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Microsoft has offered a sneak peak of its newest Azure VMware Solution ahead of its general launch later this year.
The updated version will offer the full VMware Cloud Foundation environment on Azure in what Microsoft has called "an amazing milestone” for the duo's ongoing partnership.
Announced in a blog post by Takeshi Numoto, corporate vice president at Microsoft, the solution is a first-party service from Microsoft that can integrate with Azure management, security and services.
“As we look to meet customers where they are today, we are deeply investing in support for hybrid management scenarios, and automation that can streamline the journey,” he wrote.
The solution utilises existing VMware technology, including VMware vSphere, HCX, NSX-T and vSAN, with the optional add-on of VMware HCX Enterprise which allows bulk live migrations and older on-premises versions of vSphere to move onto newer iterations.
“The new Azure VMware solution provides our mutual customers a consistent operating model that can increase business agility and resiliency, reduces costs, and support all types of applications,” said Sanjay Poonen, chief operating officer at VMware.
The solution is also compatible with Azure Hybrid Benefit Pricing for Microsoft workloads for Windows Server and SQL Server when migrating or extending to Azure. Additionally, solution users are also eligible for three years of extended security updates on the 2008 versions of Windows Server and SQL Server.
The preview of the solution is available for the US East and West Europe Azure regions, while Australia and New Zealand partners will gain access in the second half of 2020.
When the solution does enter general availability, reserved instances will also be made available for users, with one and three-year options on dedicated hosts.
More details about the solutions' hybrid capabilities are set to be announced by Microsoft at a later unspecified date.
