Exploring VMware on Azure: 3 Possible Solutions

Microsoft Azure is one of the most popular cloud solutions in the world, and for good reason. After all, the power and flexibility of the Azure platform is unmatched. One of the most powerful ways to utilise Microsoft Azure is by using it to power your virtual machines — taking advantage of the boundless potential of the cloud.

With this, another key cloud technology — VMware — has been at the forefront of virtual machine technology. However, Microsoft Azure supports VMware use, and doing so can be very beneficial if implemented correctly. There are a few different ways of going about this, though, all of which have their benefits and drawbacks.

In this article, we’re going to go over the three different ways you can implement VMware in Azure — Azure IaaS for VMware, Azure VMware Solution, and on-premises with Azure Arc. We’ll compare the three, to help you understand which is best for your business.

Overview of VMware on Azure

Integrating VMware and Azure is an example of a hybrid cloud solution — the aim is to integrate VMware vSphere environments with Microsoft Azure seamlessly. The aim is to enable organisations to extend their on-premises data centres into the cloud, giving access to boundless flexibility, scalability, and cost-effectiveness.

Utilising VMware and Azure together can have a lot of benefits, including —

• Hybrid Cloud Continuity: Easily maintain consistent operations across both on-premise and cloud environments, all with the same tools and processes.
• Scalability: The cloud brings new scalability to on-premise infrastructure, ensuring that you don’t need to make significant upfront investments.
• Disaster Recovery: Using both on-premises and cloud solutions gives you lots of potential for disaster recovery solutions.
• Cost Optimisation: Optimise costs with the pay-as-you-go Azure model, letting you take control of your VM expenditure.

For businesses looking to move away from VMware, it is also possible to use Azure natively, with a single cloud solution.

Azure IaaS

Azure IaaS lets organisations run workloads on Azure Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) resources to replace their existing VMware environment. This provides a scalable, flexible way to run your virtual machines natively on Azure, including hosting.

Key Features

• Flexibility: The flexibility that Azure IaaS offers is second to none. You can easily choose from a wide range of VM sizes, storage types, and networking capabilities to make sure that your Azure infrastructure meets your needs.
• Reduce Costs: Running your virtual machines natively on Azure means that you no longer need to pay for VMware licensing, and with Azure there are no set contract lengths, meaning you aren’t locked into a 3-year contract.
• Unmatched Cybersecurity: With an Azure IaaS solution, you have access to the wealth of cybersecurity solutions available in Azure. For example, Microsoft Defender for Cloud allows you to continuously manage your security posture, protects your VM workloads and gives you access to agentless and agent-based workload vulnerability scanning.

Benefits

• Flexibility and Scalability: Azure IaaS resources are flexible and varied and will meet your specific needs, with the ability to scale up and down resources as required.
• Simple Migration: Microsoft has made it as simple as possible to migrate VMware workloads to Azure, to ensure that your business has no downtime.
• Ongoing Optimisation: Azure is packed with security and cost-optimising features that will ensure you are making the most of your cloud investment, without compromising on security.

Azure VMware Solution

Azure VMware Solution (AVS) is a complex hybrid cloud offering that provides a fully managed, dedicated VMware private cloud environment within Azure.

Key Features

• Dedicated VMware Environment: AVS offers a private, dedicated VMware environment within Azure, providing full control over your VMware implementation as a whole.
• Consistent VMware Experience: Using AVS will give you consistent tools to use both with your cloud and on-premises system.
• Privacy: AVS offers a private cloud environment, meaning that you don’t need to share space on the public cloud. This is good for any business where data security and confidentiality are paramount.

Benefits

• Streamlined Experience: Azure VMware Solution gives you a streamlined and customisable experience, meaning that you can work more fluidly and efficiently in VMware.
• Consistent VMware Experience: Whereas other solutions like Azure IaaS are more for granular control over specific resources, AVS grants a simpler holistic experience.

On-premises VMware with Azure Arc

Azure Arc is a hybrid cloud management tool, rather than a cloud implementation. It lets you use Azure management capabilities in on-premises and edge environments and gives you a unified way to manage on-premises resources.

Key Features

• On-premises management: You can use Azure Arc to manage your on-premises system, with the ability to leverage key Azure features and integrations.
• Governance: Azure Arc enforces Azure governance policies and security best practices.
• Unified Management: With Azure Arc, you have access to a single pane of glass for managing both cloud and on-premises resources.

Benefits

• Ease of Management: The unified management capabilities make it easy to manage your cloud and on-premises resources, simplifying management all around.
• Hybrid Application Management: You can easily simplify application management and create and deploy hybrid applications that use both the cloud and on-premises environments.
• Enhanced Monitoring: Gain visibility of your whole cloud implementation, letting you enforce governance policies and enhance your security posture.

Comparison of the Three Solutions

All three of the above solutions are great for different uses, and which you should opt for ultimately depends on your organisation’s needs.

• Azure IaaS for VMware: This should be used by organisations that want full control over their infrastructure and to tailor it to their needs.
• Azure VMware Solution: This is great for organisations that desire a consistent VMware experience and want a dedicated, managed environment.
• Azure Arc: Azure Arc is for organisations that want to manage separate cloud and on-premises resources from one console, while also leveraging Azure services.

How We Can Help

The cloud is a vital technology for a modern business, but implementing and integrating it with on-premises parts of your business like VMware is a tricky process. These methods are the best ways of being able to combine the best of VMware with the best of Azure.

If you’re looking for help getting started with Azure, reach out to us now. Our experts are here to help and will ensure that you have everything you need to get started with your own cloud implementation.

Get in touch with us now and see how we can help.