What is Amazon Elastic VMware Service?
With Amazon Elastic VMware Service (Amazon EVS) you deploy and run a VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) environment directly on EC2 bare metal instances within your Amazon Virtual Private Cloud. AWS made the service generally available on 5 August 2025.
It targets organisations that want to move existing VMware workloads to the cloud without changing IP addresses, retraining staff, or rewriting operational runbooks. You keep complete control over your VMware architecture, including add-ons and third-party solutions.
Core Features
- VCF inside your own VPC: Automated deployment of VMware Cloud Foundation on EC2 bare metal instances within your Amazon VPC
- Supported versions: The product page names VCF 9.0 and 9.1
- Operational continuity: Extend on-premises networks and migrate workloads without changing IP addresses
- Full architectural control: Optimise the virtualisation stack including add-ons and third-party solutions
- Operating model of your choice: Self-manage or use AWS Partners for a managed experience
- Deployment paths: Amazon EVS console, AWS CLI, and AWS CloudFormation via the
AWS::EVS::Environmentresource type - Automated network setup: During creation, Amazon EVS creates the required VLAN subnets from the CIDR ranges you specify
- Connection to AWS services: The product page names access to 240+ AWS services, including managed databases, analytics, containers, serverless, and generative AI
Typical Use Cases
Migration and data centre retirement: Rapidly move existing VMware environments to the cloud and retire legacy hardware.
Capacity expansion: Expand data centre capacity without procuring additional hardware of your own.
Gradual AWS adoption: Adopt further AWS services at your own pace, starting from the existing VMware environment.
Backup and disaster recovery: Build backup and recovery scenarios for VMware workloads.
Benefits
- Runs inside your own Amazon VPC rather than in a separate, isolated environment
- Available in Frankfurt (eu-central-1) and further EU Regions, among others
- Migration without changing IP addresses, operational processes, or tooling
- Choice between self-management and AWS Partner-managed operation
- Deployment through console, CLI, or CloudFormation and therefore as infrastructure as code
- Direct access to further AWS services from the same VPC
Integration with innFactory
As an AWS Reseller, innFactory supports you with Amazon EVS: assessing your existing VMware landscape, sizing VPC, subnets, and quotas, planning the migration and network connectivity, and establishing operating processes and the gradual adoption of further AWS services.
Typical Use Cases
Technical Specifications
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Amazon Elastic VMware Service?
With Amazon Elastic VMware Service (Amazon EVS) you deploy and run a VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) environment directly on EC2 bare metal instances within your Amazon Virtual Private Cloud. AWS made the service generally available on 5 August 2025.
Is Amazon EVS available in Germany?
Yes. The AWS General Reference lists Amazon EVS endpoints in Europe (Frankfurt, eu-central-1), Europe (Ireland, eu-west-1), Europe (London, eu-west-2), Europe (Milan, eu-south-1), Europe (Paris, eu-west-3), Europe (Stockholm, eu-north-1), and Europe (Zurich, eu-central-2), among others.
What are the prerequisites for an EVS environment?
Per the documentation, Amazon EVS environments require four hosts for initial deployment. The VPC must have an IPv4 CIDR block and be sized adequately to accommodate the EVS subnets. IPv6 is not supported at this time. The documentation names i4i.metal, i7i.metal-24xl, and i7i.metal-48xl as example instance types; consult the documentation for the ESX versions and instance types available to your account.
Which quotas apply?
The AWS General Reference lists default values of three EVS environments per AWS account and Region and five hosts per EVS environment. Both are adjustable. AWS notes that your EC2 Running On-Demand Standard Instance quota must cover the vCPUs you need; each i4i.metal instance uses 128 vCPUs.
Which VCF versions are supported?
The product page names support for VCF 9.0 and 9.1.
How are environments deployed and managed?
You define and configure Amazon EVS deployments through the Amazon EVS console, the AWS CLI, or AWS CloudFormation using the AWS::EVS::Environment resource type. During environment creation Amazon EVS creates the required VLAN subnets from the CIDR ranges you specify and adds hosts to the environment. Further configuration is done in the vSphere user interface.
Note: All product information on this page has been compiled with care, but is provided without guarantee and may be outdated or incomplete. Cloud services evolve rapidly — features, pricing, SLAs, and availability change frequently. Authoritative and up-to-date information can only be found on the official product page of AWS (official documentation). This page does not represent an offer by AWS.