As someone who has been an early customer, and then an advisor/architect fully certified in VMware Cloud on AWS (VMC on AWS) , I’ve helped a few organizations extend their VMware workloads into the public cloud. But with AWS ending the resale contract of VMC as of last year (you can still purchase through Broadcom), the spotlight shifts to the new Amazon Elastic VMware Service (EVS).
Below I’ll break down what this truly means, and how EVS differs technically from the initial VMC offering.
VMware Cloud on AWS – VMC on AWS (What’s Fading Away)
- Service Model: VMware-managed SDDC hosted on AWS bare metal.
- Licensing: VMware VCF licensing included with the cost of the solution
- Nodes Available: i3.metal / i3en.metal / i4i.metal / M7i.metal-24xl EC2 instances available.
- Control: VMware managed the entire SDDC. Customers had vCenter access but no control over hosts or SDDC lifecycle.
Amazon Elastic VMware Service – EVS (The Replacement)
- Service Model: AWS-native, first-party service. You deploy full VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) directly into your own VPC.
- Licensing: Bring Your Own License (BYOL) for VCF.
- Nodes Available: i4i.metal EC2 nodes with 128 vCPUs, 1 TB RAM, ~30 TiB NVMe.
- Roadmap includes additional bare-metal families (storage-heavy and GPU-based for Private AI workloads).
- Storage: Native vSAN ESA across the cluster
- Third-party options like Pure Storage and/or Netapp available for extended capacity.
- Control: Full administrative access to vCenter, ESXi hosts, NSX, and SDDC Manager (give me my root access back!)
- Option to allow AWS Partners to manage this environment for you is always an option too.
- VCF version: VCF 5.2 is available with the service at the moment with plans to offer VCF 9 hopefully soon!
- Do you wait till VCF 9 is available? Or jump on it now and upgrade later? Depends on your needs.
VMC vs EVS: Side by Side
Why It Matters
For enterprises, this shift is less about “losing” VMC and more about gaining flexibility with a different option.
- EVS removes the shadow-account model, running natively in your VPC.
- You get full lifecycle control of VMware Cloud Foundation on AWS hardware.
- Solution includes full compatibility with standard add-ons and third-party solutions.
- Licensing aligns with your existing VCF subscription (BYOL).
In short, VMC was a VMware service that happened to run on AWS.
EVS is an AWS service that gives you full control of your VMware Cloud Foundation deployment, without having to deploy any hardware, or manage your own datacenter.
Official EVS website here
Official AWS introduction of EVS here
