The VMware Cloud Provider Program: A Comprehensive Guide to Storage Offerings

The VMware Cloud Provider Program (VCPP) enables VMware partners to offer cloud services to their clients. The VMware Cloud Provider Program consists of VMware SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) solutions and an international network of VMware Service Provider Partners with more than 4,000+ partners in 100 countries who are VMware-ready as of right now. It is an ultimate business opportunity for many organizations that provide hosted services including IaaS (Infrastructure-as-a-Service), PaaS (Platform-as-a-Service), cloud service providers, and application service providers to their clients.

Partners can access VMware products through the VMware Cloud Provider Program on a pay-as-you-go, pay-as-you-grow, and monthly subscription basis. It is the largest globally recognized network of VMware-based cloud services. The partners of VMware Service Provider can now offer their customers hybrid cloud services that easily extend the customer’s data center into the cloud by delivering a variety of regional VMware-based cloud services using the same VMware products and technologies that they already do use on-site.

VMware Ecosystem for Cloud Service Providers

By utilizing the VMware Cloud Provider Platform, cloud service providers may produce an enterprise-ready cloud solution. The initiative gives partners the equipment and materials they need to offer premium cloud services. Additionally, it aids partners in keeping abreast of the most recent VMware innovations.

To satisfy the demands of partners and clients, the VMware Cloud Provider Program is continually being updated. VMware is dedicated to assisting partners in expanding their businesses and providing clients with the finest cloud services available.

Benefits for VMware Cloud Service Providers

Some advantages of cloud service providers include the ones listed below:

Launch a cloud services business using VMware’s products portfolio.
VMware Cloud Providers in the Partner Connect give access to VMware products to partners on a pay-as-you-grow, monthly subscription basis; cloud service providers need to pay only for what they use.
Offer unified IT experience whether on-premises or in the cloud with improved security and compliance, enhanced business continuity, automation, and auto-scaling.
Support your customers’ particular vertical market demands and compliance certifications. Provide individualized services to make your tenants’ customers happy.
A software-defined data center that responds quickly, provides easy access to applications, and protects client data.
Fast application provisioning and availability with easy maintenance and minimal downtime. Also offers operational consistency and visibility across cloud environments either private or public.
Partner Connect provides you with crucial go-to-market assistance and development funding for increased visibility and market competition resistance.

Pricing Model for VCPP

VCPP Partners may now register to switch to the Flex Pricing Model and running a cloud business with this model is more flexible. All partners now have access to a single standard core set of products, and to fulfill the demands of their clients, they may choose any add-ons and arrange them in any sequence for the components they intend to deliver to their customers.

This enables partners to operate businesses in specific niche industries, such as DR-as-a-Service, Monitoring-as-a-Service, or cutting-edge platforms like PKS (Pivotal Container Service), to create products that precisely meet their needs. The goal of the Flex Pricing Model is to utilize the flexibility offered by VMware’s consumption pricing and extend it to the creation of custom bundles.

VMware is happy to provide this adaptable alternative to its partners to better serve its clients in the fast-growing cloud provider industry. Visit Partner Central to learn more and review the updated Product Usage Guide and Flex Pricing Model FAQ for pricing.

Foundational VMware Software that Partners Use

Several essential VMware components serve as the foundation for the Cloud Provider Platform that works together to streamline service delivery and serve as the basis for a VMware “Cloud Verified” platform.

VMware Cloud Director

One of the fundamental tools used by VMware VCPP partners to develop their cloud services provider solution is VMware Cloud Director. By pooling compute, networks, and storage and presenting them through catalog-based services, VMware Cloud Director is at the heart of giving cloud providers the ability to build a secure cloud platform. This platform can significantly increase virtual data center efficiency for delivering resources to customers. With the aid of VMware Cloud Director, these resources may be split up into several groups, depending on their specifications, capacities, or performance capabilities.

VMware Cloud Director offers:

The self-service user interface for several tenants:
- Simple deploy and run models based on the Web and API
- An extensible tenant user interface to incorporate bespoke services
- Multi-tenanted constructions strictly segregate customers from one another
- Delivery of integrated vRealize Orchestrator workflow
Media, template, and market software central libraries:
- Simple access to all the tools developers and admins require
- Personalization of media and templates
- The capacity to distribute several identical copies of applications
Tenant administrators are given power over users and developers
Utilizing tenant dashboards and data in the vRealize Operations and Tenant App to measure for billing purposes
The abstraction of the user from the underlying hardware

VMware Cloud Foundation

By minimizing the complexity, effort, and expense involved in manually creating the cloud resources, VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) effectively makes it simpler to deliver comprehensive cloud infrastructure. VCF delivers a fully integrated SDDC that is available for use as resources by Cloud Director and offers a straightforward route to the Cloud Provider Platform.

Cloud service providers might use VCF to:

By assisting the cloud service provider set up SDDCs at scale while reducing the difficulties connected with system design, testing, configuration, and provisioning of automated Day-0 deployment and possibly achieving a quicker time to market
Fully managed upgrades, patches, and scaling of the SDDC infrastructure
Reduced TCO (Total Cost of Ownership)
By supplying VMware SDDCs in a completely automated building block, an infrastructure with just one tenant or a public cloud Using VCF, complete cloud services might maintain a consistent worldwide data center footprint.

The SDDC Manager is used to manage the VMware Cloud Foundation platform and enables the cloud service providers to quickly and effectively install vSphere, vSAN, and NSX Data Center. By patching and updating all the components from a single pane of glass, SDDC Manager also completes all setup chores and lifecycle management.

Storage Offerings in VCPP

Organizations can quickly implement a high-performance, disaggregated storage solution thanks to supporting of NVMe/TCP. In comparison to current options, NVMe/TCP implementation offers superior performance at cheaper deployment costs. Using NVMe/TCP on the same network infrastructure as VMware clusters now allows for up to 4x higher IOPs and a 1/6 reduction in latency for small block operations.

For flash and next-generation SSDs (solid-state drives), NVMe is a storage access and transport protocol that provides high throughput and short response times for a variety of traditional and modern applications. The usage of non-NVMe protocols for storage networking can significantly increase latency even though all-NVMe server-based storage has been around for a while.

The first NVMe/TCP storage solution for vSphere was introduced as a result of cooperation between VMware and Dell. NVMe/TCP storage options from Dell offers:

High-performance storage connection that is less expensive and similar to Fibre Channel
Fewer complicated than current solutions
Utilize current Ethernet investments

SmartFabric Storage Software automates the SAN configuration process for quicker operations and cheaper OPEX.

The following are some benefits of NVMe/TCP including:

Enhances storage resource usage by supporting a hyperscale remote pool of SSDs with easy, effective NVMe-oF
Scales effectively by providing redundant, composable storage for both scales up and scale out.
Enhances performance by offering extensive data services for disaggregated storage with performance and latency comparable to direct-attached SSDs.

It is becoming increasingly clear to many Cloud Service Providers and VCPP clients how easy it is to supply storage and handle volume policies like availability, protection, data reduction, and QoS.

NVMe/TCP Support is Now Available in VMware vSphere 7 Update 3.

With the launch of VMware vSphere 7 Update 3, VMware is happy to introduce support for the NVMe/TCP storage protocol. Customers using vSphere now have a quick, easy, and affordable solution to maximize their current storage investments thanks to NVMe/TCP. With this update, VMware’s market-leading cloud computing platform, VMware vSphere, continues to support the most recent hardware technological advancements.

As early design partners and VMware Technology Alliance Partners, Intel, and Lightbits worked closely with VMware to create and test the new vSphere NVMe/TCP capability. As a Day-0 software-defined storage option for the VMware vSphere 7 Update 3 release, VMware has now certified Lightbits’ LightOS.

The storage solution from Lightbits offers an end-to-end NVMe solution., This uses Intel technology and is compatible with NVMe/TCP inbox support in vSphere. Now that VMware, Lightbits, and Intel have merged their solutions, businesses with private clouds, hybrid clouds, and cloud service providers may all benefit from improved performance, scalability, and cost-effectiveness.

Wrapping Up

The VMware Cloud Provider Program, which enables partners to buy VMware infrastructure on a pay-as-you-go and monthly subscription basis, is what makes public and hybrid clouds successful.

The VCPP, one of the biggest global networks of VMware-based verified cloud services, enables partners to use VMware products on a pay-as-you-go, pay-as-you-grow, or monthly subscription basis. By utilizing the VMware Cloud Provider Platform, cloud service providers may produce an enterprise-ready cloud solution. The initiative gives partners the equipment and materials they need to offer premium cloud services. Additionally, it aids partners in keeping abreast of the most recent VMware innovations.

Nisar Ahmad

Nisar is a founder of Techwrix, Sr. Systems Engineer, double VCP6 (DCV & NV), 7 x vExpert 2017-23, with 12 years of experience in administering and managing data center environments using VMware and Microsoft technologies. He is a passionate technology writer and loves to write on virtualization, cloud computing, hyper-convergence (HCI), cybersecurity, and backup & recovery solutions.