Microsoft is headed to VMware Explore 2023 in Las Vegas
VMware Explore is back in Las Vegas for 2023! If you want to know about Azure, the work we are doing with VMware, or just have a great conversation, don’t be shy and reach out to say hello. We'd love to talk to you so stop by our booth! We may even have some cool stickers too. This year we will have a bunch of sessions with Microsoft employees on stage, so if you're building out your schedule check them out: Microsoft Keynote: Transform your VMware Workloads with Microsoft Azure Speakers: Brett Tanzer, VP of Product Management, Microsoft Jeff Woolsey, Principal PM Manager, Microsoft Date/Time: Wednesday, August 23 @ 9:00 AM – 9:45 AM PDT Brett and Jeff will share how customers can transform their on-prem VMware environments using Microsoft Azure. Keynote attendees will learn how to: Learn about everything that’s new in Windows Server 2022 and address end of support for Windows Server 2012 Use familiar VMware skills to migrate or extend your VMware environment to the cloud, including hybrid cloud options with Azure VMware Solution and Azure Arc Modernize hybrid work with Azure Virtual Desktop and Horizon Cloud Learn how Azure VMware Solution could be the ideal landing spot for those looking to migrate their SQL Server workloads to Azure, but still want to use Unlimited Virtualization In addition, here are some other Microsoft Azure-related sessions that we highly recommend for learning more about Azure + VMware: Day, Time, Topic Session Title Monday, August 21 1:30-3:00 PM Azure VMware Solution Azure VMware Solution: New Guidance for Networking and Security CEIT3041LVS Monday, August 21 4:30-4:50 PM Azure VMware Solution Integrate Azure VMware Solution with Azure Native Services, Workbooks CODE1933LV - VMware {code} Theater Tuesday, August 22 10:30-11:15 AM Azure Virtual Desktop & Windows 365 Horizon DaaS and Microsoft Virtualization Solutions: The Path to the Cloud EUSB2734LV Tuesday, August 22 10:30-11:15 AM Azure VMware Solution Modernize Hybrid Multi-Cloud Environments - NetApp Customer Case Studies CEIB2924LVS Tuesday, Aug 22 2:00-2:30 PM Azure VMware Solution Ask me anything about Azure VMware Solution CEIM3039LVS Wednesday, Aug 23 9:00-9:45 AM Microsoft Azure Microsoft Executive Keynote: Transform your VMware workloads with Azure CEIB3042LVS Wednesday, August 23 10:15-11:00 AM Azure VMware Solution Azure VMware Solution Lessons Learned: Designing, Migrating, and Operating EIB3043LVS Wednesday, August 23 10:15-10:30 AM Azure VMware Solution Embracing Hybrid Cloud: Azure VMware Solution for Innovation and Growth VMTN2829LV - VMTN TechTalk Wednesday, Aug 23 12:00-12:45 PM Windows Server & Azure Arc Pave the way to innovation with Azure, Azure Arc, Windows & SQL Server! EIB3044LVS Wednesday, August 23 2:00-2:20 PM Azure VMware Solution Availability and Resilience of Azure VMware Solution CEIB2540LV Wednesday, Aug 23 12:45-1:30 PM Azure Arc Bring Azure to your VMware vSphere environment on premises and in the cloud CEIB3045LVS Wednesday, Aug 23 12:45-1:30 PM Azure VMware Solution Speed Your Azure Migration with the Latest Azure VMware Solution Features CEIB2549LV Wednesday, August 23 1:15-2:00 PM Azure VMware Solution Migrate and Modernize with Cloud Solutions from Azure VMware Solution CEIB3038LVS Wednesday, August 23 1:15-2:00 PM Azure VMware Solution Accelerate Your Public Cloud Strategy with VMware Cloud CEIB2557LV Wednesday, August 23 2:00-2:45 PM Azure Virtual Desktop & Windows 365 Extending Windows in the Cloud with VMware Horizon EUSB3046LVS Wednesday, August 23 2:00-2:20 PM Azure VMware Solution Learn How to Leverage Automation and Azure VMware Solution CODE1932LV - VMware {code} Theater Wednesday, Aug 23 2:00-2:30 PM Azure VMware Solution Ask me anything about Azure VMware Solution CEIM3040LVS Thursday, August 24 12:30-1:15 PM Azure VMware Solution State of Alaska: Rapid Cloud Migration from the Last Frontier CEIB2447LV Thursday, August 24 12:30-1:15 PM Azure VMware Solution The Enterprise Playbook for Operational Readiness for Azure VMware Solution CEIB1433LVBuild business case with Azure Migrate - Do More with Less (DMWL)
Justifying the move to cloud is a crucial decision for a business and it could be difficult to know where to start. To make an informed decision to move to cloud, customers are looking into all available migration strategies and associated costs. They are also looking for ways to build and validate such proposals to be able to decide quickly. With the current economic situation, it is becoming much more important to address cashflow challenges, add capacity and prevent security attacks while ensuring business continuity. Microsoft is committed to helping you navigate this journey with confidence and eliminate the guess work involved in the cost planning process with Azure Migrate’s new data driven business case capability. With this feature, you can conduct financial analysis with just a few clicks and create customized proposals, which can then be shared with decision makers for quick decisions. Azure Migrate Azure Migrate is Microsoft’s unified platform for migrating to and modernizing in Azure. It provides discovery, assessment, planning, migration, and modernization capabilities for various workloads on your premises. Azure Migrate allows you to run and manage your migration and modernization projects from a unified, secure portal. About Business Case Capability The Azure Migrate business case in preview helps you to understand the return on investment for migrating your servers, SQL Server deployments and ASP.NET web apps running in your datacenter to Azure. Till April 2023, this feature was available only for servers and workloads running in your VMware environment. To continuously keep supporting our customers accelerate their decision-making process to Azure, we have added some of the enhancements this month: You will also be able to build business cases on servers and workloads discovered from your Microsoft Hyper-V and Physical/ Bare-metal environments as well as IaaS services of other public clouds. If you are looking for a quick business case, without the need to deploy an appliance to collect your server inventory, you can now also use .csv-based import and build a quick business case. Learn more You can build business cases for SQL Server Always On Failover Cluster Instances and Always On Availability Groups. Learn more The business case can be created with just a few clicks and can help you understand how Azure can bring the most value to your business. It highlights: On-premises vs Azure total cost of ownership and year on year cashflow analysis. Resource utilization-based insights to identify servers and workloads that are ideal for cloud and right-sized recommendations in Azure. Azure Hybrid Benefits savings by bringing your existing Windows and SQL Server licenses to Azure Quick wins for migration and modernization including end of support Windows OS and SQL versions. Long term cost savings by moving from a capital expenditure model to an Operating expenditure model, by paying for only what you use. How to get started? Please refer to the steps below: If you have an existing Azure Migrate project: 1. The Business Case feature is already enabled on your existing Azure Migrate projects once the discovery from Azure Migrate appliance has been completed. If you already have a business case with VMware servers and workloads scoped in, you can recalculate the business case to scope in servers and workloads from Hyper-V or Physical environments. To create a new business case, simply click on ‘Build business case’ to get started: 2. Build a business case using minimal inputs 3. Review the Business Case reports including the Overview, on-premises vs Azure, Azure IaaS and Azure PaaS reports. You can also create different what-if scenarios by editing the assumptions that went into the calculations. 4. Get buy-ins from stakeholders and start your migration and modernization journey with confidence. If you are new to Azure Migrate: You will first need to set up an Azure Migrate project. Once you have created a project, you can choose to use one of the two discovery sources: 1. To use more accurate data insights collected via Azure Migrate appliance, you need to deploy and configure the Azure Migrate appliance. This appliance enables you to perform discovery from your datacenter. 2. To build a quick business case using existing server inventory available, you can import the server details via a .csv file Click here to learn more to understand the two discovery sources. After the discovery, you can build and review the business case reports. Create an Azure Migrate project from the Azure Portal, and download the Azure Migrate appliance or download the Azure Migrate template to import. Customers who already have an active Azure Migrate project can start using the feature directly. Based on your use case and chosen discovery source: Deploy a new Azure Migrate appliance for discovery . To enable you to discover your datacenter easily, the appliance lets you enter multiple credentials – Windows authentication (both Domain and non-Domain) and SQL Server authentication. The Azure Migrate appliance will automatically map each server to the appropriate credential when multiple credentials are specified. These credentials are encrypted and stored on the deployed appliance locally and are never sent to Microsoft. For import via .csv, you need to populate the template with the server inventory and import the .csv View the summary of the discovered IT estate from your Azure Migrate project and click on ‘Build business case’. You can view details of the discovered servers such as their configurations, software inventory (installed apps), dependencies, count of SQL instances and ASP.NET web apps etc. Click on 'Build business case' 5. Build a business case using minimal inputs 6. Review the Business Case reports including the Overview, on-premises vs Azure, Azure IaaS and Azure PaaS reports. You can also create different what-if scenarios by editing the assumptions that went into the calculations. 7. Get buy ins from stakeholders and start your migration and modernization journey with confidence. Learn more Check out our demo to see the preview in action. Check out this documentation for more details. Learn more about Azure Migrate. Get migration assistance from the Azure migration and modernization program (AMMP). AMMP is now a comprehensive program for all migration and modernization needs of our customers. Join AMMP today.Announcing more Azure VMware Solution enhancements
Announcing more Azure VMware Solution enhancements Greetings from Barcelona, where the Microsoft team is thrilled to be part of VMware Explore 2023. My team and I will be presenting and are eager to meet with customers and partners in person! Having been at Microsoft for over two decades, I have recently taken the helm of the Azure VMware Solution team and I am excited to hear about your thoughts and experiences using our product. Here is some of what I have already heard from customers about how Azure VMware Solution is helping their organizations: “As a public institution, we were very sensitive to the security implemented by Azure VMware Solution in terms of data protection. Our data is hosted in the European Union. On one hand, there is protection for the container that hosts our data, on the other hand, data transmission between SOLIDEO and the Microsoft servers. There's really a portability between the VMware-based SOLIDEO virtual machines, and the Azure cloud. It's a perfect match.” —Dominique Renard, Director of Information Systems Security, SOLIDEO “As a large, mature organization, we couldn’t undertake a greenfield implementation, but we were able to quickly migrate and stand up our environment in the cloud with Azure VMware Solution” and “Our migration to Azure VMware Solution extended compliance to workloads approaching end of service because of Microsoft support.” —Mark Wiltshire, IT Director, Kier Group These stories underscore the versatility and efficiency of Azure VMware Solution in addressing diverse organizational needs. We’re eager to hear your experiences too! Please stop by our booth and connect with me and the team. Check out what’s new in Azure VMware Solution I am also excited to share some of the recent updates we’ve made to Azure VMware Solution. Azure Elastic SAN, in preview, is a cloud-native managed SAN offering scalability, cost-efficiency, high performance, and security. It now supports snapshots, enhanced security, and integrates with Azure VMware Solution. Furthermore, as a VMware Certified datastore, Elastic SAN allows you to independently scale your storage and performance, optimizing your total cost of ownership and scalability. Learn more. Azure VMware Solution in Microsoft Azure Government was approved to be added as a service within the Azure Government Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) High Provisional Authorization to Operate (P-ATO). Azure VMware Solution is already available in Azure Commercial and included in the Azure Commercial FedRAMP High P-ATO. With this latest approval, customers and their partners who require the data sovereignty that Azure Government provides can now meet FedRAMP requirements with Azure VMware Solution in Azure Government. Learn more. Azure NetApp Files for Azure Government All Azure NetApp Files features available on Azure public cloud are also available on supported Azure Government regions. For Azure Government regions supported by Azure NetApp Files, see the Products Available by Region page. Azure Arc-enabled VMware vSphere is now available. Customers can start their onboarding with Azure Arc-enabled VMware vSphere, install agents at-scale, and enable Azure management, observability, and security solutions, while benefitting from the existing lifecycle management capabilities. Azure Arc-enabled VMware vSphere VMs will now show up alongside other Azure Arc-enabled servers under ‘Machines’ view in the Azure portal. Learn more. Five-year Reserved Instance promotion is available for Azure VMware Solution until March 31, 2024 for customers looking to lock-in their VMware costs for multiple years. Contact your sales representative for details. Visit our pricing page. vSphere 8.0 will be rolled out starting at the end of November. If you would like to stay up to date with the latest releases from Azure VMware Solution, please follow Azure updates. Learn more If you are here at VMware Explore Barcelona, check out all our Azure Breakout Sessions during the event, and stop by the Microsoft booth #303 for our hourly in-booth theater sessions. Later this month you can also attend Microsoft Ignite Online: November 15–16, 2023 Learn more. As always, you can visit the Azure VMware Solution website or documentation for more information.Azure Migrate: Connected Experiences
Shiva Shastri Sr Product Marketing Manager, Azure Migrate—Product & Ecosystem. Modernization in motion: Evolving at the speed of change. Modernization is the process of transforming legacy IT systems into technologies and architectures that improve agility, scalability, performance and cost-efficiency. It enables businesses to stay competitive by aligning their capabilities with evolving customer and market demands. Modernization is not a one-time event with a finish-line but a continuous journey of evolution. As technology, customer expectations, and competitive landscapes shift, so must the systems and processes that support them. Cloud-native architectures are inherently aligned with modernization while providing access to innovations such as AI. By treating modernization as an ongoing discipline, organizations can stay ahead of disruption, adapt faster to change, and unlock new opportunities. This ability to move faster and smarter is fully realized in Azure — where modernization becomes both a technical upgrade and a strategic advantage. It enables organizations to refocus on core priorities, respond to market shifts in real time, and reduce operational costs. At the heart of this transformation is Azure Migrate — Microsoft’s free, unified platform for cloud migration and modernization. It offers comprehensive capabilities including IT resource discovery, assessment, business case analysis, planning, and execution — all in a workload-agnostic manner. From a single, secure portal, users can manage and monitor the entire journey and cut over to production in Azure with confidence. Today, we’re excited to introduce several impactful Azure Migrate features designed to help you move your on-premises workloads to Azure more efficiently: Accelerated migration and modernization to the cloud. Azure Migrate Agentic method offers an intuitive and insightful approach to cloud transformation. AI assistance assesses on-prem environments, identifies dependencies, and orchestrates workload transitions with minimal manual intervention. By continuously adapting and delegating activities to the appropriate persona, the agents streamline complex migration paths, reduce risk, and accelerate time-to-value. For organizations moving to Azure, the agentic method provides a fast, frictionless route, turning what was once a daunting task into a guided, efficient journey toward modernization. Infrastructure as Code (IaC) plays a pivotal role in cloud migration and modernization by enabling organizations to automate the provisioning and management of infrastructure through code. This approach ensures consistency, scalability, and repeatability across environments, reducing manual errors and accelerating deployment timelines. Azure Migrate now supports IaC, thus simplifying the transition from legacy systems to cloud-native architectures by codifying infrastructure configurations, making it easier to replicate and validate setups. Comprehensive coverage and consistent user experience for your IT estate. No single migration or modernization tool can address the full spectrum of enterprise scenarios and technologies. That’s why Azure Migrate takes a platform-centric approach — delivering a unified, intelligent experience that spans the entire IT estate. By seamlessly interoperating with specialized tools like Database Migration Service (DMS) and GitHub Copilot (GHCP), Azure Migrate empowers organizations to modernize with confidence, flexibility, and speed. Advanced capabilities like 6R analysis — Rehost, Refactor, Rearchitect, Rebuild, Replace, and Retire — empower organizations to tailor modernization strategies to each application, driving smarter, scenario-specific decisions. Support for migration of Arc-enabled resources extends Azure Migrate’s management and governance capabilities to hybrid and multi-cloud environments, ensuring consistency and control regardless of where workloads reside. Additionally, support for Rocky Linux, PostgreSQL, and application awareness empowers teams to assess entire open-source application stacks with dependencies for readiness to migrate to Azure. Secure by design with human in-the-loop. Azure Migrate has recently introduced several security enhancements that reinforce Microsoft's commitment to a "secure by design" and "secure by default" approach. Among the key updates is the friction-free collector, which simplifies secure data collection for migration assessments while minimizing exposure risks. The friction-free discovery in Azure Migrate eliminates the need for deploying discovery appliances for initial assessments. As a result, it accelerates time-to-value, reduces setup complexity, and aligns well with security-conscious environments, making it an efficient and low-risk way to begin cloud migration planning. Azure Migrate supports Private Link and disabling public network access, ensuring that migration traffic remains within secure, private channels. Additionally, the platform enforces data encryption both in transit and at rest, with options for customer-managed keys, and integrates tightly with Azure Key Vault for secure credential and secret management. A security vulnerability report during migration and modernization identifies misconfigurations, outdated components, or exposed services, and the report provides actionable insights that align with Microsoft Defender for Cloud (MDC) threat protection and posture management capabilities. This allows teams to proactively remediate risks and apply MDC’s security controls ensuring the environment is secure from day-1 in Azure. As organizations navigate shifting markets, supply chains, and climate challenges, sustainability has become a strategic imperative. Azure’s carbon optimization capabilities provide clear visibility into potential emission reductions and cost savings, helping IT teams prioritize impactful actions. By unifying planning, execution, and continuity across infrastructure and applications, Azure delivers a consistent modernization experience. Ultimately, cloud-powered innovation enables businesses to drive efficiency, reduce environmental impact, and stay competitive in a rapidly evolving landscape. Learn more Start with a free Azure account if you are new. Sign up for previews of new capabilities and learn more about the workload agnostic method of Azure Migrate. For expert migration help, please try Azure Accelerate. You can also contact your preferred partner or Microsoft field for next steps. Get started in Azure today!
Migration planning of MySQL workloads using Azure Migrate
In our endeavor to increase coverage of OSS workloads in Azure Migrate, we are announcing discovery and modernization assessment of MySQL databases running on Windows and Linux servers. Customers previously had limited visibility into their MySQL workloads and often received generalized VM lift-and-shift recommendations. With this new capability, customers can now accurately identify their MySQL workloads and assess them for right-sizing into Azure Database for MySQL. MySQL workloads are a cornerstone of the LAMP stack, powering countless web applications with their reliability, performance, and ease of use. As businesses grow, the need for scalable and efficient database solutions becomes paramount. This is where Azure Database for MySQL comes into play. Migrating from on-premises to Azure Database for MySQL offers numerous benefits, including effortless scalability, cost efficiency, enhanced performance, robust security, high availability, and seamless integration with other Azure services. As a fully managed Database-as-a-Service (DBaaS), it simplifies database management, allowing businesses to focus on innovation and growth. What is Azure Migrate? Azure Migrate serves as a comprehensive hub designed to simplify the migration journey of on-premises infrastructure, including servers, databases, and web applications, to Azure Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) and Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) targets at scale. It provides a unified platform with a suite of tools and features to help you identify the best migration path, assess Azure readiness, estimate the cost of hosting workloads on Azure, and execute the migration with minimal downtime and risk. Key features of the MySQL Discovery and Assessment in Azure Migrate The new MySQL Discovery and Assessment feature in Azure Migrate (Preview) introduces several powerful capabilities: Discover MySQL database instances: The tool allows you to discover MySQL instances within your environment efficiently. By identifying critical attributes of these instances, it lays the foundation for a thorough assessment and a strategic migration plan. Assessment for Azure readiness: The feature evaluates the readiness of your MySQL database instances to migrate to Azure Database for MySQL – Flexible Server. This assessment considers several factors, including compatibility and performance metrics, to ensure a smooth transition. SKU recommendations: Based on the discovered data, the tool recommends the optimal compute and storage configuration for hosting MySQL workloads on Azure Database for MySQL. Furthermore, it provides insights into the associated costs, enabling better financial planning. How to get started? To begin using the MySQL Discovery and Assessment feature in Azure Migrate, follow this five-step onboarding process: Create an Azure Migrate Project: Initiate your migration journey by setting up a project in the Azure portal. Configure the Azure Migrate Appliance: Use a Windows-based appliance to discover the inventory of servers and provide guest credentials for discovering the workloads and MySQL credentials to fetch database instances and their attributes. Review Discovered Inventory: Examine the detailed attributes of the discovered MySQL instances. Create an Assessment: Evaluate the readiness and get detailed recommendations for migration to Azure Database for MySQL. For a detailed step-by-step guidance check out the documentation for discovery and assessment tutorials. Documentation: Discover MySQL databases running in your datacenter Assess MySQL database instances for migration to Azure Database for MySQL Share your feedback! In summary, the MySQL Discovery and Assessment feature in Azure Migrate enables you to effortlessly discover, assess, and plan your MySQL database migrations to Azure. Try the feature out in public preview and fast-track your migration journey! If you have any queries, feedback or suggestions, please let us know by leaving a comment below or by directly contacting us at AskAzureDBforMySQL@service.microsoft.com. We are eager to hear your feedback and support you on your journey to Azure.What's new in Azure Migrate?
Introduction The journey to the cloud is an essential step for modern enterprises looking to leverage the benefits of scalability, flexibility, and cost-efficiency. A crucial part of this transformation is understanding the current state of your IT infrastructure, including workloads, applications, and their interdependencies. Often, organizations aim to set their migration goals based on the applications they want to move to the cloud, rather than focusing on individual servers or databases in isolation. I am thrilled to share that Azure Migrate is evolving to both simplify and enrich your cloud adoption journey. We are introducing new capabilities in Azure Migrate to help you achieve your goals. Introducing Application awareness in Azure Migrate [limited preview] A key step in any cloud transformation plan is a current state analysis of the entire IT estate covering workloads and applications, and relationships/ dependencies among them. I am excited to announce the limited preview of application aware experiences in Azure Migrate – across every phase of the migration journey. This allows you to gain insights into the total cost of ownership, identify suitable IaaS and PaaS targets, and receive tailored migration and modernization guidance. To get started with Azure Migrate, simply create an Azure Migrate project on Azure portal, and leverage Azure Migrate’s wide-ranging discovery capabilities, including the Azure Migrate appliance or importing inventory via RVTools to discover your environment. This allows you to explore inventory across Infra-Data-Web tiers and use the updated dependency analysis to identify application boundaries. As part of the application aware experiences, we are introducing the concept of tags within Azure Migrate. So once dependencies are identified, you can group the dependent workloads comprising an application via tags. Then, Azure Migrate can be used to create application-specific business cases to identify savings and ROI, assess ideal migration strategies, and get recommendations for Azure services, SKUs, resource costs, and migration/modernization tools. Further, as part of executing the migration and onboarding to Azure, customers can use the recommended tools to modernize via re-platform and refactor (out of band) techniques or use the integrated rehost migration experience to rehost to Azure VM. Complemented with a refreshed user experience As part of delivering application awareness and sustainability insights, Azure Migrate will also feature a refreshed user interface. The new experience is designed to help customers across every step of the migration journey – across Decide, Plan and Execute phases. The experience provides you with a new intuitive table of contents and overview page to allow easy navigation. You can explore discovered workloads and their relationships through effective search, sort, and seamless transition from Azure Migrate to other specialized migration tools, depending on your specific goals and requirements. Finally, you can quickly create and visualize different migration and modernization strategies side-by-side. Expanded support for workloads and platforms In addition to the capabilities described above, Azure Migrate continues to evolve to support capabilities provided by Azure for customers to evaluate and execute as part of their cloud adoption journey. As part of this effort, I am pleased to announce public preview of the following capabilities. These capabilities are available for customers, partners and sellers to try today! ROI/TCO of Azure Arc in Azure Migrate Business Case [public preview] We understand that customers are looking to understand the best path as they evaluate the cloud. This includes continuing to stay on-premises in their current environment while benefiting from Azure services such as Azure Arc. Knowing the varying needs of every customer and with the goal to meet customers where they are, we are introducing the envisioning of ROI for Azure Arc in Azure Migrate Business Case. This includes - Azure Migrate business case to help you compare the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) for on-premises estates versus Azure, including year-on-year cash flow analysis. With this new capability, the Azure Migrate Business Case now includes the added value of Azure Arc for resources remaining on-premises during the customer’s migration journey. You can now visualize cost savings and other benefits of using Azure security and management tools via Azure Arc for your on-premises servers and see licensing benefits such as Extended Security Updates and SQL Pay-As-You-Go. In addition to visualizing the business case for Arc, customers can identify and at-scale onboard machines that are not yet Arc-enabled directly from the Azure Migrate portal. Additional details and step by step instructions can be found here. Support for migrations to Azure Stack HCI [public preview] Azure Stack HCI enables customers to run workloads in the private cloud or edge and offers an ideal platform for modernizing workloads with enhanced performance, scalability, simplified management, and cost efficiency. To support this modernization, we have introduced the ability to migrate virtual machines from Hyper-V and VMware environments to Azure Stack HCI using Azure Migrate: Server Migrations. Like Azure migrations, you can leverage Azure Migrate to discover virtual machines from VMware and Hyper-V environments at scale, without needing prior agent installation. After discovery, you can migrate virtual machines to Azure Stack HCI through an easy-to-use Azure Migrate portal experience, ensuring zero data loss and minimal downtime. This migration keeps data flow locally from on-premises to Azure Stack HCI. Learn more about this capability here. Expanded OSS Support in Azure Migrate [public preview] Azure Migrate has been diligently expanding its capabilities to better support customers using Linux. We are thrilled to highlight three significant updates that enhance your migration experience: Support for newer Linux Distributions [public preview] Azure Migrate now supports a range of newer Linux distributions, including Rocky Linux, Alma Linux, SLES 15, RHEL 9, and Ubuntu 22.04. This enhancement ensures a broader compatibility for Linux workloads, allowing you to migrate seamlessly, whether using agentless or agent-based migrations. Azure Hybrid Benefit (AHB) for Enterprise Linux [public preview] We've integrated Azure Hybrid Benefit (AHB) for Enterprise Linux (RHEL and SLES) into the migration process. Customers can visualize the savings from AHB directly in Azure Migrate business case assessments, maximizing their return on investment. To leverage AHB, you can directly enable the appropriate licenses for migrating Enterprise Linux machines within Azure Migrate. This integration eliminates the need for manual installation of the AHB extension post migrations, streamlining the migration workflow and ensuring compliance. Discovery and Assessment of MySQL Databases [public preview] In our endeavor to increase coverage of OSS workloads in Azure Migrate, we are announcing discovery and modernization assessment of MySQL databases running on Linux servers. Customers previously had limited visibility in their MySQL workloads and often received generalized VM lift-and-shift recommendations. With this new capability, you can now accurately identify the MySQL workloads and assess them for right-sizing into Azure Database for MySQL: Flexible Server. CSV Import powered discovery for SQL Servers [limited preview] We understand that deploying an appliance may not be the quickest way to generate migration assessments to enable planning. Further, many times customers can’t provide credentials for SQL Server instances, to allow Azure Migrate to capture relevant details and provide accurate readiness and right-sized recommendations. Hence, we are now adding the ability to import SQL Server details which can then be used to discover SQL Server instances and databases and generate accurate assessment reports. Use existing repositories such as SQL Server Dynamic Management Views, SCOM etc. to populate the CSV schema required to discover SQL Server. Interested in trying the limited preview experience? The capabilities described above are currently in limited preview. To take advantage of these capabilities for your environment, please share your interest here. Conclusion The enhancements in Azure Migrate underscore our commitment to providing comprehensive, user-friendly, and efficient migration solutions. Stay tuned for more updates and join us at Ignite 2024 for a detailed demo of these exciting new features. Curious to learn more? Here is a sneak peek of what we plan to announce at Ignite - https://youtu.be/aquRVLvau7cVMware HCX Troubleshooting with Azure VMware Solution
Overview VMware HCX is one of the Azure VMware Solution components that generates a large number of service requests from our customers. The Azure VMware Solution product group has worked to cover the most common troubleshooting considerations that you should know about when using VMware HCX with the Azure VMware Solution. Azure VMware Solution is a VMware validated first party Azure service from Microsoft that provides private clouds containing VMware vSphere clusters built from dedicated bare-metal Azure infrastructure. It enables customers to leverage their existing investments in VMware skills and tools, allowing them to focus on developing and running their VMware-based workloads on Azure. VMware HCX is the mobility and migration software used by the Azure VMware Solution to connect remote VMware vSphere environments to the Azure VMware Solution. These remote VMware vSphere environments can be on-premises, co-location or cloud-based instances. Figure 1 – Azure VMware Solution with VMware HCX Service Mesh In the next section, I will introduce the architectural components of the Azure VMware Solution. Architectural Components The diagram below describes the architectural components of the Azure VMware Solution. Figure 2 – Azure VMware Solution Architectural Components Each Azure VMware Solution architectural component has the following function: Azure Subscription: Used to provide controlled access, budget and quota management for the Azure VMware Solution. Azure Region: Physical locations around the world where we group data centers into Availability Zones (AZs) and then group AZs into regions. Azure Resource Group: Container used to place Azure services and resources into logical groups. Azure VMware Solution Private Cloud: Uses VMware software, including vCenter Server, NSX software-defined networking, vSAN software-defined storage, and Azure bare-metal ESXi hosts to provide compute, networking, and storage resources. Azure NetApp Files, Azure Elastic SAN, and Pure Cloud Block Store are also supported. Azure VMware Solution Resource Cluster: Uses VMware software, including vSAN software-defined storage, and Azure bare-metal ESXi hosts to provide compute, networking, and storage resources for customer workloads by scaling out the Azure VMware Solution private cloud. Azure NetApp Files, Azure Elastic SAN, and Pure Cloud Block Store are also supported. VMware HCX: Provides mobility, migration, and network extension services. VMware Site Recovery: Provides Disaster Recovery automation, and storage replication services with VMware vSphere Replication. Third party Disaster Recovery solutions Zerto DR and JetStream DR are also supported. Dedicated Microsoft Enterprise Edge (D-MSEE): Router that provides connectivity between Azure cloud and the Azure VMware Solution private cloud instance. Azure Virtual Network (VNet): Private network used to connect Azure services and resources together. Azure Route Server: Enables network appliances to exchange dynamic route information with Azure networks. Azure Virtual Network Gateway: Cross premises gateway for connecting Azure services and resources to other private networks using IPSec VPN, ExpressRoute, and VNet to VNet. Azure ExpressRoute: Provides high-speed private connections between Azure data centers and on-premises or colocation infrastructure. Azure Virtual WAN (vWAN): Aggregates networking, security, and routing functions together into a single unified Wide Area Network (WAN). In the next section, I will describe the troubleshooting steps you should follow for VMware HCX when used with the Azure VMware Solution. Troubleshooting Considerations Before opening a ticket with Microsoft support, please use the following steps as a checklist to ensure you are not impacted by the most common VMware HCX issues. Troubleshooting Step 1: Download the VMware HCX Connector. Once VMware HCX is deployed on the Azure VMware Solution side, the download for the VMware HCX Connector OVA is in the VMware HCX UI plugin. Under the Administration there is a Request Download Link. The OVA can be copied locally or a download link for the OVA can be selected. Figure 3 – VMware HCX Connector OVA Download Troubleshooting Step 2: Upgrade to HCX Enterprise. Azure VMware Solution comes with an Enterprise license key for VMware HCX. If you have a pre-existing VMware HCX Connector on-prem that is licensed for VMware HCX Advanced, please be sure to upgrade the connector to the Enterprise version. To upgrade VMware HCX navigate to the HCX Connector at https://<hcx_connector_fqdn>:9443, under the Configuration section select Licensing and Activation, edit the current license and enter the VMware HCX enterprise license key obtained from the Azure VMware Solution portal. Verify that the License is showing Enterprise. Figure 4 – VMware HCX Connector License Key Once you have updated the VMware HCX Connector, be sure to update/edit the VMware HCX Compute Profile and Service Mesh to include the updated VMware HCX services that you would like to take advantage of, such as Replicated Assisted vMotion and OS Assisted Migration. OS Assisted Migration is used for migrating and converting Microsoft Hyper-V and RedHat KVM workloads into Azure VMware Solution. Figure 5 – VMware HCX Connector Compute Profile Service Activation Troubleshooting Step 3: Only use the key from the Azure VMware Solution private cloud you are connecting to. When deploying the VMware HCX Connector on-premises, the activation key should come from the Azure VMware Solution you are migrating to. In the Azure portal, an activation Key can be obtained in the Add-Ons section. Simply request an activation key, provide it with a friendly name and map that activation key to the on-premises VMware HCX connector. Figure 6 – VMware HCX Connector License Key Troubleshooting Step 4: Do not use an IPSec VPN. If possible, avoid using an IPSec VPN connection to Azure VMware Solution when migrations with VMware HCX will happen. Migrating with VMware HCX over VPN has been known to cause issues and multiple failures around migrations. Although utilizing VMware HCX via VPN is supported, it is not the recommended way to migrate virtual machines to Azure VMware Solution. One of the biggest caveats of migrating VMs with VMware HCX over VPN is that a separate uplink network profile is needed on-premises. The management network cannot be used as an uplink profile, as the MTU of the uplink profile needs to be adjusted to 1300 to accommodate the IPSec overhead. Note that VMware HCX uses IPSec VPN natively as part of the VMware HCX Service Mesh. Troubleshooting Step 5: Check MTU size within your Network Profile. Be sure to verify the MTU setting on the Network Profiles setup. Within VMware HCX, navigate to the Interconnect section, select Network Profiles and be sure to verify the correct MTU size is being used for each Profile. Be sure to verify this on both ends of the VMware HCX site pair. Figure 7 – VMware HCX MTU size in Network Profile Use this guide of recommended MTU sizes for the Network Profiles in the table below when connecting to Azure VMware Solution. Connectivity Method Management Uplink Replication vMotion Azure ExpressRoute 1500 1500 1500 or 9000 1500 or 9000 VMware HCX over IPSec VPN 1500 1300 1500 or 9000 1500 or 9000 Table 1 – VMware HCX Network Profile MTU Sizes Troubleshooting Step 6: Always keep your VMware HCX versions updated (Connectors, Cloud Manager and Service Meshes). Before you upgrade VMware HCX, check the VMware product interoperability matrix to ensure the integrated versions of on-premises VMware solution software are supported by the new version of VMware HCX you are going to upgrade to. Updates to VMware HCX are released regularly by VMware. It is the responsibility of the customer to upgrade and maintain VMware HCX on both sides of the Service Mesh (on-premises and Azure VMware Solution). When updating VMware HCX, the VMware HCX Cloud Managers should be updated first. It is recommended to create a back-up to the VMware HCX Connector before updating. Backups to the VMware HCX Connector can be done through the VMware HCX manager UI at https://<hcx_connector_fqdn>:9443 with the admin password created at the time of VMware HCX Connector deployment. Under the Administration section head to the Backups and restore section. Backups can be taken here and scheduled to be taken as well. Optionally, you can take a vSphere snapshot of the VMware HCX Connector on-premises as well. Figure 8 – VMware HCX Connector Backup & Restore Updates for the VMware HCX Cloud Managers can be found in the administration section, select your current version, and hit the ‘Check for Updates’ button. If a new version is available, you will be able to download and update to the newest version. Backups of the VMware HCX Cloud Manager are taken automatically each day. Figure 9 – VMware HCX Upgrades It should be noted that VMware HCX Service Meshes are updated independently of the VMware HCX Cloud Managers and Connectors. Upon completion of the VMware HCX Cloud Manager and Connector updates, Service Meshes should be updated next. VMware HCX Cloud Managers and Service Meshes should be upgraded in order and together as to not cause an issue with mixed mode versions of Managers and Service Meshes. Running mixed mode versions of VMware HCX Cloud Managers, Connectors, and Service Meshes in production is highly discouraged. You can lose certain features and it often creates issues within the environment. Figure 10 – VMware HCX Manager Service Mesh Update During the Service Mesh update process, if Network Extension appliances are deployed a temporary loss of connectivity will occur while the appliances update. For Network Extension in an HA pair, down time is approximately a few seconds. Network Extension appliances not in an HA pair will incur downtime of approximately one minute. Troubleshooting Step 7: On-Premises Network Connectivity and Firewalls. For VMware HCX to be activated and receive updates, your on-premises firewalls need to allow outbound traffic to port 443 for the following websites: https://connect.hcx.vmware.com https://hybridity-depot.vmware.com https://hcx.<guid>.<region>.avs.azure.com Your on-premises firewalls will also need to allow outbound traffic to UDP port 4500. Within VMware HCX UDP port 4500 serves a specific purpose, it allows IPSec VPN communication between VMware HCX components across environments and is essential for communication and data transfer between environments to work. When configuring VMware HCX, you need to ensure that this port is open between your on-premises VMware HCX Connector uplink network profile and the Azure VMware Solution HCX Cloud Manager uplink network profile. Another common issue we see within VMware HCX, is that your on-premises VMware HCX Connector is unable to reach the VMware HCX activation and entitlement website. A simple way to verify your on-premises environment has access to the activation and entitlement website is as follows. SSH into the on-premises VMware HCX Connector and run the below curl commands to verify connectivity: Curl -k -v https://connect.hcx.vmware.com Curl -k -v https://hyridity-depot.vmware.com A successful connection to the above website will look like the figure below. Figure 11 – VMware HCX Connector SSH CURL connectivity test Troubleshooting Step 8: Diagnostics page on the Service Mesh. Built into the VMware HCX Service Mesh there is an option to run a diagnostics check on the Service Mesh appliances. This is an effective way to verify the health of your Service Mesh and pinpoint any specific issues the appliances may have. In the VMware HCX Connect user interface, under the Interconnect section, select the Service Mesh you want to run the diagnostics on. Under the “More” link, select Run Diagnostics to perform a health check on the appliances. Figure 12 – VMware HCX Service Mesh Run Diagnostics Once the Diagnostics test is completed, if there are any issues, a red banner will appear under the Service Mesh name. You can drill down to the specific issues by clicking on the red alert (!) icon. Figure 13 – VMware HCX Service Mesh Alert Troubleshooting Step 9: If you are having issues with the source side interface reboot the VMware HCX Connector. VMware HCX Connectors may have issues over time. It is recommended to reboot the VMware HCX Connector if it has been up and running for an extended period without a reboot. On the Azure VMware Solution side, we do have the option for customers to reboot the VMware HCX Cloud Manager within Azure VMware Solution through a Run Command in the Azure portal. The option to Force or Hard Reboot the VMware HCX Cloud Manager is also an option that is offered. Please use this with caution as it does not check for any active migrations or replications that may be occurring. Figure 14 – Azure VMware Solution Run Command Restart-HCXManager Troubleshooting Step 10: Logging into the VMware HCX Cloud Manager directly You have the ability to log into the VMware HCX Cloud Manager directly. At times the VMware HCX plugin through your Azure VMware Solution vSphere Client will not be available or fail to open. You can obtain the IP address of the VMware HCX Cloud Manager in the Azure portal when you are in the Azure VMware Solution resource. In the Add-ons section under the “Migration using VMware HCX”, the IP address of the VMware HCX Cloud manager will be listed. It is part of the /22 network you provided when deploying Azure VMware Solution. Access the manager directly at https://<x.x.x.9>:443 or https://hcx.<guid>.<region>.avs.azure.com. The VMware HCX Cloud Manager will always end with a .9 octet. Figure 15 – VMware HCX Cloud Manager Login Troubleshooting Step 11: Network Extensions are for temporary migration phases, not for permanent use. At its core VMware HCX is a migration tool. When using Network Extensions in VMware HCX, it is important to understand that these Network Extensions should be a temporary solution used during the migration process to migrate VMs into Azure VMware Solution with no downtime during the migration. It is best practice to remove the network extensions as soon as the migration waves are completed. Leaving network extensions in place for extended periods of time can cause issues and outages in your environment. Use Network Extensions with caution. Figure 16 – VMware HCX Network Extension Troubleshooting Step 12: If you have Mobility Optimized Networking (MON) enabled, ensure you have the router location set to the correct side. When configuring MON, verify where the default gateway resides. The default gateway will always be located on the source side of the network extension. Primarily, it will reside in the on-premises data center when connecting to Azure VMware Solution. Figure 17 – VMware HCX Mobility Optimized Network (MON) Troubleshooting Step 13: OS Assisted Migration -Sentinel Gateway Appliances. When using VMware HCX OS Assisted Migration, it is important to maintain and manage the VMware HCX Sentinel Gateway Appliance (SGW) at the source site (On-premises). The Sentinel Gateway Appliance is responsible for establishing a forwarding connection with the VMware HCX Sentinel Data Receiver (SDR) on the destination site. Managing and maintaining the Sentinel Gateway appliance’s resources, CPU and memory configuration, is the responsibility of the customer. Next Steps If this has not resolved the VMware HCX issue in your Azure VMware Solution private cloud, please open a Service Request with Microsoft to continue the resolution process. Summary In this post, we described helpful troubleshooting tips when facing some of the most common VMware HCX service issues our customers have with the Azure VMware Solution. If you are interested in the Azure VMware Solution, please use these resources to learn more about the service: Homepage: Azure VMware Solution Documentation: Azure VMware Solution SLA: SLA for Azure VMware Solution Azure Regions: Azure Products by Region VMware Ports and Protocols for HCX VMware HCX - VMware Ports and Protocols VMware Interoperability Matrix Product Interoperability Matrix (vmware.com) VMware HCX: Configuration & Best Practices Design: Availability Design Considerations Design: Recoverability Design Considerations Design: Performance Design Considerations Design: Security Design Considerations GitHub repository: Azure/azure-vmware-solution Well-Architected Framework: Azure VMware Solution workloads Cloud Adoption Framework: Introduction to the Azure VMware Solution adoption scenario Network connectivity scenarios: Enterprise-scale network topology and connectivity for Azure VMware Solution Enterprise Scale Landing Zone: Enterprise-scale for Microsoft Azure VMware Solution Enterprise Scale GitHub repository: Azure/Enterprise-Scale-for-AVS Azure CLI: Azure Command-Line Interface (CLI) Overview PowerShell module: Az.VMware Module Azure Resource Manager: Microsoft.AVS/privateClouds REST API: Azure VMware Solution REST API Terraform provider: azurerm_vmware_private_cloud Terraform Registry Author Bios Ricky Perez is a Senior Cloud Solution Architect in the international Customer Success Unit (iCSU) at Microsoft. His background is in solution architecture with experience in public cloud and core infrastructure services. Jason Trammell is a Senior Software Engineer in the Azure VMware Solution engineering group at Microsoft. Kenyon Hensler is a Principal Technical Program Manager in the Azure VMware Solution product group at Microsoft. His background is in system engineering with experience across all facets of enterprise networking and compute stacks. René van den Bedem is a Principal Technical Program Manager in the Azure VMware Solution product group at Microsoft. His background is in enterprise architecture with extensive experience across all facets of the enterprise, public cloud & service provider spaces, including digital transformation and the business, enterprise, and technology architecture stacks. René works backwards from the problem to be solved and designs solutions that deliver business value with the minimum of risk. In addition to being the first quadruple VMware Certified Design Expert (VCDX), he is also a Dell Technologies Certified Master Enterprise Architect, a Nutanix Platform Expert (NPX), and a VMware vExpert.
