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AWS Backup for VMware Cloud on AWS workloads - The Design

This blog post provides the high level design for implementing the Native AWS Backup to protect the VMware Workloads hosted on VMware Cloud on AWS. 


VMware Cloud on AWS

VMware Cloud on AWS enables customers to deploy the SDDC and consume vSphere workloads as a managed service on AWS global infrastructure. VMC is a jointly engineered solution by VMware and AWS that provides customers with a true hybrid cloud experience.

As customers continue to adopt VMware Cloud on AWS, data protection for the VMs and workloads hosted on the VMC SDDC is becoming increasingly important. Customers should also be able to comply with data regulations and manage backup costs effectively.

This post will go over the design considerations and best practices for enabling Native AWS Backup for VMs hosted on VMC SDDC. We'll go over different architecture design options and use cases that address customer needs.

AWS Backup for VMware

We can centrally protect our VMware workloads hosted on VMC SDDC thanks to AWS Backup support for VMware. AWS Backup enables us to demonstrate the status of compliance with our organizational data protection policies by monitoring backup, copy, and restore operations and generating unified auditor-ready reports to help us meet data governance and regulatory requirements. 

How does AWS Backup work with VMware SDDC


AWS Backup connects to VMware workloads via the AWS Backup gateway, which we will deploy in our VMC SDDC Compute Cluster. AWS Backup gateway discovers VMs via VMware vCenter Server, takes VM snapshots, and manages backup and restore data between AWS Backup and the VMC SDDC. We can assign VMs to your backup policies using tags, VM Resource IDs, or group assignment by VM folder or hypervisor, which centrally govern data protection of VMware VMs with supported AWS Backup services. Following these steps, AWS Backup begins securely backing up VMs into AWS Backup's storage vaults. You can view your VMware backups in AWS Backup and restore them on-premises, to VMware Cloud on AWS, VMware Cloud on AWS Outposts, Amazon EBS, or Amazon EC2 as needed. 

The detailed deployment steps to be followed in the next blog post. 

Deciding the Network path for the Backup traffic 


The great advantage of VMware Cloud on AWS is that it can integrate seamlessly with native AWS services like AWS backup. During the SDDC onboarding process, customers are able to establish high-bandwidth and low-latency connectivity to a designated VPC, which is often referred to as the connected VPC. This connectivity is established using cross-account Elastic Network Interface (ENI) between the NSX Edge appliance in the VMware-managed shadow account and a subnet within the AWS connected VPC in the customer-managed account. 

Advantage of ENI


Virtual machine workloads running on the VMC SDDCs and accessing native services hosted in the connected VPC (AWS Backup) will use the ENIs rather than the VMware Transit Connect, improving operations efficiency and lowering data transfer costs.

Because the VM backup size is large (daily, weekly, and monthly), it is recommended to use ENI to avoid cluttering the network bandwidth of VPN, Direct Connect, VMware Transit Connect, or the Internet path. 


The Architecture 






The detailed deployment steps to be followed in the next blog post. 
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