While VMware and Amazon Web Services (AWS) may have finally pledged to play nice with one another at some future date, there are a lot of IT organizations that want to be able to create a hybrid cloud spanning the two platforms today.
As one of the first providers of tools to simplify that process, Velostrata makes it possible to move application workloads from VMware to AWS and back again. This week, Velostrata added support for spot instances of AWS in addition to significantly improving the speed at which workloads can move across a wide area network (WAN).
Ady Degany, chief product officer at Velostrata, says support for spot instances is important because they often wind up being the least expensive way to use AWS for a specific amount of time.
Velostrata, says Degany, is unique in that it doesn’t rely on replication and agent software to move workloads. Instead, Velostrata clones the application workload, which can then access data across the WAN as needed.
“There’s no need to move data,” says Degany. “Replication is not agile enough.”
Naturally, a lot of challenges remain when it comes to hybrid cloud computing. But it’s clear that connecting the dominant on-premises IT environment in the form of VMware with the most widely used cloud is a high priority for many IT organizations. As such, more than a few of them can’t wait for VMware to make it possible to run its software on AWS.
In the meantime, however, Velostrata provides an alternative approach that should fill the gap between VMware and AWS without necessarily having to run the VMware hypervisor on AWS.