VMC on AWS: Hybrid Cloud Made Easy

About

WWT was engaged by a large Health Services Organization that provides managed care services for the most complex areas of healthcare. This organization is focused on enabling providers to make better decisions. This company provides services to health plans and other managed care organizations, employers, labor unions, military and governmental agencies, and third-party administrators.

Challenge

The Customer desired to implement a cloud first strategy for all new and existing application workloads. This involves evaluating cloud-based solutions before considering traditional, on-premises alternatives while also reducing their own physical data center footprint. These business drivers will change the way IT operates and delivers services over time, but the Customer understood the importance of respecting their historic investment in current compute platforms and personnel skillsets. 

In addition, the Customer mandated that any new technology adoption must intrinsically improve the overall security posture of their IT infrastructure. The challenge was clear: the Customer desired a secure, hybrid cloud environment that meshed well with existing infrastructure, applications and skillsets. 

Solution

WWT took a multifaceted approach to meeting the Customer's requirements with the goal of delivering a solution that was fit for purpose and use while also being near effortless to implement and operate. 

The engagement started with a scoping workshop. During this time, VMware Cloud (VMC) on AWS was introduced and evaluated as a potential hybrid cloud solution. After in-depth discussion, all parties agreed that VMC on AWS would provide the desired outcome. In order to validate the hypothesis, WWT delivered a VMC on AWS proof of concept (POC) utilizing our Advanced Technology Center (ATC). During this POC, the Customer was able to gain hands-on experience with a VMC on AWS deployment in a hybrid cloud environment reflecting their own future state.

After validating that VMC on AWS would achieve their end goals, the customer chose to to build a hybrid cloud environment. In partnership with VMware, WWT was engaged to help deliver and implement the VMC on AWS solution. WWT worked directly with the Customer to deploy their first software-defined data center (SDDC) and integrate it with their existing on-premises environment. This solution utilized VMware HCX to achieve hybrid cloud extension by greatly simplifying networking and migration efforts.

After the pilot deployment was validated and initial migrations of non-production workloads into the first SDDC proved successful, WWT provided a VMC on AWS subject matter expert (SME) to provide operational guidance over the continued migration and operational activities. WWT's SME worked with the Customer to deploy additional SDDCs to increase their hybrid cloud capacity and even assisted with integrating VMware Transit Connect, a new (at the time) VMC on AWS feature leveraging AWS Transit Gateway under the hood, allowing the Customer to quickly and easily set up highly performant and scalable network interconnectivity between their existing on-premises environment and their newly scaled out VMC on AWS solution.

Additionally, WWT's SME assisted with knowledge transfer to the client's IT staff and demonstrated several advanced SDDC features, including micro-segmentation with VMware NSX. WWT's goal was to ensure that, when the engagement completed, the customer would be confident operating their new hybrid cloud solution.  

Outcome

This engagement provided several immediate, tangible benefits to the Customer. They are now equipped with a functional, scalable hybrid cloud environment that is both agile and self-service friendly. Migration and consolidation of their remaining physical data centers can be carried out at a pace of their choosing. In addition to the scalable compute and storage of their new hybrid cloud environment that can grow to meet the demands of their application workloads, the Customer also enjoys enhanced software-defined networking and security with VMware NSX. 

Finally, these new capabilities reduced operational effort while improving efficiency by eliminating the "busy work" of traditional IT, allowing the Customer to shift personnel focus toward pursuits more valuable to the business while requiring minimal investment into new skillsets and operational tooling.