Earlier this year, Microsoft announced Azure VMware Solutions in collaboration with Dell. The new services were aimed toward providing the availability to run native VMware-based workloads on Azure. As such, customers have been able to integrate their VMware environment with the cloud platform, taking advantage of modern Azure services while simultaneously utilizing the VMware tools they are familiar with.
Today, Microsoft revealed innovative ways in which its customers are using these solutions, and also announced expanded support and capabilities for VMware Solutions that would arrive by the end of the year.
As far as partners adopting the solutions are concerned, the tech giant has highlighted Lucky Brand as one of the retailers that is now transitioning some of its VMware workloads to Azure. Furthermore, the firm RiverMeadow is working to accelerate and expand the migration process to even "the most complex workloads". Meanwhile, software company Zerto integrated the aforementioned solutions with its IT Resilience Platform, which has helped offer a host of new capabilities, stated by Peter Kerr, Vice President of Global Alliances, Zerto, in the following manner:
"Azure VMware Solution by CloudSimple, brings the familiarity and simplicity of VMware into Azure public cloud. Every customer and IT pro using VMware will be instantly productive with minimal or no Azure competency. With Zerto, VMware customers gain immediate access to simple point and click disaster recovery and migration capabilities between Azure VMware Solutions, the rest of Azure, and on-premises VMware private clouds. Enabled by Zerto, one of Microsoft"s top ISVs and an award-winning industry leader in VMware-based disaster recovery and cloud migration, delivers native support for Azure VMware Solutions. "
And finally, Veeam"s Backup & Replication software can be utilized by organizations to migrate, and more importantly, protect the workloads they transfer to Azure. Customers of these organizations can then also adhere to backup demands using the same services from Veeam that they are used to deploying.
Azure VMware services will be expanded to eight regions across the U.S., Western Europe, and Asia Pacific by the end of the year. New capabilities, such as Azure NetApp Files as a storage option, will also be provided in around the same time frame. In other Azure news, Microsoft recently detailed Project Tardigrade, an initiative that serves mitigation strategies as protection for Azure VMs in the case of unanticipated platform failures.
For those who are currently attending or plan to attend VMworld 2019 in the Moscone Center, San Francisco, U.S., Azure VMware Solutions can be seen in action or understood more comprehensively through mini-presentations at Microsoft"s booth. The event will continue till August 29.