Content Calendar: What’s coming here?

Upcoming blog articles and video interviews. I am excited to continue my research on cloud vendors, cloud migration companies, and potential VMware landing zones.

1. UPCOMING BLOG ARTICLES

1.1. TOOLS & MARKET

Sharing my hands-on experience with 1st and 3rd party cloud migration tools combined with my recent cloud migration market research

1.1.1. AWS TOOLS

Hands-on experience with AWS Application Migration Service and key learnings

Lift and Shift – AWS Application Migration Service (amazon.com)

1.1.2. AZURE & GCP TOOLS

Azure Migrate, and Google Migration Services; how similar or different from AWS tools?

I used Azure Migrate a lot for many years, various source systems (Hyper-V, vSphere, and Physical). I am really excited to compare it with AWS, GCP, and 3rd party offerings.

1.1.3. 3RD PARTY TOOLS & MIGRATION COMPANIES

Cloudamize, Virtana Migrate, Turbonomic, Rivermeadow, and many other great solutions and companies.

I used Cloudamize a lot at Microsoft to run assessments of multi-tenant VMware-based service providers in CEE to see how much their workload will cost in Azure (limited Azure VMware Solution available at that time). Connected to vCenter, collected performance data on storage and networking to have a more accurate number. At that time Cloudamize was not integrated with Azure Migrate and Azure Migrate was more like an assessment, not a migration tool.

Recently, Paul, my former Virtual Instruments colleague was so kind to update me on the Virtana Migrate platform. Impressive, they see the workload from the SAN Fibre channel perspective; I think, their approach is special on the market.

I am following the Rivermedow Multi-Cloud Migration Platform and its success with GCP migrations. I will investigate more to better understand their offerings.

Probably Carbonite become the most advanced migration tool after their acquired Double-Take Software.

I checked the relevant Gartner MQ (July 2021) to better understand the companies offering Public Cloud IT Transformation Services.

Gartner: Magic Quadrant for Public Cloud IT Transformation Services 2021

Source: Gartner Magic Quadrant for Public Cloud IT Transformation Services | Deloitte | Technology

Connecting the dots I quickly discovered that migration companies own tools as well, such as Cloudreach, an Atos Company that has Cloudamize, or Nordcloud and Turbonomic are both IBM companies.

1.2. VMWARE GOES TO CLOUD – BUILDING AN ADVANCED HYBRID CLOUD LAB

Building the perfect VMware NSX-T/HCX based hands-on lab to support hybrid scenarios and testing migration tools

I am very passionate about VMware’s Hybrid Cloud future. I think, keeping VMware products and creating a hybrid cloud & later integrating cloud-native workloads is a good idea for the next decade.

In order to support my passion, I am building a highly complex lab to continue to research this topic.

1.2.1. BASICS – a nested virtualized 3 node vSphere 7 hyper-converged cluster with vCenter 7, vSAN, DVS, template VMs (Windows, Linux, other, multiple OS versions).

Purchased hardware, deployed and configured software, designed networking, added templates.

  • The perfect nested virtualization-based demo LAB: adding templates, various workloads

1.2.2. ADVANCED NETWORKING – adding NSX-T based networking layer

I do not think we can talk about cloud migration without understanding the on-premises networking stack. Networking is not only VLANs like 20 years ago. Networking is not only distributed virtual switch and port group configuration like 10 years ago. Software-defined networking is very advanced today.

Meeting NSX-T capabilities in Cloud is not easy (and not necessarily needed, as you can move VMware to Cloud keeping vSphere & NSX-T)

  • The perfect nested virtualization-based demo LAB: adding NSX-T

1.2.3. VMWARE HYBRID CLOUD EXTENSION (HCX) – connecting on-premises and cloud hosted VMware environments & integrating of cloud-native workloads

  • The perfect nested virtualization-based demo LAB: adding HCX and connecting public cloud(s)
  • HCX basics – how to move VMs across on-premises and cloud the easiest way (keeping VMware virtualization)? VMware HCX Migration Types
  • VMware & public clouds together – hybrid efforts: how public cloud adds value to VMware deployments?

AWS, Azure, and GCP are my primary interests. However, thanks to my friend at Oracle we might start with OCI since he has access to an Oracle Cloud VMware Solution lab.

1.2.4. BEYOND THE VSPHERE – add additional popular VMware products and see how they work in (Hybrid/Multi) Cloud. VDI: Horizon View Universal. BCDR: Site Recovery Manager. MONITORING: vRealize product family.

I think this is the best part of it. Imagine that customer invested 10+ years in VMware. Let’s discover together how Horizon VDI or Site Recovery manager fits into the public cloud?

1.2.5. CLOUD NATIVE (KUBERNETES) WORKLOADS AND VMWARE – let’s see how Tanzu Mission Control delivers in multi-cloud environments

Let’s not forget about Kubernetes and understand how this works in a multi-cloud environment.

2. PLANNED VIDEO INTERVIEWS

  • VMware Hybrid Cloud Extension (HCX) demo by using Oracle Cloud VMware Solution
  • The importance of Identity and Access Management in Cloud Migration
  • Legacy VMs and/vs. cloud-native workloads – what’s the workload to be migrated?

  • Microsoft Azure Migrate updates
  • Microsoft Azure VMware Solution updates
  • Google Migrate for Compute (M4C) 
  • Google VMware Engine updates

  • Amazon Workspaces (identity services integration, VMware Horizon and Citrix opportunites)
  • Azure Virtual Desktop and Windows 365 (identity services integration, VMware Horizon and Citrix opportunites)

  • The FinOps perspective

Related posts

Comparison of VMware relocation options in public cloud

I keep researching this topic from several perspectives: regional availability, provided architecture, most popular use cases, VMware software versions, provided hardware configuration, and finally the price of a 3-node vSphere cluster in the Cloud.

AWS MiGratioN, GCP Migrate4Cloud, and Azure Migrate pros and cons

It’s been more than 5 years since I am testing and comparing 1st party migration tools. I have seen these tools getting better over the years, with major improvements by acquisitions, end-of-life products, continuous changes, and improvements not just the tools but the methodology around, well-architected, CaF, the concept of the landing zone, 5Rs become 7Rs. In this article, I am sharing my experiences with the most commonly used cloud migration tools.

Oracle Database service for Azure – connecting Azure VM and Power App

I have connected a Database Admin Azure VM running Oracle’s SQL Developer (Windows version) and a Microsoft Power Platform application displaying Oracle’s HR demo schema (via on-premises data gateway on Azure VM connecting with Power Platform’s Oracle Premium Connector) to the same Oracle Database hosted on OCI.

Oracle Database service for Azure – linking subscriptions

As part of my multi-cloud research, I wanted to test Oracle Database Service for Azure. In this article, you will see how to sign up for the new service and how to link Oracle and Azure accounts. I used Frankfurt datacenters, Azure MSDN, and OCI paid account (Free Tier does not work) using my private Azure Active Directory.

Why multi-cloud is the way to go? VMware and Oracle perspective.

While cloud migration is still a popular topic during customer discussions, I have noticed that more and more customers are considering an exit plan from one cloud (vendor lock-in) to another cloud meaning there is an increase in multi-cloud migration demand. VMware, Oracle, and SAP are the major workloads in on-premises data centers today. Based on my research both VMware and Oracle are very vocal about the importance of having a multi-cloud strategy.

AWS Site-to-Site VPN using MikroTik RouterOS

There are two ways of approaching this challenge. (#1) running MikroTik virtual appliance (CHR) in AWS (#2) using Virtual Private Gateway, a “cloud-native” networking solution provided by AWS. Each solution has its own benefits.