Azure VMware Solution

What is Azure VMware solution?

Azure VMware solution is a service offering from Azure that runs VMware infrastructure in Azure Public cloud bare-metal infrastructure. This service is offered in partnership between VMware and Microsoft. The service is validated, supported, and certified by both partners. This solution delivers a native VMware workload in Azure private cloud. While a customer has more investment in a private cloud with VMware technologies and looking forward to having the same ability to use in Azure Public cloud.

In other words, you will be able to run VMware ESxi servers hosted in Azure and integrate with all Azure services natively. This solution is equivalent to VMware on Cloud in the AWS public cloud. This solution is different from Azure VMware solution by CloudSimple. CloudSimple solution is provided by cloudsimple with Azure integration and required cloudsimple portal for accessing.

Solution Overview

Azure VMware solution comprises of following components:

• VMware ESXi hosts – This is hypervisor servers used to host virtual machines workloads in this solution. It’s installed on Azure bare metal servers.
• vSphere Network – vSphere networking components. This component supports NSX and older VMware Software- defined network.
• VMware vCenter – Provides vCenter with HTML5 based web client and it’s out of box functionality.
• VMware vSAN – The solution utilizes local flash storage for primary access from Azure bare metal servers. De-dupicaiton and comporession are enabled on vSAN datatore by default. To maintain
• Azure Bare metal servers- These are used for hosting ESXi servers for this solution.
• Azure Management portal – Single pane of glass to manage vSphere based and Azure native VMs.
• Integration with Azure native services – Seamlessly integrate to Azure services and leverage with Azure VMware solutions.
• Third-Party partner service – We can leverage existing third-party components used with VMware. Ex: Veeam, etc.

The solution currently supports two types of nodes:

Instance Size	Core	Memory	Flash Storage
C28	28	256 GB	5.62 TB
C36	36	512 GB	11.25 TB

Network connectivity:

The solution supports three types of connectivity with on-premise to Azure:

• Express route: This is a highly recommended approach for migration with high traffic flow from on-premise to Azure.
• Site to Site VPN
• Point to Site VPN

Azure VMware solution (AVS) requires a network with /22 subnet for AVS network. AVS requires a unique virtual network with no overlapping of ip address with on premise or existing virtual network.  AVS includes a  dedicated express route circuit for connectivity to other Vnets and on-premise, in addition to customer existing Express route circuit. The ER that comes with AVS for the internal connection is included in the AVS price.  To connect AVS to any existing Azure VNets via a Virtual Network Gateway.

The AVS network will be divided into small subnets as:

• VM workload subnet
• Vmotion subnet
• Private cloud subnet
• ER subnet for peering primary and secondary.

The solution can leverage and integrate with the following Azure services:

• Azure AD: Connect Azure Active directory as VMware vCenter SSO identity source.
• Azure Monitor: This service can be used to monitor the workloads and overall solution with health and alerts.
• Azure Backup: Feature can be leverage for backed-up workloads in Azure VMware solution.
• Other Services: Azure Database, Azure IoT, and AI Services.

Key points:

1. No additional cost for VMs hosted in this solution, other than price for host or nodes provisioned.
2. 1 year or 3 year reserved instance discounts for Azure VMware nodes.
3. Host management, updates, and firmware management will be handled by Microsoft. Microsoft is responsible for testing and patching hosts.
4. Elevated root (admin) access for host OS level installation and external integration for 3^rd party software’s.
5. VMotion from on-premise VMWare to Azure VMware solution and its bi-directional, with network connectivity enabled. Please not egress charge will applied here.
6. Azure VMware solutions include the license for VMware vSphere Ent, vSAN Adv, NSX-T Adv, and HCX.
7. Hardware provisioned automatically when buying nodes and VMware ESXi is deployed. The solution does not add nodes automatically based on utilization. Additional nodes need to be added manually.
8. VMware Horizon can be deployed on these nodes and the management of Horizon is the user responsible.
9. Veeam, Zerto, and other backup products can be used to backup virtual machines in this solution.
10. A minimum of three nodes is required and a maximum of 16 nodes per cluster. There is a Max 64 nodes to an Azure Private cloud instance.
11. RDM disks are not supported in this solution.
12. Microsoft is responsible for Nodes level High availability and the customer is responsible for Virtual machine level HA. VM’s will vmotion to another node for any update or maintenance activity in ESXi nodes.
13. We can use private link for Azure services within Azure VMware solution.

Use Cases for this solution

1. Hardware Refresh: This solution can be used in place of hardware refresh on your private datacentre or co-location contract ended or re-location of co-location datacentre.
2. A fast approach migration to Azure: If a customer looks for the fastest approach of migration to azure cloud from on-premise and no re-architecture of workloads and applications.
3. Disaster Recovery Plan: When the customer has to provide a Disaster Recovery site for a month, with no upfront and co-location cost.

Below is the high level responsibility matrix on Azure VMware solution:

Pricing, Support & availability:

The solution is currently in preview and available in Azure US East and Azure West Europe. Australia East and UK South are expected by end of this year for this solution. Customers are charged for a minimum of one month each time they provides a service or node. Even if we de-provision a node after a day, Azure will charge for one month. Azure supports reserved instances for this solution for one or three years.

This pricing includes extended security updates for Windows Server 2008/R2 and SQL Server 200/R2 workloads with no additional cost.

Microsoft support is the single point of contact for any issue related to this solution. When there is a problem with the workloads in this solution Microsoft is the first point of contact. Based on the issue Microsoft will decide if it will be addressed by VMware and/or Azure. Microsoft continues to be a central point of contact.