To start using VMware Cloud Flex Storage, create a storage capacity term subscription.

Prerequisites

You can choose a term subscription for one year or three years, for which you can pay in full or in monthly installments.

For each datastore you create, there is a 25 TiB minimum to cover the cost of creating a datastore in a region. Because of this requirement, we recommend buying a minimum 25 TiB storage capacity subscription to avoid overages. (After the 25 TiB minimum, you can purchase subscription capacity in increments of 1 TiB.)

For example, you can activate your first region and buy a 100 TiB subscription applied at the subscription region. 25 TiB is deducted from the 100 TiB to cover the cost of the datastore in that region. Later you can activate three more regions or deploy three more datastores in the original region, which also deducts 25 TiB each from the subscription. So, if you do not have sufficient capacity in your subscription, in this scenario you are charged for overages.

Another example: If you have one datastore using 35 TiB and the other datastore using 2 TiB, you are charged for (25, 35) + max (25, 2) = 60 TiB.

For more current and detailed information about prices, see VMware Cloud Flex Storage pricing.
Note: 1 TiB = 1.10 TB

You must have funds associated with your VMware Cloud services account that you can use to pay for the subscription. Once you order a subscription, you cannot cancel, convert, or modify it.

Procedure

  1. Log in to VMware Cloud Services using your VMware account at https://console.cloud.vmware.com.
  2. Under Services > My Services, click the VMware Cloud Flex Storage tile.
  3. From the left navigation, select Subscriptions.
  4. On the subscriptions page, click the Create Subsctiption button.
  5. Click the Create Subscription button. (If you already have subscriptions, in the upper-right click the Create New Subscription button.)
  6. On the Purchase through page, choose VMware as the seller. Once selected, you cannot change the seller. Click Next.
  7. On the Region page, select a subscription region. A subscription region encompasses several AWS regions. When you select a subscription region, only regions with SDDCs deployed are shown. Click Next.
  8. On the Capacity and term page, select the terms of your subscription. You can choose from the following options:
    • Select Pay Upfront to pay for the entire term in a single payment upfront.
    • Select Pay Monthly to pay for the term in monthly installments. You are charged the monthly fee regardless of datastore usage.
    • Select Pay Monthly to pay for the term in monthly installments. You are charged the monthly fee regardless of datastore usage.
  9. Click Next.
  10. Confirm that you understand the terms of the subscription, then click the Place Order button.