Over here at INAP, we’ve been hearing the buzz with VMware and its shifting cloud strategy. RightScale’s latest State of the Cloud Report has confirmed that “public cloud adoption is growing while private cloud adoption flattened and fewer companies are prioritizing building a private cloud” (Right Scale 2017 State of the Cloud Report, p. 36).
The report goes on to state that VMware vSphere adoption was flat year over year, confirming what we’re feeling in the market. That said, VMware still holds a high share of the private cloud deployments, and our customers have a significant investment in their licenses.
For many VMware users looking to move into the cloud, finding a VMware based public cloud solution without losing their VMware license investment seems limited. I have had several conversations with IT Directors and CTOs about this problem, and most were unaware that they can migrate to INAP’s AgileSERVER Cloud and still use their VMware licenses.
But wait…I can run my vSphere cluster on INAP’s public cloud?
It’s true, and has been for a while now! INAP launched AgileSERVER, our OpenStack bare-metal platform in 2015, laying the foundation for a VMware cluster in a public cloud environment.
Shortly thereafter, we added the ability to support dedicated SAN devices to our Bare-Metal cloud, rounding out the infrastructure needed for a VMware cluster.
In fact, INAP provides the following features to make migrating VMware simple for our clients:
- Dedicated servers that can be provisioned in a cloud-like manner
- Over 70 different configurations with multiple processor sets, RAM and disk needs
- High speed 10GB networking in all the servers
- Entry level to high performance dedicated SAN options
- Optional monitoring and management services
The design of our infrastructure will enable your IT department to migrate to the cloud with minimal difficulty. Because INAP serves companies at all points in their growth cycles, we know that some companies may need assistance configuring their VMware cluster or migrating their existing environment. We can even help you with that! Our Solution Engineering team will work with you to size and configure the VMware environment you need. We have the tools and the experience to review your current environment and right-size it based on the current performance.
The cloud is the limit tomorrow…
Vendor lock-in is a material reality of the corporate world. Companies protect their proprietary information by securing a customer’s loyalty for an agreed-upon time, creating a mutually beneficial relationship. That is, until a customer realizes that they may have a better option elsewhere, with the weight of prior commitments keeping them where they are.
At INAP, the customers I talk to recognize the cost and performance benefits of moving to the cloud, but they want to make the most of their VMware investments first. In addition to license costs, their IT operations and platforms are dependent on VMware. These customers believe that their sunk costs would be wasted in migrating to the cloud, so they are always surprised to learn that they can use their existing VMware licenses in our cloud environment!
Your new environment will have the same look and feel with the same management practices as a privately hosted VMware cluster, but it’s built on OpenStack Cloud technology. As your teams and applications become more cloud-friendly, you can slowly migrate off VMware, providing further savings in the future when you do not have to renew your licenses.
But we can save that discussion for another time…
The most important thing to realize is that if you are looking to migrate to the cloud but feel stuck in terms of licenses, technologies or skill-sets, you do have options. Our customers find this solution is an easy step to the cloud with limited risk. Contact one of our specialists to find out what INAP can do to help you transition to the cloud with licenses intact!
