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VMware delivers a load of updates for its Amazonian incarnation

Windows 11 debuts, as service extends to Hong Kong

VMware this week announced its virtualization stack for AWS will come to Hong Kong this quarter, one of a number of upgrades and improvements to the Amazonian edition of its core offerings.

Introduced in 2017, VMware Cloud on AWS offers the virtualization giant's products in the Amazon cloud, under an arrangement that sees the virtualization giant given unusual levels of access to AWS engineering. .

The coming release sees VMware and AWS extend the service to its Asia Pacific region, which is located in Hong Kong, bringing VMware Cloud on AWS to 21 regions globally. The service is expected to come online in AWS Hong Kong datacenters later this month ahead of the VMware's Q2 2023 earnings announcement in August.

Beyond new availability zones, Wednesday's updates cover a wide swath of the platform, ranging from improvements to VMware's disaster recovery and replication stack to support for newer Kubernetes and Windows releases, and UI improvements throughout.

Tanzu on AWS gets an overhaul

VMware's Tanzu Kuberentes service also received a new coat of paint, with the virtualization vendor touting an improved user interface that simplifies the process of deploying and networking high-availability Kubernetes clusters within a single availability zone.

The overhaul adds support for Kubernetes 1.22 and drops support for 1.19. It should be noted that VMware isn't shipping the latest Kubernetes release, version 1.24, which launched in May and officially sank support for Dockershim.

Tanzu fans be warned: VMware says existing Kubernetes 1.19 clusters will be automatically upgraded to version 1.20.

Windows 11 comes to VMware Cloud

Regardless of how you feel about Windows 11, customers can – should they so choose – deploy Redmond's latest operating system natively on VMware Cloud on AWS. The update includes support for virtual trusted platform module (vTPM) devices using the vSphere Native Key Provider. Critically for Windows 11 users, the approach is TPM 2.0 compliant.

For those holding on to Windows 10 – or even Windows 7 or XP – Windows 11 was the first release to mandate the use of TPM 2.0 compliant modules in order to install the system.

The controversial requirement – one of several that have dogged the OS – led to considerable confusion as to whether various systems actually supported Windows 11 or not. In many cases, customers found that while their systems were compatible, a BIOS flag was required to enable support. However, for virtualized environments, the situation is trivial – only requiring a vTPM device be enabled before boot.

Smoother disaster recovery

For those using VMware Cloud on AWS for disaster recovery in the case of an outage on-prem, the update more than doubles the per-region replication limit – from 2,500 VMs to 6,000. The idea is that in the event of a VM, system, or datacenter outage, workloads can be redeployed in the cloud to minimize downtime.

This update will eliminate the need for customers with more than 2,500 VMs to split deployments across multiple VMware Cloud on AWS regions.

Meanwhile, VMware says it has improved its Site Recovery service, which automates workload migration between on-premises and VMware Cloud, and even between AWS regions. Improvements include support for cross-cloud recovery, enabling workloads to be replicated between AWS and Azure as well as provisions for backing up and restoring VMs to and from the cloud.

Automate all the things

Not to be left out, VMware's vRealize datacenter management platform gains tools to automate the deployment of services on VMware Cloud on AWS. These include the ability to activate a trial of the suite's Automation Cloud service directly from the VMware Cloud dashboard.

Many of the vRealize updates revolve around automating tasks like proxy provision, log tracking, and network visibility. The release also includes several organization improvements, including support for custom naming regimes and multi-level cloud governance controls.

You can find a comprehensive breakdown of all of the new features and tweaks to VMware Cloud on AWS here. ®

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