vCloud Air was a public

cloud computing Cloud computing is the on-demand availability of computer system resources, especially data storage ( cloud storage) and computing power, without direct active management by the user. Large clouds often have functions distributed over mu ...

service built on

vSphere VMware vSphere (formerly VMware Infrastructure 4) is VMware's cloud computing virtualization platform. It includes an updated vCenter Configuration Manager, as well as vCenter Application Discovery Manager, and the ability of vMotion to move m ...

from

VMware VMware, Inc. is an American cloud computing and virtualization technology company with headquarters in Palo Alto, California. VMware was the first commercially successful company to virtualize the x86 architecture. VMware's desktop software ru ...

. vCloud Air has three "

infrastructure as a service The first major provider of infrastructure as a service (IaaS) was Amazon in 2008. IaaS is a cloud computing service model by means of which computing resources are supplied by a cloud services provider. The IaaS vendor provides the storage, net ...

" (IaaS) subscription service types: dedicated cloud,

virtual private cloud A virtual private cloud (VPC) is an on-demand configurable pool of shared resources allocated within a public cloud environment, providing a certain level of isolation between the different organizations (denoted as ''users'' hereafter) using th ...

, and disaster recovery. vCloud Air also offers a pay-as-you-go service named Virtual Private Cloud OnDemand. In Q2 2017, VMware sold vCloud Air to French cloud service provider

OVH OVH, legally OVH Groupe SAS, is a French cloud computing company which offers VPS, dedicated servers and other web services. As of 2016 OVH owned the world's largest data center in surface area. As of 2019, it was the largest hosting provide ...

History

VMware announced the vCloud initiative at the 2008

VMworld VMworld is a global multi-cloud conference, hosted by VMware. It is the largest multi-cloud-specific event. It has been held in San Diego, California in 2004; Las Vegas, Nevada in 2005, 2008, 2011, 2016, 2017, and 2018; Los Angeles, California in 2 ...

conference in

Las Vegas Las Vegas (; Spanish for "The Meadows"), often known simply as Vegas, is the 25th-most populous city in the United States, the most populous city in the state of Nevada, and the county seat of Clark County. The city anchors the Las Vegas ...

and garnered significant press attention. At the 2009

conference in

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17th ...

vCloud was featured in the vCloud Pavilion. vCloud was also a subject at the 2010 VMworld conference. On May 21, 2013, the early access program for vCloud Hybrid Service was launched. On August 26, 2013, general availability was announced for vCloud Hybrid Service including features such as DRaaS and Direct Connect. vCloud Hybrid Service was rebranded to vCloud Air on August 21, 2014. vCloud Air provides a

hybrid cloud Cloud computing is the on-demand availability of computer system resources, especially data storage ( cloud storage) and computing power, without direct active management by the user. Large clouds often have functions distributed over mul ...

—a public

IaaS The first major provider of infrastructure as a service (IaaS) was Amazon in 2008. IaaS is a cloud computing service model by means of which computing resources are supplied by a cloud services provider. The IaaS vendor provides the storage, net ...

that functions as an extension of existing data centers running VMware vSphere, with common management and networking. With the rebrand of the service, they also announced a

On-Demand program that allows users to pay only for what each user needs to use for resources. vCloud Air Mobile was announced on August 25, 2014, which added the integration of AirWatch and Pivotal Cloud Foundry. On 4 April 2017 French cloud provider

announced its intent to acquire VMware vCloud Air Business and all personnel. The acquisition was completed in Q2 2017.

Data center locations

Similar to other public cloud providers, vCloud Air supports the concept of regions - or locations, in vCloud terminology - which are typically used for better pricing, to increase application performance, or as disaster recovery. vCloud Air is offered to the public in

California California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the m ...

Nevada Nevada ( ; ) is a state in the Western region of the United States. It is bordered by Oregon to the northwest, Idaho to the northeast, California to the west, Arizona to the southeast, and Utah to the east. Nevada is the 7th-most extensive, ...

Texas Texas (, ; Spanish: ''Texas'', ''Tejas'') is a state in the South Central region of the United States. At 268,596 square miles (695,662 km2), and with more than 29.1 million residents in 2020, it is the second-largest U.S. state by ...

Virginia Virginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern regions of the United States, between the Atlantic Coast and the Appalachian Mountains. The geography and climate of the Commonwealth ar ...

and

New Jersey New Jersey is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York; on the east, southeast, and south by the Atlantic Ocean; on the west by the Delaware ...

in the United States. Internationally, it is available in the United Kingdom, Germany, Japan, and Australia. Government users have access to two additional locations: one in

Arizona Arizona ( ; nv, Hoozdo Hahoodzo ; ood, Alĭ ṣonak ) is a state in the Southwestern United States. It is the 6th largest and the 14th most populous of the 50 states. Its capital and largest city is Phoenix. Arizona is part of the Fou ...

, and another in

Architecture

vCloud Air supports more than 5,000 applications and 90+ operating systems certified to run on vSphere. The use of vCloud Air allows seamless workload portability and migration due to vSphere, which means no rewrites or recoding when moving workloads from an on-premises data center to the cloud and vice versa.

Network virtualization In computing, network virtualization is the process of combining hardware and software network resources and network functionality into a single, software-based administrative entity, a virtual network. Network virtualization involves platform vi ...

allows users to configure firewalls and network to mirror on-site networks, including NAT rules and firewall rules, networks, and public IPs.

Virtual Private Cloud OnDemand

Virtual Private Cloud OnDemand is self-service on-demand

platform from vCloud Air. This infrastructure-as-a-service (

) pay-as-you-go offering allows users to consume specific vCPU, storage, vRAM, Network, and IP as needed. Additionally, the service allows adjusting of powered-on state virtual machines. VMware announced plans for a vCloud Air Virtual Private Cloud OnDemand early access program on October 14, 2014. The program was officially launched on November 17, 2014. It included $1,000 in-service credits for approved users. Virtual Private Cloud OnDemand was officially released publicly on January 20, 2015, An initial offering of $300 in-service credits to be used in the first 90 days after signing up was also announced.

Configurations

The most basic configuration includes a

virtual machine In computing, a virtual machine (VM) is the virtualization/ emulation of a computer system. Virtual machines are based on computer architectures and provide functionality of a physical computer. Their implementations may involve specialized h ...

with 1GB RAM, 1 vCPU, and 20GB SSD storage at $0.07 / hour.Cloud Computing On-Demand Pricing Calculator
/ref> Currently the service offers the choices of these three operating systems: * CentOS *Microsoft Windows Server Standard Edition *

Ubuntu Ubuntu ( ) is a Linux distribution based on Debian and composed mostly of free and open-source software. Ubuntu is officially released in three editions: '' Desktop'', ''Server'', and ''Core'' for Internet of things devices and robots. All ...

Additionally, users can consume up to 16 vCPUs and 120 GB of memory. Storage options include: * 2 TB standard storage * 2 TB of SSD-accelerated storage Users can also have up to 20 public IP addresses and support levels vary, with online support being 7% of the total invoice and production support being $100 or 12%, whichever is greater.

References

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External links

VMware vCloud Air
Cloud platforms Cloud computing providers VMware