Azure VMware Solution vs Azure VMs

Your understanding of Azure VMware Solution is correct, it is a vSphere cluster running in Azure. Bare metal. Microsoft manages the platform, you, the customer, manages the workloads. There are benefits beyond just a managed VMware environment, like the integrations into Azure and ability to leverage azure services with your vSphere cluster.

If you'd like to see the session I did at a recent VMware Usercon check out this link. https://youtu.be/uUvHgpiOZbc