I’m thrilled to be writing to you today from VMware Explore in San Francisco, where my team and I will be presenting and meeting with customers and partners in person! When we launched Azure VMware Solution two years ago amid a pandemic, IT agility became a top priority as organizations scrambled to enable remote work and ensure business resilience via cloud solutions. Fast forward to today, and most organizations recognize that by running workloads in the cloud, they can respond more rapidly, no matter what the challenge or opportunity.

“It’s much easier for us to take on smaller acquisitions and bring them onboard … by using Azure VMware Solution, we’re always ready and able to add a node and start folding in the new acquisition’s applications and data with the extra capacity.”—Dean Hughes, Infrastructure Manager, Carpetright

“Ordering and installing on-premises networking hosts can take six months. But using Azure VMware Solution, it’s a simple process to run up new hosts that we can have working in a few days.”—Harry Sturgess, Manager of Technology and Operations, Metro South Health

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. Azure VMware Solution offers symmetry with on-premises environments, which helps to accelerate datacenter migrations, so customers recognize the benefits of the cloud sooner. This symmetry also allows IT teams to leverage the same VMware skills, processes, and investments from their on-premises VMware environments.

“What a game-changer for us. As a VMware house, we saw how easy it would be to move applications from VMware to Azure VMware Solution because it’s bolted onto the back of Azure.”—Rob Wilde, Platforms Manager, Nottinghamshire County Council

Thanks to Microsoft’s unique Azure Hybrid Benefit and Extended Security Updates for Windows Server and SQL Server, Azure VMware Solution is one of the fastest and most cost-effective ways to seamlessly migrate and run VMware in the cloud.

Option coming for VMware Cloud Universal Program

Today we extended our partnership with VMware to add support for the VMware Cloud Universal program. This will allow customers to purchase Azure VMware Solution as part of VMware Cloud Universal program, a flexible purchasing and consumption program for executing hybrid and multi-cloud strategies. With VMware Cloud Universal, customers may purchase credits for VMware’s multi-cloud infrastructure and management and apply these credits to deployments of Azure VMware Solution. Learn more.

Check out what’s new in Azure VMware Solution

Today I am excited to share some of the recent updates we’ve made to Azure VMware Solution.

• 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. Check out the Azure products by region web page to find a region near you.

• 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. Learn more.
• 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. Learn more.
• 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. Learn more.
• 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. Learn more.
• 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. Learn more.
• VMware vSphere 7.0 is now available globally for all cloud deployments in Azure VMware Solution.

If you would like to stay up to date with the latest releases from Azure VMware Solution, please follow Azure updates.

Learn more

This week we are offering a special opportunity to take the Azure VMware Solution Cloud Skills Challenge. Compete in this free, self-paced, Microsoft learning path and advance your technical skills at the same time! Register for the Challenge.

As always, you can visit the Azure VMware Solution website or documentation for more information.

And if you are here at VMware Explore, stop by the Microsoft booth and say hello. We are excited to see you in person! Booth #1101.

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