Amazon Elastic VMware Service
Run VMware in your VPC
Deploys VMware Cloud Foundation directly on EC2 bare metal in your VPC, letting you move VMware VMs to AWS without changing formats or management tools.
- Cost$$$ High
- Difficulty●●●●●
- Costs money when idle?Yes
- Self-managed
Think of it asLike moving your whole office into a new building while keeping the exact same layout and house rules.
When to use it
✓ Use it when
You have many VMware VMs that need to leave the data center quickly while keeping familiar vSphere processes.
✗ Avoid it when
You're ready to convert VMs into regular EC2 to drop VMware license costs → Application Migration Service.
Common uses
- Exiting a data center when the contract expires
- Extending on-prem VMware to the cloud
- Disaster recovery for VMware environments
What does it cost?
- Pricing model: Per-host service fee plus EC2 bare metal charges; VMware Cloud Foundation licenses are purchased separately from Broadcom.
⚠️ Cost traps
The minimum cluster includes several bare metal hosts, so the starting cost is high.
