VMware Cloud on AWS Now Integrates with Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP

Amazon and VMware announced last week the general availability of the VMware Cloud on AWS integration with Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP. This new integration builds on the latest addition to the Amazon FSx family of fully-managed and highly-performant file systems that Amazon launched last year.

For those unfamiliar, VMware Cloud on AWS provides the ability to run applications across VMware vSphere-based public, private, and hybrid cloud environments by bringing VMware’s Software-Defined Data Center (SDDC) to AWS. Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP, on the other hand, provides fully managed shared storage in the AWS cloud with the data access and management capabilities of ONTAP, a popular enterprise data management offering.

“Prior to this announcement, customers could only use VMware VSAN where they could scale datastore capacity with compute. Now, they can scale storage independently and SDDCs can be scaled with the additional storage capacity that is made possible by FSx for NetApp ONTAP,” Amazon explained in the announcement.

Customers have previously been able to add storage by purchasing additional hosts or by adding AWS native storage services such as Amazon S3, Amazon EFS, and Amazon FSx to virtual machines (VMs) on existing hosts. However, this new VMware Cloud on AWS integration with Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP provides the flexibility to add data storage by connecting to external storage without the need to purchase more hosts. Ultimately, this integration should provide a cost-effective way to incrementally add storage capacity without increasing compute expenses.

Connectivity options for the VMware Cloud on AWS integration with FSx for NetApp ONTAP

There are two connectivity options for enabling storage provisioned by FSx for NetApp ONTAP to be made available for mounting as a data store to a VMware Cloud on AWS SDDC:

• The first option is to create a new Amazon VPC under the same connected AWS account and have it connected with the VMware-owned Shadow VPC using VMware Transit Connect.
• The second option is to create a new AWS account, which by default comes with an Amazon VPC for the Region. Like the first option, VMware Transit Connect is used to attach the new VPC with the VMware-owned Shadow VPC.

The first step to using this new integration option is to create an FSx for NetApp ONTAP file system in your AWS account. You can learn more about using VMware Cloud on AWS with Amazon FSx for NetApp ONOTAP in the FSx for ONTAP User Guide.