Hybrid Infrastructure is an operating model
Hybrid infrastructure isn't a place it's an operating model. Looking at VMware Cross Cloud helps remind us of that.
VMware’s Cross-Cloud team presented during Cloud Field Day 13. VMware is on a corporate-wide mission to evangelize its cloud capabilities beyond VMware cloud solutions. I’m writing a more extensive post on thectoadvisor.com on cloud adjacency.
VMware’s overall approach is to be cloud adjacent vs. a cloud provider themselves. From running workloads to measuring performance and cost, VMware Cross-Cloud is less about building native services to leverage those services to provide a hybrid infrastructure or what they call Cross-Cloud.
Think VMware Cloud on AWS. While the workload runs on AWS infrastructure, I consider it a cloud adjacent service. The VMC on AWS service isn’t managed or controlled via the AWS Control plane. Meaning you must use vCenter and VMware’s cloud management tools to manage the solution. It enables customers to decouple their vSphere environment separately from the native control plane.
VMware Tanzu Mission Control is a similar approach. You won’t find Tanzu Mission Control directly in any of the service offerings of the major cloud providers. It’s Cloud Adjacent.
EC2 is an example of a native cloud service. You need the AWS control plane to run EC2. However, you get the advantage of being tightly coupled with Identity Access Management. Unlike VMs running in VMC on AWS, you can assign an IAM role to an EC2 instance.
Expanded thoughts are coming in the next few days on thectoadvisor.com
I've just now started watching the VMware portion of CFD13 and have only seen Amanda's segment so far. Maybe this will be explained better in the subsequent videos, but I was struck by the slide showing the "stack" of software needed to make cross cloud a reality. If I heard right, you need VCF + Tanzu + vRealize (presumably all the pieces - ie: vRealize Automation, vRealize Operations, vRealize Network Insight, etc.) + Cloud Health at a minimum. As a VMware partner I saw visions of a big fat bloated VMware suite with dozens of sku's, products you are required to purchase but will rarely use, salivating VMware reps with visions of ELA's, and a fair amount of lock-in at least at the VMware level. It would be interesting to know how well some of the items can co-exist with non-VMware product. Terraform and/or Ansible instead of vRealize Automation comes to mind immediately.