This article is based on reporting originally published by NetworkWorld (October 2019) and VMware blog posts from the same period.
Overview: A Maturing VMware–AWS Partnership
The integration between VMware’s on-premises virtualization stack and Amazon Web Services’ public cloud has moved well beyond simple lift-and-shift migrations. In the second half of 2019, the two companies announced or delivered several significant capabilities: Amazon RDS on VMware, expanded VMware HCX support for multi-region workloads, GPU acceleration services, and deeper ties through AWS Outposts. Together these announcements signal a strategy of making the AWS management plane a credible control surface for workloads that still run inside enterprise data centers.
Amazon RDS on VMware: Managed Databases On-Premises
The most concrete new release at the time of reporting was Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) on VMware. The service allows customers to run native AWS RDS database instances on a vSphere platform while managing those instances from the familiar AWS Management Console, CLI, and RDS APIs.
Supported Platforms and Databases
- Hypervisor requirement: VMware vSphere 6.5 or later
- Databases supported at launch: Microsoft SQL Server, PostgreSQL, and MySQL
- Additional database engines were stated as planned for future releases
What RDS on VMware Automates
According to VMware, the service handles the following operational tasks automatically:
- Database instance provisioning
- Operating-system and database patching
- Automated backups and point-in-time restore
- Compute scaling of database instances
- Database-instance health monitoring and management
Chris Wolf, then Vice President and CTO of Global Field and Industry at VMware, described the rationale in a blog post: database management on vSphere had historically been a time-consuming task that diverted skilled database administrators from higher-value work. RDS on VMware was designed to bring the same automation and standardization available in the AWS public cloud to on-premises vSphere environments, letting operations teams spin up an RDS instance wherever they run vSphere using their existing tools and processes.
Who Benefits
The primary audiences for this service are:
- Database administrators who want RDS-style automation without moving workloads to the public cloud
- Software developers who need consistent database provisioning across on-premises and cloud environments
- Operations teams in regulated industries or with data-residency requirements that prevent full public cloud migration
VMware HCX: Cross-Region Migration and Interconnectivity
In August 2019, VMware announced expanded VMware HCX (Hybrid Cloud Extension) capabilities within VMware Cloud on AWS. HCX now supports push-button migration and network interconnectivity between VMware Cloud on AWS Software-Defined Data Centers (SDDCs) running in different AWS Regions.
This is significant for enterprises that need workload portability across geographic regions without re-architecting applications. VMware also added new Elastic vSAN support during the same period to improve storage scaling for VMware Cloud on AWS deployments.
Once applications are running on VMware Cloud on AWS, customers can extend them by consuming native AWS services — a key architectural advantage of the joint platform.
GPU Acceleration: VMware Cloud on AWS with NVIDIA
VMware and NVIDIA announced their intent to deliver accelerated GPU services for VMware Cloud on AWS. The stated goal is to allow customers to migrate existing vSphere-based applications and containers to the cloud without modification, and then modernize them to take advantage of:
- High-performance computing (HPC)
- Machine learning workloads
- Data analytics pipelines
- Video processing applications
VMware also referenced its Bitfusion technology (acquired in 2019) as a future path for enabling GPU resource sharing and acceleration within this architecture. Bitfusion allows workloads to access GPU resources over the network, which can help enterprises modernize applications incrementally rather than requiring a full rebuild.
AWS Outposts: Bringing AWS Infrastructure On-Premises
Announced by AWS in November 2018 and beginning broader availability in 2019, AWS Outposts is an on-premises infrastructure offering that comes in two variants:
- VMware Cloud on AWS Outposts: Customers use the same VMware control plane and APIs they already operate on-premises, but running on AWS-managed hardware in their own data center.
- AWS-native Outposts: Customers use the same AWS APIs and management console they use in the public cloud, but the compute runs on premises in customer facilities.
The core value proposition of Outposts is operational consistency: a single programming interface, the same APIs and CLI, and unified deployment tooling across on-premises and cloud environments. This enables teams to maintain a single code base and reduces the skill fragmentation that typically accompanies hybrid cloud deployments.
AWS also stated that Outposts hardware can be upgraded to support the latest instance types and run both native AWS and VMware applications side by side.
Broader Ecosystem: Cisco Also Integrates with AWS
VMware is not alone in building deep integrations with AWS. Cisco released Cloud ACI for AWS in April 2019, allowing network and infrastructure teams to:
- Configure inter-site connectivity between on-premises data centers and AWS
- Define and enforce network policies across hybrid environments from a single interface
- Monitor the health of network infrastructure spanning both environments
The solution uses the Cisco Cloud APIC (Application Policy Infrastructure Controller) to provide connectivity, policy translation, and visibility into public cloud workloads. Cisco described the goal as enabling true multi-cloud architectures with consistent policy enforcement regardless of where applications or data reside, using native AWS constructs for policy translation.
What This Means for Enterprise Infrastructure Teams
The pattern across all of these announcements is consistent: major infrastructure vendors are investing in making AWS the shared management and API layer for hybrid environments, rather than requiring enterprises to choose between on-premises and cloud-native tooling. For DevOps and infrastructure engineers, the practical implications include:
- Reduced operational fragmentation: Teams can use AWS Console, CLI, and APIs to manage workloads running in their own data centers, not just in AWS regions.
- Database automation without cloud migration: RDS on VMware brings managed database capabilities to environments where data must remain on-premises.
- Workload portability: HCX lowers the cost and complexity of moving workloads between on-premises vSphere and VMware Cloud on AWS.
- Incremental modernization paths: GPU acceleration and Bitfusion integration allow applications to be enriched after migration rather than requiring re-architecture upfront.
Organizations evaluating hybrid cloud strategies should assess whether the operational consistency these integrations promise justifies the vendor lock-in they introduce — particularly given AWS’s central role as the management plane in most of these scenarios.