Amazon unleashes on-prem-VM-to-cloud application teleporter

Amazon Web Services (AWS) has revealed a new on-prem-VM-to-cloud teleporter that aims to help organisations take virtualised workloads to its cloud.

The “AWS Server Migration Service will replicate your server’s volumes to the cloud, creating a new Amazon Machine Image (AMI) for each one.” There's no expectation cutover will be instant: AWS reckons once you take a VM into its cloud you'll want to play with it a bit to get a feel for how it runs in its newly-numinous home. Hence the inclusion of a sync feature that snapshots the VM as it changes and makes a new AMI for every snapshot.

Once you're confident the VM you send AWS' way is ready to roll, flick the switch and off you go.

You'll need the “Server Migration Service Connector” to make this all happen and once you set it running you'll pay for S3 storage for the VMs you upload.

AWS says the service “simplifies and streamlines the process of migrating existing virtualised applications to Amazon EC2.”

Which is thematically identical to the deal between AWS and VMware that will see vSphere run in the Amazon cloud to allow easy migration of virtualised on-premises applications into the cloud.

Amazon's clearly going to have a cake and eat it too. VMware? Virtzilla knows it can't win them all. But it can't be much fun to have a partner one week and a re-invigorated competitor the next. ®