Storage has always been a difficult subject for VMware Cloud on AWS. While the default vSAN storage is highly performant and well-engineered, it is not the most cost-effective option. The only way to scale is to add or remove hosts. Doing so is seamless but it is a rigid amount without any choice available in between. That also means the addition or removal of CPU and memory in chunks – regardless of whether it was needed or not – all of which impacts the cost argument negatively.
To get around this cost challenge, a few vendors have introduced their own solutions. Those solutions allow the provision of additional external storage, without the need to add a whole host, thereby reducing the overall cost of the solution.
Rackspace Technology offers NetApp Cloud Volumes based external storage, which provides flexibly sized storage with different performance levels. NetApp offers another option based on NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP, which provides external storage based on virtual appliances in AWS (unlike Rackspace Technology’s solution that is based on physical NetApp Storage Appliances). Faction Inc. also has a solution addressing the same issue.
VMware has been addressing the cost challenge for VMware Cloud in multiple ways recently but it did not have a cost-effective solution to scale storage independently – until now.
Today, VMware is announcing the preview of VMware Cloud Flex Storage which is a scalable, elastic, and natively integrated storage and data management service that is fully managed by VMware and augments the native vSAN storage already present for VMware Cloud on AWS.
As you can imagine, it is built with cloud economics in mind. It physically sits in AWS but all management is through the VMware Cloud Services Console. With just a few clicks, customers can scale their storage environment without adding hosts, and elastically adjust their storage capacity up (up to 400 TB) or down as needed. It is operated under a pay-as-you-go consumption model so organisations can control their storage costs dynamically, to fit their current needs.
This service is built on the same technology that ran Datrium’s D-HCI product which VMware acquired a couple of years ago and on which, the VMware Cloud Disaster Recovery Service runs today. It is a mature two-tier filesystem that allows for independent scaling of storage performance and capacity, using a Log-Structure Filesystem (LFS) design. For more advantages and use-cases of Log-Structure Filesystems, I would highly recommend reading Sazzala Reddy’s (Chief Technologist and a founder of Datrium) blog here.
The key use cases for VMware Cloud Flex Storage are:
- Seamless and cost-effective cloud migration
- Elastic data center extension, and
- Scaling of storage-intensive workloads
Today, the platform sits on AWS and is available to VMware Cloud on AWS only but VMware’s vision is to deliver VMware Cloud Flex Storage as a consistent experience across multiple clouds. With time, it will enable customers to independently provide and scale multi-AZ/region storage capacity for their environments, along with enterprise-grade data management and data reduction capabilities.
As mentioned, this service is still in preview as while VMware has done a fair bit of testing, it’s ultimately limited. But that’s where you come in! VMware is opening early access nominations for this service from today. If you have a VMware Cloud on AWS deployment and are interested in applying for the early access program, do send an email to vmcfs_ea@vmware.com – to gain access at no cost and test to your heart’s content.
While VMware has tested the environment to deliver 150K IOPS per datastore already, it will likely be under certain conditions that might not match yours. So, I would highly recommend testing it thoroughly with your applications in mind as it will help both you and VMware to ensure this service is performant enough for all kinds of workloads.
When deciding on the suitability, do bear in mind that the native performant vSAN storage is still available so any performance demanding applications can live on it – more of which will become available when complemented with VMware Cloud Flex Storage.
I cannot wait for it to become generally available as it gives me and my customers more cost-effective options for use and that can only be a good thing!
Disclaimer: I work for Rackspace Technology and am the SME for the VMware Cloud on AWS with NetApp Cloud Volumes External Storage solution mentioned in this post.
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