Introduction
Hello to all readers of the blog about Architecture and Training.
Today we will talk about a joint technological solution of two irreconcilable, at first glance competitors – Microsoft and VMware. Azure VMware Solution will allow you to combine your usual VMware tools and technologies and the breadth and power of Microsoft Azure cloud services.
Let’s take a look at this hybrid solution from VMware and Microsoft, and try to take a deeper look at how these technologies work.
What is Azure VMware Solution?
So what is Azure VMware Solution?
Azure VMware Solution gives us the ability to use the private cloud model in Azure data centers. With the help of the self-service portal and together with Azure Resource Manager, we are deploying a cluster of three hardware hyper-converged servers, to which you can later add up to 16 more nodes. This environment will be managed through the usual management tool – VMware vCenter Server, and in the case of a virtual network using NSX Manager. Also included in this decision are such mandatory components of the Software Defined Data Center as vSAN and NSX-T.
The goal of this approach is to easily transfer workloads from your on-premises infrastructure, and easily integrate with popular Azure services such as Azure Web Applications or Azure SQL Databases.
It should also be noted that the list of operating systems that can be deployed in the VMware environment is much larger than in Microsoft Hyper-V, on which the Azure virtualization stack is built.
Cluster and hosts
As mentioned above, the hosts that make up the cluster are hyper-converged, bare metal. These are two-processor Intel Xeon Gold 6140 platforms with a clock speed of 2.3 GHz. The amount of RAM reaches 0.5 TB. In addition, hosts have two groups of disks to build vSAN – 15 TB SSD for data and 3 TB NVME for cache.
Networking
Because Azure VMware Solution is a private cloud environment, it must be accessible from local or Azure resources. This can be achieved through services such as Azure ExpressRoute, VPN connection, or Azure Virtual WAN.
When a private cloud is deployed, private networks for management, provisioning, and vMotion get created.
Access control and security
Azure VMware Solution Private Clouds use vSphere-based access control to increase security and integrate vSphere SSO LDAP with Azure Active Directory.
VSAN data encryption is enabled by default and is used to secure the vSAN data.
Monitoring
After deploying Azure VMware Solution, as with other Azure services, they are affected by Azure Monitor. With the help of which you can have an understanding of the state of health of your services, collect and analyze metrics and logs. For Linux and Windows virtual machines, you can install a special Monitoring agent and use standard or customized dashboards to control the required parameters.
The next steps
Let me remind you that we recently reviewed this free resource from VMware in the series of articles “VMware Practice. Season 2021-2022”.
Thus, the next step of practical acquaintance with Azure VMware Solution technology is the service of practical laboratories – VMware Hands-on Labs.
But, I will tell about it in the following article.
See you on the air a few days,
Sincerely, AIRRA
