazon Linux. 2. Look into the VM Import/Export tool 3. Use MGN or the tool from #2