Cloud Director Service Expanding Multi-Cloud Services on Azure VMware Solution

This week we are pleased to announce VMware Cloud Director service (CDs) support for managing Enterprise Multi-Tenancy SDDC endpoints on Azure VMware Solution (AVS) as an Initial Availability. Azure VMware Solution is a Microsoft service, sold and supported by Microsoft, verified by VMware, that runs on Azure hardware in Azure data centers, while Cloud Director service is sold and offered as a SaaS service operated by VMware, to VMware Cloud Providers and Enterprise customers.

What does this mean to Partners and Enterprise customers?

Now you can deliver a multi-cloud control plane for infrastructure and applications on Azure VMware Solution and connect on-premises SDDC (vCenter and NSX) instances that are greenfield or existing on-premises VMware Cloud Director instances. An Enterprise customer can abstract resources from the SDDC and create multi-tenancy within the organization, creating a public cloud consumption experience for their lines of business.

We already support Partners and Enterprise customers by delivering a multi-cloud control plane for infrastructure and applications (multi-tenancy) to Google Cloud VMware Engine and VMware Cloud on AWS. Now we are extending our services for Enterprise customers to deliver SDDC endpoints in Azure VMware Solution using multi-tenancy within their organization, with each internal tenant having their own Organization Virtual Data Center (OVDC).

Communications to Azure VMware Solution endpoints from the Cloud Director service are supported by an SSL reverse proxy, the same mechanism that connects the VMware Cloud Director service to Google Cloud VMware Engine and on-premises SDDC endpoints.

VMware Cloud Director service provides a consistent user experience over multiple cloud architectures and genuinely delivers on the hybrid cloud promise. Providers that have on-premises VMware SDDC deployments can associate them with the VMware Cloud Director service. This means that customers have a single access point to deploy and deliver all their cloud infrastructure regardless of the endpoint.

This offering will be supported in all the Azure regions Azure VMware Solution is available.

Note: Before making any design considerations, please ensure that the region you wish to connect to Cloud Director service is within the 150 milliseconds round trip time latency rule for Cloud Director service.

Use Cases

Use case: Enterprises with self-service capabilities that want multi-tenancy

In this use case, the Enterprise customer purchases the Azure VMware Solution service offered by Microsoft, which provides a private cloud that contains VMware vSphere clusters built from dedicated bare-metal Azure infrastructure. Additionally, the Enterprise customer purchases the Cloud Director service offering from VMware. Thereafter, the Enterprise customer in this case can onboard their internal tenants separated using multi-tenancy.

For example:

An Enterprise customer, Acme Corp, that wants to own all the SDDC endpoint resources without sharing them with any other Enterprise customer, has purchased Azure VMware Solution and onboarded their different internal tenants. Each tenant will have access to the Cloud Director service to provide them with self-service capabilities. Thereafter Acme Corp can multi-tenant and manage the resources within the organization into multiple departments. For example, they can have one tenant within their organization for all the production applications and can have another tenant within the same organization for all the staging applications.

Use case: Cloud Director service for Managed Service Providers with Enterprise customers

In this use case, the Enterprise customer purchases the Azure VMware Solution service offered by Microsoft, which provides private clouds that contain VMware vSphere clusters built from dedicated bare-metal Azure infrastructure. The Managed Service Provider (MSP) will buy the Cloud Director service offering available from VMware. Thereafter, the MSP in this case can onboard the Enterprise customer and enable multi-tenancy like the 1st use case.

For example:

An Enterprise customer, Acme Corp, that wants to own all the SDDC endpoint resources without sharing them with any other Enterprise customer, has purchased Azure VMware Solution. A Managed Service Provider would onboard Acme Corp onto Cloud Director service, thereafter Acme Corp and the MSP can multi-tenant and manage the resources within their organization into multiple departments. For example, they can have one tenant within their organization for all the production applications owned by the IT department and can have another tenant within the same organization for all the applications owned by the DevOps department.

Note: Currently, the MSP is not able to buy Azure VMware Solution and resell it to their customers.

Migrating workloads to Cloud Director service on Azure VMware Solution:

VMware Cloud Director Availability enables VMware Cloud Director workload migration into Cloud Director service on Azure VMware Solution. Customers can drive self-serve one-way warm migration from the on-premises Cloud Director Availability vSphere plugin, or they can run the Cloud Director Availability plugin from the provider-managed Cloud Director instance and move workloads into Azure VMware Solution.