NickOver the past few 2 months, I’ve been taking part in VMware’s Take-3 program. This is where staff who have been with the company for 5 years or more can “take 3 months” to join another team and see how a different part of the business or technology works. It’s a great way to gain different experience, network with new people and take a breather from what your normal job entails. I’ve been fortunate enough to join the Technical Marketing team working on VMware Cloud on AWS.
The Operating Model for Hybrid Cloud
When operating any kind of IT environment, you must consider the team that is running it, the tasks they will be performing and the level of responsibility they have for ensuring the delivery of that service. It may seem obvious looking at it from the outside, but when you adopt new methods of IT delivery, you should also evaluate change to your IT operating practices.
New technologies like VMware Cloud on AWS are perfect candidates for this type of review. We’ve recently released an updated document that helps customers understand who is responsible for certain aspects of the VMware Cloud on AWS service. In here you can find details on the permissions structure, feature functionality and links to detailed operational procedures.
If you are adopting VMware Cloud on AWS, there are a number of tasks that regular vSphere administrators will be familiar with, and will still need to perform. Operations like configuring virtual networks, virtual machine resource allocation and granting security permissions, to name just a few, are all still required by customers using VMware Cloud on AWS. However, operations such as security patching, cluster HA settings and version upgrades are all handled seamlessly by VMware behind the scenes.
Additionally, some tasks are completely new, and some are performed differently than traditional vSphere tasks. Take, for example, adding hosts to a cluster. Procurement of physical hosts is still required, however, it is with a few simple clicks. The hypervisor installation is automated by VMware Cloud on AWS and joining the hosts to an existing (or new) cluster is also automated.
How to perform these operations, who should be ultimately responsible, and what a new team makeup should look like, will depend on the existing IT organization, and how they plan to operate. Not only has VMware tried to make the VMware Cloud on AWS service as simple as possible, but we also want to simplify customers IT operations by explaining how things are different and what needs to be considered.
You can find the VMware Cloud on AWS Operation Model in the Technical Articles of our documentation site.