We previously covered changes to the VMware licensing model as a result of Broadcom’s acquisition – but with fresh announcements at Microsoft Ignite and from Broadcom, there are more changes on the cards for VMware users.
In this blog, Damian Reffin, Azure Service Architect, dives into the most recent announcements for Azure VMware Solution, Microsoft’s hybrid cloud service for VMware users.
Fear of unpredictable billing is still one of the top objections to adopting public cloud and that’s no different for organisations with substantial investments in VMware. This aligns neatly with increasing focus on adopting FinOps practices into organisations. Businesses want to transform, but they want to be able to manage any associated risks.
As a VMware user, if your end game is to modernise and innovate while retiring technical debt, increase your agility and above all maintain predictable pricing, then Azure VMware Solution (AVS) offers a compelling journey to meet your requirements.
What are the latest updates and offers on Azure VMware Solution?
Price protection
There are updates to long-term discounts for AVS. This means it’s time to modernise on your terms by locking in predictable pricing for one, three and five-year terms with the long-term discounts offer with Azure Reserved Instances. Discounts include:
- Additional 20% off the one-year RI until 30th June 2025
- Five-year RIs available until 30th June 2025
There is another change to reservation flexibility. This means you can enjoy modernisation flexibility by exchanging AVS Ris for other compute types at any time.
Save with hybrid and portable licensing
With hybrid benefit, you can use Windows Server and SQL Server on-premises licences with SA to save on Azure. This offers the most competitive Windows Server and SQL Server pricing on Azure.
Extended security is on offer, giving you up to three years’ free security updates on Azure for Windows Server and SQL Server 2012 and 2014.
VMware subscription portability allows you to utilise existing VMware Cloud Foundation subscription on AVS.
Help with migration
You can leverage us at Advania as your partner to access Azure Migrate and Modernise program funding and resources to offset your migration costs.
You can streamline your migration even further with an AVS specialist partner and Microsoft CSU Migration Factory service with Advania.
Azure Credits
Azure Credits offers a one-time maximum $120k incentive to modernise with Azure. It is available for one, three and five-year Ris on a new migration. This benefit is available until 30th June 2025.
Azure VMware Solution Pilot
There is an AVS 30-day Pilot available for partner-led projects. This allows you to trial AVS for free on three-nodes for 30 days.
Advania is an AVS specialised and Azure Expert MSP – we are authorised to deliver this exceptional offer.
Azure VMware Solution technical updates
Microsoft is now ready to update all existing Azure Commercial customers from vSphere 7 to vSphere 8 on AVS.
Trusted Launch is now available in all Azure VMware Solution regions. This enables Virtual Trusted Platform Module (vTPM) on virtual machines, ensuring compliance with the latest security standards and unlocking the potential to run modern operating systems like Microsoft Windows 11.
The VMware Cloud Foundations (VCF) licence portability feature on Azure VMware Solution allows you to bring your VCF entitlement to Azure VMware Solution and take advantage of potential cost savings.
Azure VMware Solution: a summary of key facts
- Broadcom and Microsoft have jointly engineered Azure VMware Solution
- It is a native Azure service running on dedicated bare-metal servers.
- It is fast path for VMware customers to extend or migrate to Azure without the associated cost and friction of rearchitecting applications and operating models.
- It is fully supported by Microsoft experts who can call on Broadcom experts and resources when required.
- AVS provides a compelling option to VMware large and small Enterprise customers for:
- Data centre expansion
- Disaster Recovery
- Data centre business critical events
- Application modernisation
- Cloud desktop expansion or DR
