Microsoft is currently participating in VMware Explore, the official VMware conference that is ongoing in San Francisco until Sept. 02. At the event, Microsoft is meeting with customers and partners, while also introducing a major update to Azure VMware Solution.
Microsoft says its ongoing partnership with VMware has been strengthened, bringing support for VMware Cloud Universal. This means users on Azure VMware Solution are now part of the program. The Cloud Universal program delivers a flexible platform for purchasing and using hybrid and multi-cloud methods.
Elsewhere, Azure VMware Solution has the following major changes, including extended availability:
- “Global expansion to 24 regions: Since the launch of Azure VMware Solution two years ago, we've been working to support customers globally with geographic expansion to 24 Azure regions, more than any other cloud provider.
- Azure NetApp Files datastores for Azure VMware Solution is now in public preview. For your storage-intensive workloads running on Azure VMware Solution, the integration with Azure NetApp Files helps to easily scale storage capacity beyond the limits of the local instance storage provided by vSAN and lower your overall total cost of ownership for storage-intensive workloads.
- Public IP to NSX Edge capability for Azure VMware Solution is now generally available in 17 Azure regions. Most customer applications running on Azure VMware Solution require internet access requiring both outbound and inbound internet connectivity. With this new capability, there are now three primary patterns for creating inbound and outbound internet access to resources on your Azure VMware Solution private cloud.
- Enterprise VMware Cloud Director Services for Azure VMware Solution is now in Public Preview. Customers who have Azure VMware Solution deployed under their Microsoft Enterprise agreement can purchase the VMware Cloud Director Service from VMware and connect their Azure VMware Solution private cloud to create and manage private virtual datacenters and leverage vCloud availability for migrating on-premises VMware workloads to Azure VMware Solution private clouds.
- Jetstream DR for Azure VMware Solution is now generally available, providing customers with disaster recovery protection needed for business and mission-critical applications while leveraging cost-effective cloud storage such as Azure Blob Storage. JetStream DR can also replicate and automate recovery to Azure NetApp Files datastores.
- VMware vRealize Log Insight Cloud for Azure VMware Solution is now generally available. This service provides centralized log management, deep operational visibility, intelligent analytics, and improved troubleshooting and security. This boosts IT organizations' operational efficiency, mitigates costs arising from unplanned downtime, and reduces organizational risk by providing visibility into security-related events.
- VMware vSphere 7.0 is now available globally for all cloud deployments in Azure VMware Solution.”
Ongoing Success
If you're unfamiliar with Azure VMware Solution, it helps organizations run their workloads in the cloud. It migrates on-premises workloads into the cloud efficiently.
Some of the most popular VMware tools are integrated into the experience, including HCX, vSphere, vSAN, and NSX-T. Microsoft has also included the Azure Hybrid Benefit extension, which gives organizations more compatibility with SQL Server and Windows Server on-premises.
The service was announced in 2020 in the middle of the pandemic, while the second generation launched that same year.
In a blog post to accompany its presence at VMware Explore, Microsoft's Ram Gowrishankar Partner Director—Product Management, says the flexibility of Azure VMware Solution has been valuable to customers.
“Because every customer starts their cloud journey at a different place, we help enable customers to migrate to the cloud on their terms and maintain support for the business platforms and investments they have today. Azure VMware Solution is an easy way to extend and migrate existing VMware Private Clouds to run them natively on Azure.”
Tip of the day: File History is a Windows back up feature that saves each version of files in the Documents, Pictures, Videos, Desktop, and Offline OneDrive folders. Though its name implies a primary focus on version control, you can actually use it as a fully-fledged backup tool for your important documents.
