Leaseweb offers reliable cloud products and services, including several products powered by VMware. But when there are so many different types of VMware Cloud products, how do you choose? Worry not – read on as we walk you through our different VMware product offerings and use cases.
Dedicated Servers with VMWare ESXi (OS)
One of the products Leaseweb offers is a dedicated server with the option to (OS-)install VMware ESXi hypervisor software. This VMware installation comes without a paid VMware license and therefore only includes the features of the free VMware software license. For more features, additional VMware software licensing may be required. Note that the additional licensing and management of VMware ESXi on a dedicated server is a self-service. On top of VMware ESXi, you can create your own virtual machines.
Next to dedicated servers, Leaseweb offers ready-to-use VMWare Cloud products whereby Leaseweb builds, licenses, and operates the VMware platform. You as a customer need to simply log in to the relevant VMware web portal (or API) and create and manage your virtual machines.
There are two different VMWare Cloud products to choose from:
1. Virtual resources for your virtual machines on Leaseweb’s multi-tenant cloud platform
The Leaseweb ready-to-use multi-tenant solution VMware vCloud offers a reserved pack of virtual resources (vCPU, GB vRAM, GB vDisk) to allocate to virtual machines. The vCPU resources come in Standard or Premium. Premium vCPU has no overbooking compared to the underlying platform CPU resources. The Standard vCPU option is more cost-effective due to a more optimized CPU booking ratio, ideal for general-purpose workloads. The creation and management of the virtual machines are performed via the self-service web portal or API (VMware vCloud Director).
VMware’s vCloud Suite powers Leaseweb’s multi-tenant VMware vCloud, also known as Leaseweb VMware vCloud. The VMware vCloud Suite is a cloud infrastructure and management solution. It combines products from the VMware vRealize Suite (for automation, operations, log analytics, and lifecycle management) with VMware vSphere. VMware vSphere is server virtualization software that powers computing environments for modern applications using virtual machines.
With VMware NSX features included, VMware vCloud offers networking, firewalling, load-balancing, VPN services, and more. These software-defined features are also available through the VMware vCloud management web portal.
Leaseweb provides additional services (such as integrated Veeam Backup and Zerto Disaster Recovery-as-a-Service) to keep virtual machines safe. It also offers restore options and the ability to simply launch a replicated copy of the virtual machine from a second data center.
In addition to our multi-tenant VMware vCloud, we also offer the single-tenant VMware Private Cloud:
2. Dedicated single-tenant Private Cloud platform
Leaseweb’s VMware vSphere product – a single-tenant Private Cloud platform – is used by some of Leaseweb’s largest customers.
Why? It offers dedicated single-tenant hypervisor resources in combination with actual used cloud storage resources. In addition, more customization options are available compared to the multi-tenant VMware vCloud platform offerings.
The first significant difference is that on the single-tenant platform, the physical hypervisor CPU Core/RAM resources are agreed – not the virtual resources that are allocated to the virtual machines. This also means that agreed physical resources (CPU Cores, GB RAM) can be ordered to optimize the performance of the private cloud, independent of the virtual resources allocated to the virtual machines. For example, if your virtual machine’s allocated vCPUs do not actually use the underlying physical CPU core resources, additional vCPU can be allocated to extra virtual machines.
Similarly, the actual used storage of the cloud SSD data stores is agreed and measured for a single-tenant private cloud after compression/deduplication (if relevant) and not the total size of the allocated vDisk to the virtual machines. This ‘actual used storage size’ can be half of the total size of allocated vDisk resources to the virtual machine, hence it is important not to simply use the same sizing numbers for single-tenant as for the Leaseweb multi-tenant platform.
Possible customizations include the hypervisor hardware equipment, dual data center setup with advanced IP Subnet Failover, dedicated network interconnects for hybrid cloud setups, optional hardware network equipment for firewalling and load-balancing, VMware vSAN (instead of the default Leaseweb SAN/NAS cloud storage), VMware vCloud Suite (instead of the default VMware vSphere), and more.
The same as our multi-tenant cloud solution, Leaseweb provides additional services (integrated Veeam Backup, Zerto Disaster Recovery-as-a-Service, etc.) to keep virtual machines safe and provide restore options.
Conclusion
Are you looking to start quickly with as many self-service and standard services as possible? If the answer is yes, the multi-tenant VMware vCloud product may be the best match for you.
Do you have a large environment and require extra customization? If yes, consider the single-tenant VMware Private Cloud option.
For more information and personalized advice, contact us or consult your Leaseweb (pre)sales rep.