As organizations modernize their infrastructure and migrate workloads to the cloud, many seek a seamless way to migrate and scale their VMware environments without disrupting operations.
Today, we’re excited to share that the private preview of NetApp® Cloud Volumes ONTAP® integration with Microsoft Azure VMware Solution (AVS) is now available.
Easily extend and migrate VMware workloads to Azure
With Cloud Volumes ONTAP and Azure VMware Solution, organizations can extend or migrate block-based VMware workloads to Azure with minimal disruption.
This integration is designed to:
- Streamline Virtual Machine Disk (VMDK) migrations
- Accelerate time to value for cloud initiatives
- Preserve existing VMware tools, processes, and architectures
Azure VMware Solution provides a fully managed VMware environment, running vSphere, vSAN, and NSX natively on Azure, while Cloud Volumes ONTAP delivers enterprise-grade storage capabilities powered by ONTAP.
Enterprise storage for VMware workloads in Azure
By combining AVS with Cloud Volumes ONTAP, customers gain access to the full suite of ONTAP data management capabilities for VMware workloads in Azure, including:
- Enterprise-grade storage in the cloud. Access the same ONTAP data management features and storage efficiencies you trust—deduplication, compression, thin provisioning, compaction, Snapshot copies, and replication—now for VMware block-based workloads running in AVS.
- Cost optimization. Automatically tier cold data to lower cost Azure Blob storage, reducing spend without sacrificing performance.
- Simplify workload mobility in hybrid cloud environments. Seamlessly lift and shift VMware workloads to Azure without re-architecting applications—preserving consistent storage operations and data protection policies across on-premises and cloud environments.
- Cloud-based disaster recovery (storage replication available now; full DR scenario — future capability): NetApp SnapMirror® technology can be used to replicate data from on-premises ONTAP systems to Cloud Volumes ONTAP in Azure today. When integrated with AVS, this architecture can enable a VMware-consistent recovery environment to support business continuity across hybrid or multi-site deployments (e.g., on-premises to AVS, or AVS-to-AVS). Full disaster recovery capabilities in this integrated architecture are expected in a future release and are subject to additional integration and validation.
Together, this enables expanded storage capacity, elastic scalability, and consistent data services across hybrid environments.
Built for real-world use cases
This integration will be ideal for ONTAP users with existing on-premises VMware block environments, who intend to migrate to Microsoft Azure, with possible use cases including:
- Block-based storage. Connect Cloud Volumes ONTAP to cloud compute instances through block-based SAN protocols like iSCSI.
- Backup and disaster recovery. Use SnapMirror to replicate data from an ONTAP-based on-premises environment to the cloud. If a primary system fails, SnapMirror promotes business continuity and minimal downtime by enabling quick failover to the secondary system. You can also create automated, point-in-time, incremental backups of your data using Snapshot technology.
- Development and testing. Use NetApp FlexClone® technology to create instant, space-efficient clones for Dev/Test environments, reducing storage costs.
Get early access
With the private preview now officially open, customers can get early access to this exciting integration and explore how it simplifies VMware migrations and hybrid cloud operations on Azure.
If you’re looking to modernize VMware environments, streamline cloud migration, or extend on-premises workloads into the cloud, this integration provides a powerful and seamless new path forward.
Interested? Complete the interest form to get started or contact your NetApp sales representative.