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 mul ...

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. 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 Disaster recovery is the process of maintaining or reestablishing vital infrastructure and systems following a natural or human-induced disaster, such as a storm or battle.It employs policies, tools, and procedures. Disaster recovery focuses on t ...

. 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 Multicloud, 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 Valley, Las Vegas, Nevada in 2005, 2008, 2011, 2016, 2017, and 2018; ...

conference in Las Vegas and garnered significant press attention. At the 2009

conference in San Francisco 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 multip ...

—a public IaaS 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 AirWatch was an Atlanta-based provider of enterprise mobility management (EMM) software and standalone management systems for content, applications and email. AirWatch was acquired by VMware, Inc. in February 2014. Note: AirWatch was the name of ...

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, Nevada, Texas, Virginia and New Jersey 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, and another in Virginia.

Architecture

vCloud Air supports more than 5,000 applications and 90+

operating systems An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems schedule tasks for efficient use of the system and may also inc ...

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 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 ( IaaS) 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 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 CentOS (, from Community Enterprise Operating System; also known as CentOS Linux) is a Linux distribution that provides a free and open-source community-supported computing platform, functionally compatible with its upstream source, Red Hat En ...

*Microsoft Windows Server Standard Edition * Ubuntu Additionally, users can consume up to 16 vCPUs and 120 GB of memory. Storage options include: * 2 TB standard storage * 2 TB of

SSD A solid-state drive (SSD) is a solid-state storage device that uses integrated circuit assemblies to store data persistently, typically using flash memory, and functioning as secondary storage in the hierarchy of computer storage. It is ...

-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