Alibaba Cloud VMware Service (ACVS) is an enterprise-class VMware Cloud™️ service jointly developed by Alibaba Cloud and VMware. Alibaba Cloud provides sales, operations, and after-sales support for ACVS. ACVS provides the powerful features of VMware products including vSphere, NSX, and vSAN. As a cloud service, ACVS is usable out-of-the-box, agile, and elastic. It can help users easily migrate or extend existing on-premises VMware workloads to Alibaba Cloud.
Benefits
Table 1 Benefits of ACVS
Benefit | Description |
Consistent experience | ACVS allows you to configure and manage a dedicated VMware environment by using management components such as vCenter and NSX Manager that are optimized for clouds.You can enjoy a user experience that is consistent with that in on-premises VMware environments, and you can make full use of your existing knowledge without the need to learn new technologies. |
Seamless integration | ACVS is seamlessly integrated with Alibaba Cloud products such as Cloud Enterprise Network (CEN) and Virtual Private Cloud (VPC), making it easy for workloads in a dedicated VMware environment to access the cloud-native services of Alibaba Cloud. |
Quick migration | ACVS and an on-premises VMware environment share the same architecture and network. With VMware or VMware-certified products and tools, VMware VMs can be freely and quickly migrated between a dedicated VMware environment and an on-premises VMware environment, with IP addresses unchanged and without the need for architecture reconstruction. |
High stability and reliability | With the help of the powerful infrastructure O&M capabilities of Alibaba Cloud, ACVS provides a stable and reliable VMware operating environment in the cloud. A dedicated VMware environment has high availability and supports failover. Even in the event of a hardware exception, VMware VMs and workloads can run smoothly. |
Regions and zones
Table 2 Regions and zones where ACVS is available
Region name | Region ID | Zone | Feature |
China (Shanghai) | cn-shanghai | Shanghai Zone L | Dedicated VMware environment (PrivateCloud instance) and host type vs182o.16xlarge. |
China (Beijing) | cn-beijing | Beijing Zone L | Dedicated VMware environment (PrivateCloud instance) and host types vs242.12xlarge and vs221.10xlarge. |
China (Shenzhen) | cn-shenzhen | Shenzhen Zone F | Dedicated VMware environment (PrivateCloud instance) and host types vs242.12xlarge and vs221.10xlarge. |
Terms
Table 3 Terms used in ACVS
Term | Description |
dedicated VMware environment (PrivateCloud instance) | A dedicated VMware environment is a VMware Cloud environment created by using the ACVS console or OpenAPI. A dedicated VMware environment has at least one vSphere cluster (default cluster) and provides the features of VMware products such as vSphere, NSX-T, and vSAN. This environment is dedicated to the user who creates it. The user has the operation and management permissions provided by the CloudAdmin account. In this environment, the user can perform operations such as VM creation, modification, and deletion, network configuration, and data storage. A dedicated VMware environment is also known as a PrivateCloud instance (hereinafter referred to as an "instance"). |
cluster | A cluster is a group of ESXi hosts configured in an instance that share resources such as processors, memory, networking, and storage. The vSphere cluster that is used during instance creation is the default cluster. The VMware management components vCenter and NSX Manager run on the default cluster. |
host | A host is a physical server that runs ESXi in an instance. |
NSX-T segment | An NSX-T segment is a Layer 2 broadcast domain across transport nodes. Similar to port groups, VMware VMs can be connected to segments. VMware VMs connected to the same segment can communicate with each other, even across transport nodes through encapsulation over tunneling. |
VMware management components | VMware management components refer to vCenter and NSX Manager. vCenter is used to manage vSphere and NSX Manager is used to manage NSX-T in an instance. Each instance has its own vCenter and NSX Manager. You can find the URL of a VMware management component on the Service information page of an instance in the ACVS console. Then, you can log on to the ECS jump server and access the management component. |
management gateway (MGW) | An MGW is an NSX-T tier-1 router that provides routing and firewall features for vCenter, NSX Manager, and other management components that run on the management network segment in an instance. MGW firewall rules run on the MGW and control access to the VMware management components in an instance. By default, after an instance is created, you are allowed to access VMware management components from the VPC network segment that you selected when you create the instance. |
compute gateway (CGW) | A CGW is an NSX-T tier-1 router that provides routing and firewall features for the VMware VMs connected to compute network segments. CGW firewall rules and NAT rules run on tier-0 routers. By default, these rules block all traffic to and from compute network segments after an instance is created. You must configure firewall rules to allow inbound and outbound traffic. |