VMware and AWS Unite to Enable Seamless Migration of VMware Workloads to the Cloud

The partnership between VMware and AWS offers significant benefits for both vendors and IT teams. For most IT organizations that rely on VMware’s virtualized environments, migrating workloads to AWS can now be done without re‑engineering existing applications. Historically, VMware‑heavy shops were locked into complex on‑premises infrastructures, and the shift to public cloud required substantial re‑architecture. AWS has grown rapidly, but its cloud native approach still demands its own engineering. By leveraging the VMware‑AWS collaboration, organizations can run vSphere hypervisors directly on AWS bare‑metal hardware—mirroring a private data center—while gaining the scalability and flexibility of the public cloud.

The VMware Cloud on AWS service was first announced in late 2016, and at this week’s VMworld the companies announced that the service is now live on AWS with limited availability. AppNeta has been watching this development closely, and we’re eager to see the partnership in action.

While the option to port VMware systems to AWS is no longer a costly or complex endeavor, it does have stringent system requirements. For larger enterprises, the cost is justified by the ability to preserve the efficiency of virtualization and the mature infrastructure that has been built over the years.

Our users continually seek ways to streamline their infrastructures and capitalize on new technologies. Moving VMware workloads to AWS introduces the same visibility challenges that first appeared when organizations launched native AWS instances.

Transitioning VMware instances to AWS is essentially a LAN‑to‑WAN move—a scenario we’re familiar with. On‑premises, you have granular visibility into network performance. Once workloads shift to AWS, they compete on a shared internet backbone, exposing them to potential “noisy neighbor” effects. In an unmonitored AWS environment, slow application performance can be difficult to diagnose due to the myriad variables at play.

The Complexity of Cloud Networks Is Real

IT teams that have deployed infrastructure in public cloud already know that cloud networking is a complex web of internet hops. AppNeta’s monitoring platform bridges on‑premises and cloud environments—including VMware and AWS—providing end‑to‑end visibility. By integrating AppNeta with your VMware‑AWS environment, you regain the control and insight lost when adopting public cloud.

Using AppNeta with your VMware‑AWS deployment offers two primary benefits:

1. Baseline Cloud Performance. AppNeta’s virtual Monitoring Point monitors your VMware infrastructure before, during, and after the move to AWS. This is invaluable for validating performance gains post‑migration. Deploying the v35 monitoring agent inside AWS delivers bidirectional visibility without hardware dependencies, ensuring consistent monitoring even as network carriers and internet hops change.
2. Deep Monitoring Inside the Cloud. AppNeta’s virtual monitoring technology leverages deep packet inspection to provide granular usage metrics. It captures performance inside the VMware stack running on AWS infrastructure and across your in‑house software‑defined data center (SDDC). This enables proactive monitoring of intra‑cloud communications, taking full advantage of Amazon EBS and other AWS services. You gain end‑to‑end network capacity and quality insights, including traffic volumes between systems and to end users—effectively real‑user monitoring (RUM) with network context for third‑party applications.

The VMware‑AWS announcement is a win for many IT professionals. It allows rapid scaling and immediate transition to cloud without sacrificing the reliability of existing virtualization investments. AppNeta seamlessly operates in this environment, delivering comprehensive application usage, experience, and delivery data.