
VMware’s new cloud service will run on AWS - frostmatthew
https://techcrunch.com/2016/10/13/vmware-cloud-on-aws/
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SteveNuts
I've heard "we tried to move our app to AWS but we couldn't tolerate instance
failure so we moved back to on-prem" so many times in the past.

I'm afraid managers are going to see this as an easy way to jump to the cloud
and lift and drop their on-prem apps to AWS without re-architecting to handle
failures and expect high uptime.

~~~
user5994461
Clueless engineers. The AWS instances don't fail more often or any differently
than old school servers.

Source: I've got hundreds

~~~
sithadmin
>Clueless engineers. The AWS instances don't fail more often or any
differently than old school servers.

Instance and host reliability aren't the issue here. The issue is that a
disgustingly high number of enterprises rely on vSphere High Availability and
Fault-Tolerance features to restart VMs or keep them alive when an OS hangs or
the host fails, instead of architecting for high availability at the app
layer.

To be entirely fair though, vSphere HA and FT are incredibly friendly to the
bottom line relative to rebuilding apps that simply weren't designed for HA.

~~~
user5994461
My bad. I didn't get that you were talking about the built-in vSphere HA. This
thing is truly amazing =)

I thought it was the usual complain about AWS instances dying and needing to
be replaced on regular basis. That thing is a myth. An instances can run for
years without any issues, if noone stops it manually.

~~~
maratd
> An instances can run for years without any issues, if noone stops it
> manually.

Sometimes.

And sometimes the hardware it was running on dies or there was a maintenance
event. Now you have a message like this waiting for you:

[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/34259924/instance-
retirem...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/34259924/instance-retirement-
instance-stop)

Fail to notice? Bye bye instance.

That said, you're right, it's not any more common than hardware failure. But
that's common enough. Keep a backup and don't expect your stuff to always be
there no matter what.

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teilo
There are other advantages to this beyond an alternative deployment method:
Many vendor-supplied application stacks only support ESX. Yes, it is possible
with some hacking, to get them on to EC2, but at the expense of losing vendor
support.

Furthermore, with this comes vMotion. EC2 has yet to implement live migration.

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notimetorelax
If I understand it right, this gives companies ability to shift their services
to and from AWS relatively painlessly. Do other cloud provides offer anything
comparable?

~~~
ensignavenger
Anyone who uses OpenStack, or Joyents Smart solution, Or Redhats cloud
solution, or any number of other open source cloud platforms have this
ability.

~~~
tw04
Those are all absolutely valid options, none of those "have this ability".

Nothing in the open source world currently matches NSX's ability to extend the
network from on-prem to the cloud. I really wish they did, but it's not even a
discussion.

~~~
ensignavenger
Sorry, maybe I am misunderstanding what feature you are talking about. Al of
the solutions mentioned are ones you can run on your own hardware, as well as
their respective 'cloud' services, using the same APIs. Are you wanting some
sort of live migration of vms between the two?

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mbesto
This is huge for a long list of middle market companies who shudder at the
prospect of moving a data center from their on premise closet to a hosted
solution while leveraging the same exact vSphere infrastructure they already
have sunk time and money into.

~~~
oxyclean
I have always been impressed with the amount of lock-in some companies have
gotten themselves into with VMWare. Every place I've worked at which used
VMWare, their tooling had a stranglehold on the entire business, with the
exception of some totally greenfield stuff done on GCE or AWS.

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user5994461
Waiting to see the price list. AWS + VmWare is gonna break the sky.

~~~
devonkim
You're not familiar with the operational costs of most Fortune 100 data
centers (and more importantly, basic services built on top of a reliable
infrastructure) if this sounds eye-watering expensive. Almost everyone I've
ever moved to AWS is pretty bad at O&S and pays at least double the monthly
costs of AWS for far worse systemic reliability. Add in AWS support being far,
far better by every metric than whatever crappy offshore helplessdesk was
contracted and it's a no-brainer. Delta's recent debacle just wouldn't have
happened, for starters, and that's costing them more than a billion dollars in
raw costs.

~~~
user5994461
I am familiar enough with that. Traditional datacenters are a money sink and
anything will do cheaper, more reliable and easier to manage.

But why AWS + VmWare? That makes no sense.

If you want to have special snowflakes, you go for SoftLayer + VmWare. You can
be as exotic as you want with that.

Otherwise, just use AWS. And you get the benefit of all the services that
VMWare don't and can't provide. (servers, storage, load balancer,
databases...).

Better, go for GCE. It's the same as AWS for 20-50% cheaper. :D

AWS + VmWare is the worst of any world. It's not even a real solution. It's an
experimental idea waiting to be released and go though years of
bugfix/improvements.

~~~
sithadmin
>But why AWS + VmWare? That makes no sense.

If you're my customers? AWS + VMware makes plenty of sense because you have
gazillions of dollars sunk into vSphere management and automation that's
narrowly tailored to the enterprise's needs. Making the case that all of that
prior work should be abandoned or phased out in favor of going all-in on AWS
is a difficult up-hill battle in these situations.

>AWS + VmWare is the worst of any world. It's not even a real solution. It's
an experimental idea waiting to be released and go though years of
bugfix/improvements.

This isn't even a real argument. The same could be said of any new product
anywhere.

~~~
user5994461
The case is to go AWS or stay where you are.

If a company has a HUGE VmWare legacy, we'd both make the case to stay on
VmWare.

> This isn't even a real argument. The same could be said of any new product
> anywhere.

VmWare and AWS are both hugely complex (possibly among the most complex
software on the planet).

They have a different philosophy and they were never intended to fit together.
The route to doing so will be filled with endless complications.

We'll see how they execute. IMO they can't overcome their legacy easily, the
result will be a mess.

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BucketSort
Vendor lock in is reaching critical mass.

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jacquesm
Am I wrong or is this VMware effectively throwing in the towel in their quest
to compete with Amazon/The Cloud in general?

~~~
caraboga
I think this is just embracing and extending. VMWare has the on premise
infrastructure market cornered for the most part. But if they don't leverage
that and pivot into using off premise stuff, then they stand to lose ground to
Azure, as you can orchestrate just about all of Azure from Active
Directory/Powershell.

This is a good move on their part.

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xorgar831
I wonder if it'll integrate with other AWS services, such as ALBs and ASGs, I
don't think VMware has any equivalent.

