Amazon Web Services (AWS) augmented its Elastic VMware Service (EVS) by adding support for NSX Federation to help users bridge distributed environments.

NSX was unveiled by VMware way back at VMworld Europe 2019 to help customers manage multisite networking topologies from a single control plane. EVS customers can now maintain their VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) license and securely treat cloud resources inside their private cloud as an extension of their local data center.

An AWS blog stated that where VCF Operations HCX (HCX) is VMware’s solution for migrations and network extension during migrations, NSX Federation focuses more on providing enterprises with the means to stretch larger-scale layer two or data-link layer networks across physical and geographic boundaries.

The hyperscaler touted the benefits of the addition across specific use cases, citing NSX Federation as a means to implement a unified distributed firewall with rules enforced consistently across locations or even adding additional facilities in multisite deployments without building point-to-point links. By treating all locations as members of a single fabric, the hyperscaler touts the offering as a sovereignty win as it provides users the means to shore up compliance between on-premises and cloud, even for those operating across multiple AWS regions or availability zones.

One concrete EVS user benefit detailed was solving complex large-scale migrations. The hyperscaler claimed some prospective EVS users were unable to make the move across as their requirements for multisite disaster recovery and IP-preserving connectivity across network segments were “impractical at scale,” adding: “NSX Federation directly unblocks these organizations, enabling production deployments to proceed.”

“You might be planning a large-scale migration, building a multisite disaster recovery architecture, or connecting workloads across multiple AWS locations and on-premises data centers. Whatever the scenario, the combination of HCX and NSX Federation on Amazon EVS provides the networking foundation to do it right,” the blog post reads.

Support for NSX Federation is the latest addition to Amazon’s EVS service as it looks to entice those who want to keep their VCF license but with the added bonus of accessing other applications in AWS.

EVS debuted last August, with AWS also introducing its Transform full agentic migration tool to automate processes like network conversion and server migrations.