AWS Consulting ·
VMware exit to AWS for India mid-market: renew, Amazon EVS or rehost to EC2
Facing a Broadcom VMware renewal? Compare renewing, moving VMware Cloud Foundation to Amazon EVS in Mumbai or Hyderabad, rehosting to Amazon EC2 with AWS Application Migration Service (MGN) and refactoring, then decide before you sign.
By Upvantix team
For a VMware migration in India ahead of a Broadcom renewal, mid-market teams have three realistic paths: renew and stay on-premises, move the VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) estate unchanged to Amazon Elastic VMware Service (Amazon EVS) in the Mumbai or Hyderabad Region, or rehost individual virtual machines to native Amazon EC2 with AWS Application Migration Service (MGN). Refactoring selected applications onto managed AWS services is a fourth path, and it can also follow one of the first moves.
Amazon EVS runs VCF on EC2 bare-metal instances inside your own Amazon VPC and is available in both AWS India Regions, Asia Pacific (Mumbai) and Asia Pacific (Hyderabad). The right choice depends on your licence position, your team’s VMware skills, how many workloads you want to modernise, and how much time is left before your renewal and before vSphere 8 general support ends on 11 October 2027. Build a like-for-like comparison of the paths from your own estate data before you sign.
Why the VMware renewal has become a platform decision
After Broadcom acquired VMware, licensing moved from perpetual licences to subscriptions sold as bundles such as VMware Cloud Foundation. Broadcom licenses VCF per core, with a minimum number of cores per processor, so teams that used only part of the stack now renew for the whole bundle.
Broadcom lists 11 October 2027 as the end of general support for vSphere 8 (ESXi 8.0 and vCenter Server 8.0), with technical guidance running to 11 October 2029. Whatever you decide at renewal should still hold after those dates.
Option 1: Renew and stay on-premises
Renewing is a legitimate choice. It fits when your VMware integrations run deep, when the negotiated renewal is acceptable, or when there is no realistic window to migrate before the renewal date.
Price it properly, including hardware refresh, data-centre and operating costs, rather than treating it as the safe default.
Option 2: Move VCF to Amazon EVS and keep the VMware operating model
Amazon EVS deploys and runs VMware Cloud Foundation directly on EC2 bare-metal instances inside your Amazon VPC. You keep vSphere, NSX and vSAN, your runbooks and your VMware skills, and you stop owning the hardware and the data-centre footprint. AWS documents that workloads can move without changing IP addresses.
You bring your own VCF subscription with licence portability, so the Broadcom relationship continues. EVS answers the data-centre question; the licence question stays with Broadcom.
Option 3: Rehost to native Amazon EC2 with AWS MGN
AWS Application Migration Service (MGN) converts source servers, including VMware virtual machines, into native EC2 instances. It replicates continuously at block level, so you can launch test instances before each cutover. The VCF subscription drops out of the target estate, and each workload gains a path to managed AWS services later.
The trade-off is skills: after cutover your team operates EC2 instances rather than virtual machines on vSphere.
Option 4: Refactor selected applications
Refactoring rebuilds an application on managed services such as containers or managed databases. It involves the most change per application, so it is usually applied selectively, to applications you already planned to modernise, rather than across a whole estate under renewal pressure.
Renew, Amazon EVS, rehost with MGN or refactor: side by side
This comparison is qualitative. Price each path with your own estate data and negotiated terms.
| Criterion | Renew Broadcom | Amazon EVS | Rehost to EC2 with MGN | Refactor |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Licence model | VCF subscription with Broadcom continues | Bring your own VCF subscription with licence portability; perpetual vSphere licences are not supported | No VCF licence for migrated workloads; EC2, operating system and application licensing apply | No VMware licence for rebuilt applications; managed-service pricing applies |
| Operating model change | None | Low: same vSphere, NSX and vSAN tools and runbooks, on AWS-hosted hosts | Medium: teams operate EC2 instances instead of VMs on vSphere | High: architecture, deployment and operations change per application |
| Hardware and data centre | You keep owning and refreshing them | Move to AWS | Move to AWS | Move to AWS |
| Time to exit (relative) | No exit | AWS positions EVS as its fastest path for VMware workloads; VMs move unchanged | Server by server in waves, with test launches before each cutover | Slowest per application, because each one is rebuilt |
| Key prerequisites | Acceptable renewal terms and a hardware plan | AWS Business, Enterprise On-Ramp or Enterprise Support plan; sized VCF keys; /22 VPC, Route Server, Transit Gateway with Direct Connect or VPN; DNS and NTP | Supported source operating systems, a replication network path and target AWS accounts | Application ownership, test coverage and a target AWS architecture |
| Best fit | Deep VMware integrations, an acceptable price or no migration window before renewal | A quick data-centre exit while keeping VMware skills and tools | Teams ready to run native AWS and leave the VMware layer | Applications already due for modernisation |
Is Amazon EVS available in India?
Yes. Amazon EVS is available in Asia Pacific (Mumbai, ap-south-1) and Asia Pacific (Hyderabad, ap-south-2). VMware workloads can move to AWS while staying in India-based Regions, and Hyderabad gives a second Indian Region for recovery planning. AWS Application Migration Service (MGN) is also available in both India Regions.
Region choice is one input to data-residency decisions; it does not settle them on its own.
What Amazon EVS needs before day one
Amazon EVS is not a simple sign-up. AWS documents a specific set of prerequisites:
- An AWS Business, Enterprise On-Ramp or Enterprise Support plan
- A VCF subscription with licence portability, with solution and vSAN keys sized for the four hosts created at setup
- A VPC with an RFC 1918 CIDR block of at least /22 (no IPv6) and Amazon VPC Route Server with at least two endpoints
- AWS Transit Gateway with AWS Direct Connect or Site-to-Site VPN for on-premises connectivity
- DNS forward and reverse records for every host and VCF appliance, plus DHCP options with two DNS servers and an NTP server
- Account quotas sized for the deployment; an EC2 Capacity Reservation for the bare-metal hosts is recommended
- VMware HCX for live migration, if you plan to use it; it is not installed by default
A public example: Shutterfly’s move from VMware to AWS
In an AWS case study, Shutterfly Business Solutions (SBS), the B2B printing division of Shutterfly, describes leaving an on-premises VMware vSphere environment that at peak ran over 2,000 virtual machines.
According to the case study, SBS used VMware Cloud on AWS as a bridge, completing that move in August 2022, then migrated to native AWS services. Before the second step it right-sized, consolidating from over 2,000 VMs to 1,200. It moved about 80% of workloads to Amazon ECS and 20% to Amazon EC2, and used lift-and-shift for workloads on operating systems nearing end of life. AWS reports that SBS completed the move to AWS services in March 2025, and Shutterfly’s engineers told AWS they had no high-severity incidents as a result of the migration.
The sequencing is the useful lesson for an EVS decision: land on a VMware-compatible platform first, then move workloads to native AWS. VMware Cloud on AWS and Amazon EVS are different services, so treat this as an illustration rather than a forecast for your estate. The example comes from AWS’s published case study, not from Upvantix project work.
How to decide before you sign
Treat the renewal date as the deadline for a decision, not for a finished migration. Five steps keep the comparison honest.
For the wider migration checklist covering discovery, foundations, wave planning, cutover and handover, see our AWS migration and modernization services.
- Inventory the estate and its dependencies
- Price renewal, Amazon EVS and an MGN rehost like-for-like, with negotiated terms on both sides
- Match each workload to renew, EVS, MGN or a later refactor
- Check Region, residency and recovery needs across Mumbai and Hyderabad
- Pilot, then migrate in waves with a rollback point at each stage
Where Upvantix fits
Upvantix is an AWS Select Tier Services Partner offering AWS consulting and managed services. If you are comparing renewal, Amazon EVS and an EC2 rehost with MGN, we can work through that comparison with you using your estate data and current AWS documentation.
Common questions about a VMware exit to AWS in India
Is Amazon EVS available in Mumbai or Hyderabad?
Yes. AWS lists Amazon EVS as available in Asia Pacific (Mumbai) and Asia Pacific (Hyderabad).
Do I still need a Broadcom licence if I move to Amazon EVS?
Yes. Amazon EVS uses a VCF subscription with licence portability that you bring to AWS. Perpetual vSphere licences are not supported.
What is the difference between Amazon EVS and rehosting with AWS MGN?
EVS runs your existing VMware Cloud Foundation stack on AWS, so the VMware operating model stays. MGN converts individual servers into native Amazon EC2 instances, so the VMware layer goes away on the target side.
When does vSphere 8 general support end?
Broadcom lists 11 October 2027 as the end of general support for vSphere 8, with technical guidance continuing to 11 October 2029.
Is renewing with Broadcom ever the right answer?
Yes. Renewing can be right when integrations run deep, the negotiated price is acceptable, or there is no realistic migration window before renewal. Compare it against the AWS paths using your own numbers.
What AWS partner status does Upvantix hold?
Upvantix is an AWS Select Tier Services Partner.