GCP – A Google Cloud VMware Engine cheat sheet

If you have VMware workloads and you want to modernize your application to take advantage of cloud services to increase agility and reduce total cost of ownership then Google Cloud VMware Engine is the service for you! It is a managed VMware service with bare metal infrastructure that runs the VMware software stack on Google Cloud—fully dedicated and physically isolated from other customers. 

In this blog post, I’ll take you through Google Cloud VMware Engine, its benefits, features, and use cases. 

Benefits of Google Cloud VMware Engine

1. Operational continuity– Google offers native access to VMware platforms. the service is sold, delivered and supported by Google – no other companies are involved. The architecture is compatible with your existing applications, as well as operations, security, backup, disaster recovery, audit, and compliance tools and processes.
2. No retraining – Your teams can use their existing skills and knowledge. 
3. Infrastructure agility – The service is delivered as a Google Cloud service, and infrastructure scales on demand in minutes.
4. Security – Access to the environment through Google Cloud provides built-in DDoS protection and security monitoring.
5. Policy compatibility– You can continue to use VMware tools and security procedures, audit practices, and compliance certifications.
6. Infrastructure monitoring – You get reliability with fully redundant and dedicated 100 Gbps networking, providing up to 99.99% availability to meet the needs of your VMware stack. There is also infrastructure monitoring so failed hardware automatically gets replaced. 
7. Hybrid platform – The service enables high-speed, low-latency access to other  Google Cloud services such as BigQuery, AI Platform, Cloud Storage, and more.
8. Low cost– Because the service is engineered for automation, operational efficiency, and scale it is also cost effective!

How does Google Cloud VMware Engine work?

Google Cloud VMware Engine makes it easy to migrate or extend your VMware environment to Google Cloud. Here is how it works… you can easily migrate your on-premises VMware instances to Google Cloud, using included HCX licenses, via a cloud VPN or interconnect. The service comprises VMware vCenter, the virtual machines, ESXi host, storage, and network on bare metal! You can easily connect from the service to other Google Cloud services such as Cloud SQL, BigQuery, Memorystore, and so on. 

You can access the service UI, billing, and identity and access management all from the Google Cloud console as well as connect to other third-party disaster recovery and storage services such as Zerto and Veeam. 

Google Cloud VMware Engine use cases

• Retire or migrate data centers – Scale data center capacity in the cloud and stop managing hardware refreshes. Reduce risk and cost by migrating to the cloud while still using familiar VMware tools and skills. In the cloud, use Google Cloud services to modernize your applications at your pace.
• Expand on demand – Scale capacity to meet unanticipated needs, such as new development environments or seasonal capacity bursts, and keep it only as long as you need it. Reduce your up-front investment, accelerate speed of provisioning, and reduce complexity by using the same architecture and policies across both on-premises and the cloud.
• Disaster recovery and virtual desktops in Google Cloud – High-bandwidth connections let you quickly upload and download data to recover from incidents.
• Virtual desktops in Google Cloud – Create virtual desktops (VDI) in Google Cloud for remote access to data, apps, and desktops. Low-latency networks give you fast response times — similar to those of a desktop app. 
• Power high-performance applications and databases – In Google Cloud you have a hyper-converged architecture designed to run your most demanding VMware workloads such as Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server, middleware systems, and high-performance noSQL databases. 
• Unify DevOps across VMware and Google Cloud – Optimize VMware administration by using Google Cloud services that can be applied across all your workloads, without having to expand your data center or re-architect your applications. You can centralize identities, access control policies, logging, and monitoring for VMware applications on Google Cloud.

Conclusion

So there you have it! Google Cloud VMware Engine, its use cases, benefits, and how it works. If this has piqued your interest, check out the Google Cloud VMware Engine documentation and demo for more details.  

Here is a video on Google Cloud VMware Engine: 

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