Various blogs have covered this, so I will link them here.
http://www.boche.net/blog/index.php : VMware Announces vCloud Express
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Today at VMworld 2009, VMware announced vCloud Express! For those still struggling with cloud as a concept, technology, or offering, this is where the tangible rubber meets the road with VMware virtual infrastructure.
The VMware vCloud™ Express service delivers the ability to provision infrastructure on-demand, via credit card, and pay for use by the hour. As a VMware Virtualized ™ service, it ensures compatibility with other VMware environments both internally and with external services.
Quick, easy access to VMware Virtualized™ infrastructure for prototyping and development from external third party providers.
Increase flexibility and time to market, and reduce capex and resource challenges associated with trying to address the fluctuating infrastructure needs of development, staging, and production teams.
By leveraging the VMware platform, the VMware vCloud™ Express service retains the robustness, interoperability and reliability that VMware is known for while delivering the easy access and cost-effectiveness of a transactional service model.
Five partners currently offering VMware vCloud™ Express service (as beta): Terremark, Hosting.com, and BlueLock in the Americas; Logica in EMEA; and Melbourne IT in the APAC.The announcement was coupled with an on-stage web-based demonstration with Terremark, whom if I remember correctly, was involved with the interactive cloud provisioning presentation during a keynote speech at VMworld Europe 2009. As most keynote demonstrations usually go, the process was very slick, streamlined, and painless.
It will be interesting to watch VMware compete with other big cloud providers in existence. How much market share will VMware gain in the first year? What impact, if any, will “beta” status have on VMware vCloud Express adoption rates?”
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http://blog.virtualarchitect.nl : VMware announces vCloud Express
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Today at the Keynote at VMworld 2009 in San Francisco VMware announced VMware vCloud Express. The VMware vCloud Express is part of or if you want a product or spin off from the vCloud initiative that was presented at VMworld Europe earlier this year.
vCloud Express is an Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) offering delivered by leading VMware service provider partners. It provides reliable, on-demand, pay-as-you-go infrastructure that ensures compatibility with internal VMware environments and with VMware Virtualized™ services.
So who delivers and what do you get?
The following snap from a slide somewhat covers that question:
A screenshot from the newly launched vCloud Express website (Beta) of Terremark :
The pricing is very clear and is on a pay-per-use basis. In the pricing model Terremark differentiates into a couple of areas:
Servers – The hourly price of the servers depends on their deployed virtual processors (VPUs), memory and system storage configuration.
System Storage /Gb /month
Additional Storage /Gb /month
Public IP /hour /IP – you can activate public IP addresses that stay persistent with your environment until you no longer need them
Internet Service /hour /service – Internet Services allow you to configure a public IP address’s Internet protocol and communication port so your servers can be reached from the Internet. With the Internet Services feature you also can enable network load balancing across multiple servers.
bandwidth /transferred GB – Internet bandwidth is billed based on data transferred in and out of your vCloud Express public IP addresses
Subscription software / month /software license – Pre-build templates with an OS like Windows Server 2003 can be used.”
Thanks to Jason and Gerben for the blog posts.
Roger L.
