VMware Cloud on AWS pricing

Resource consumption on VMware Cloud on AWS is calculated by the number of ESXI hosts. This model does not follow traditional licensing in vSphere where reference for consumption is number of CPUs per host. Note that the number of CPUs available to you in the VMware Cloud on AWS contains two CPU sockets with a total of 36 threads. The cost per ESXI varies and depends by region and zones. Let’s check the licensing options in VMware cloud on AWS!

License types

VMware Cloud on AWS pricing icludes two licensing models: on-demand and subscription on a yearly basis. It’s important to note that you can take advantage of your existing licenses to get additional discounts.

Example for AWS US West (Oregon) and AWS US East (N. Virginia) – 3 host configuration

On-demand

If you decide to purchase hosts on-demand, three hosts (hourly pricing – $25)

Subscription

You can subscribe to a one-year or a three-year subscription.

The cost of an ESXI host for one-year subscription (three hosts, yearly pricing – $155,961).

Saving compared to on-demand model is 30%.

The cost of an ESXI host for one-year subscription (three hosts, yearly pricing – $109,366).

Saving compared to on-demand model is 50%.

Prices seems high, but knowing that you don’t have to purchase any physical hardware, not need to backup, recover, update complete infrastructure, at the end price is good opportunity. Plus, if you bring your existing licenses you will get additional discount.

One host On-Demand(hourly) One-Year Subscription Three-Year Subscription
Price/host $8.3681 per hour $51.987 per year $109,366 per 3 years
Hourly $8.6381 $5.9346 per hour $4.1616 per hour
Savings  – 30% 50%

 What’s included in a license?

  1. VMware licenses (vSphere, NSX, vSAN)
  2. SDDC Cloud maintenance operations (Backup, Recovery, Updates) – does not include your virtual machines
  3. 24/7 VMware support (phone, mail, chat)
  4. Backup and Recovery of infrastructure Virtual Machines (vCenter, NSX, Controllers, Edge)
  5. Maintenance and updates of physical ESXI hosts

What is not included in license?

  1. AWS services integrated with the VMware environment (EC2, DynamoDB, EFS, Database services, VPC …)
  2. Software licenses for guest virtual machines (Windows, Oracle…)
  3. Licenses for other VMware products (vRealize Automation, SRM, Horizon View…)

Billing

VMware Cloud on AWS pricing splits into two different billing categories.

VMware sells, supplies and charges the complete VMware Cloud on AWS infrastructure.

AWS services that your infrastructure uses, are sold, delivered and billed through a special AWS account. You should have or open AWS account when activating the VMWare Cloud on AWS. Only in special terms, i.e. one host configuration you can postpone opening AWS account for 14 days. AWS account is free and you are not required to use AWS services. To summarize, AWS services such as EC2, database services, VPC, Route 53, CloudWatch, SNS and others are billed separately.

All billing details can be viewed in the SDDC console (Billing section). If you use on-demand billing, you will receive a bill for the previous month that includes the resource utilization statistic for ESXI hosts, cost of using IP addresses and external traffic. If you use a one-year or three-year subscription you will only receive bill for using ESXI hosts.

Minimum number of hosts

The minimum number of ESXI hosts you can rent is one, although minimum of three hosts are recommended for redundancy.

One host configuration

You have the possibility to purchase one ESXI host for the 30-day test period. After 30 days, you can buy standard on-demand or subscription service. When trial period is finished, SDDC is automatically deleted but it is possible to create a new SDDC with one host for the new 30 days. It is also not necessary to open an AWS account within 14 days. The offer is valid for all zones and regions. For this configuration, you will get the same level of VMware support as for other configurations but without any SLA contract. It is possible to upgrade the cluster to 3 ESXI hosts and then to more.

Which functionalities are not included in a single ESXI host configuration?

Functions involving multiple host configurations such as limit for vSAN storage with FTT = 0. In case of loss of ESXI host, all data is lost. HA, DRS and Stretched cluster configurations would not be available.

Three host configuration

The minimum recommended configuration is 3 ESXI hosts where you will use all the functionalities of VMware products.

Activation process 

  1. Open the AWS account
  2. Contact VMware sales
  3. Decide who will make the payment
  4. In contact with VMware sales, purchase the desired configuration via credit card
  5. The payment participant activates the organization through the activation link sent to the email
  6. Deploy SDDC