Most organizations have now embraced a cloud-first strategy. Still, many business-critical applications do not lend themselves to be easily ‘cut and pasted’ into a cloud service. This is where VMware Private Cloud might be the way to go. In this blog we’ll explain why and how Leaseweb can support you in taking this step.
What is VMware Private Cloud?
A VMware Cloud is a standardized solution which enables you to accelerate your cloud transformation. By using this proven technology as the foundation of your existing (legacy) workloads in the cloud, you can modernize the workloads to start using more and more cloud-native services. VMware Cloud solutions are offered by all the major players in the cloud infrastructure arena, as an intermediate steppingstone for you to move from your existing (on-premises) setup to a modern cloud-native setup at your cloud provider. Even if this doesn’t come into play, it may be feasible to consider VMware Cloud to offload your own IT-staff, increase performance and reliability and lower the security risks of your virtualization infrastructure.
Benefits of VMware Cloud
The benefits of a VMware Cloud are the leadership and track record of VMware technology to provide a stable platform for all workloads, including more legacy workloads. Many engineers in the industry have learned to work with VMware and know and trust VMware platforms to host their workloads successfully and reliably. VMware also supports physical to virtual (P2V), so converting your current on-premises physical server into a virtual machine that runs on a VMware Cloud.
Leaseweb VMware Private Cloud
For those who find a VMware Cloud too expensive, alternative cloud platforms are available. One solution is our VMware Private Cloud. This provides you with a dedicated hardware environment controlled by a VMware ESXi virtualization layer. It is a highly scalable and flexible managed virtualized hosting solution allowing physical servers to be partitioned into multiple self-contained virtual machines, each with its own operating system and set of applications to meet your needs.
Our VMware Private Cloud is built and managed by Leaseweb with VMware vSphere, High Availability by design (minimum 3 or 4 ESXi Hosts, N+1), all flash disks (SSD or NVME-SSD) as SAN Storage or as hyper-converged infrastructure (also known as HCI, powered by VMware vSAN and NSX). You have the freedom to add dedicated hardware firewalls and load balancers, and upgrade storage capacity and compute resources such as CPU and RAM, as required.
VMs and data will reside safely on Leaseweb’s ultra-high-performance SAN storage systems (vSphere product), or local vSAN storage (HCI product), while running on market-leading hypervisors for end-to-end excellence. Billing is default per ESXi Host (HCI product), with a minimum of 4 hosts per cluster. Or, per bundle of (physical) CPU/RAM/SSD resources (vSphere product), with a minimum of 3 hosts per cluster.
The price per host (HCI product) depends on CPU, RAM and local NVME storage capacities of the selected host configuration. Leaseweb offers multiple configuration options to facilitate any needs you may have. Please note, that as VMware licenses are default included, and VMware licenses are typically based on RAM size, pricing of hosts with more RAM is higher due to the costs of more RAM modules as well as higher costs for the provider for VMware licensing.
VMware Migration
Migration of your current (VMware) workloads to the cloud, also to a VMware Cloud, is always a challenge. Creating a migration plan and preparing for the actual migration of (live) workloads and data requires a good understanding of your current setup and of the capabilities of your new platform. Each provider supports options to help you shift your workloads, which varies from standardized migration tools to direct access to experts at VMware. Leaseweb guides you through the process with a team of experts that you have at your disposal. Our VMware Private Cloud products are managed by experienced VMware, cloud storage, and network engineers. Personal contact with your account manager, customer care representatives, customer success manager, and the cloud engineers when needed is part of our package. For example, cloud engineers can work with your engineering team to see what the best technical setup is to migrate your existing workloads.
Why Consider Leaseweb?
Leaseweb has a longstanding track record of servicing its clients when it comes to their hosting and cloud needs. We have our own global network and manage cloud infrastructure out of multiple data centers in Europe, North America and Asia Pacific, allowing for low latency levels across all regions and compliance to local rules and regulations. You can benefit from our reliable cloud infrastructure, and your dedicated VMware Private Cloud. You can combine your private cloud with other Leaseweb services, like Veeam Backup (VM Backup), Zerto Disaster Recovery (VM Replication across two datacenters), Object Storage, Cloud Connect with other cloud providers, dedicated bare metal servers, and more. Last-but-not-least, Leaseweb pricing for VMware Cloud is in almost all cases very competitive, please check it out.