In this blog I am going to show you the differend VMware solutions AWS, Google cloud and Azure have to offer.
All three providers have a fully managed solution. Which means that they have full administrative access to the environment. You as a customer have admin rights or a subset of access rights to deploy and administer the environment.
VMware on AWS is managed by VMware, the other two are managed by Azure and Google respectively. If you want to remember who manages the solution, simply look at the name of the offering. If it starts with VMware then VMware manages the solution. When the name starts with the cloud provider then the cloud provider manages the solution.
There is another VMWare public cloud offering that is new to the mix; Oracle VMware cloud. The main difference here is that Oracle provides bare metal machines with VMware SDDC deployed. The user has full access and control and Oracle has no further access to the environment. For this blog I will only focus on the “Big Three” but you can find more info on Oracle’s offer here.
So now that I have explained the main identifiers and offerings let’s dive into the different offerings shall we?
AWS, Google Cloud and Azure; an overview
| Provider information URL | https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/azure-vmware | https://cloud.google.com/vmware-engine | https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/azure-vmware |
| Support provided by | VMware | Microsoft | |
| Documentation | https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-Cloud-on-AWS/index.html | https://cloud.google.com/vmware-engine/docs/ | https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-vmware/ |
| Supported regions (or soon coming) | Asia Pacific (Mumbai) Asia Pacific (Seoul) Asia Pacific (Singapore) Asia Pacific (Sydney) Asia Pacific (Tokyo) Canada (Central) Europe (Frankfurt) Europe (Ireland) Europe (London) Europe (Paris) Europe (Stockholm) South America (São Paulo) US East (N. Virginia) US East (Ohio) US West (N. California) US West (Oregon) | Canada (Montreal) Europe (Amsterdam) Asia Pacific (Singapore) South America (Sao Paulo) US East4 (Northern Virginia) US West2 (South California) Europe (Frankfurt) Europe (London) Asia Pacific (Tokyo) Asia Pacific (Sydney) | US East US West US South Central Europe West Australia East UK South |
| SDDC solutions provided | vSphere, VSAN and NSX-T | vSphere, VSAN and NSX-T | vSphere, VSAN and NSX-T |
| Minimum Cluster size | 2 Hosts with SLA 1 Hosts without SLA | 3 Hosts | 3 Hosts |
| Cluster size | max 16 Hosts | max 16 Hosts | max 16 Hosts |
| SDDC Network options | AWS Direct Connect NXS L2VPN IPSEC VPN VMware HCX | Google Cloud interconnect Google Cloud VPN NSX L2VPN IPSEC VPN VMware HCX | Azure Express route VPN Gateway |
| API Access | Yes | No (not yet) | Yes |
| Compute options | I3.metal I3en.metal | ve1-standard-72 | CS28 CS36 CS36m |
| Storage options | NVME cache NVME capacity tier | NVME cache NVME capacity tier | All Flash cache Raw for capacity tier |
| VMware cloud services supported | Hybrid Linked-Mode vRealize Automation Cloud vRealize Log Insight Cloud vRealize Operations Cloud VMware Cloud Site Recovery Site recovery manager HCX | vRealize Automation Cloud vRealize Log Insight Cloud vRealize Operations Cloud VMware Cloud Site Recovery Site recovery manager HCX | HCX VMware Cloud Site Recovery Site recovery manager vRealize Operations Cloud |
Conclusion and final thoughts
Well there you have it, some of the main differences between the offerings and as you can see the AWS solutions seems to offer the most capabilities.
One important thing to keep in mind though is that the cloud providers have access to the environment and the data. This can cause compliance issues so if this is a concern for you maybe looking at Oracle’s solution or hosting on prem is a better choice.
If you are interested in learning more about vSphere please have a look at our other blogs here
