During the recent VMware Explore 2022, VMware announced it would strengthen its collaboration with Microsoft regarding the Azure VMware Solution. In addition, the solution received several new updates, including extended availability.
The intensified collaboration means customers can now purchase Azure VMware Solution as part of VMware Cloud Universal, a flexible purchasing and consumption program for executing multi-cloud and digital transformation strategies.
Furthermore, Microsoft announced several significant updates to the Azure VMWare solution. It now offers, including extended availability:
- Expansion to 24 regions Azure regions.
- Public preview of Azure NetApp Files datastores for storage-intensive workloads running on Azure VMware Solution.
- Generally availability of public IP to NSX Edge capability in 17 Azure regions. There are now three primary patterns for creating inbound and outbound internet access to resources on Azure VMware Solution private cloud.
- Public preview of Enterprise VMware Cloud Director Services, allowing customers with Azure VMware Solution deployed under their Microsoft Enterprise agreement to purchase the VMware Cloud Director Service from VMware.
- General availability of Jetstream DR, providing customers with disaster recovery protection needed for business and mission-critical applications while leveraging cost-effective cloud storage such as Azure Blob Storage.
- General availability of VMware vRealize Log Insight Cloud, a service that provides centralized log management, deep operational visibility, intelligent analytics, and improved troubleshooting and security.
- Global availability of VMware vSphere 7.0 for all cloud deployments in Azure VMware Solution.
Jeff Woolsey, a principal program manager of Azure Stack at Microsoft, tweeted:
This solution is so powerful. You can deploy VMware VMs in Azure & on-premises & use the vSphere tools you know. You can deploy Azure Arc to your virtualized servers to provide consistent governance, security & lifecycle management. Arc even extends multi-cloud to AWS, Google, etc.
Regarding the availability of Azure VM Solution as part of VMware Cloud Universal, Zia Yusuf, senior vice president, strategic ecosystem and industry solutions, VMware, said in a press release:
The availability of Azure VMware Solution through VMware Cloud Universal makes it easier for customers to adopt Azure VMware Solution as part of a multi-cloud strategy. VMware Cloud Universal customers will gain greater flexibility to adopt Azure VMware Solution at their own pace to speed cloud migration, simplify ongoing operations, modernize applications faster and achieve better economics while benefitting from a single operating model across clouds.
Lastly, more details of the Azure VMware solution are available on the documentation landing page, and the pricing details of the solution are available on the pricing page.