Run VMware workloads natively on Azure with a managed VMware private cloud.
Choose Azure VMware Solution to run existing VMware (vSphere, vSAN, NSX) workloads natively on Azure with minimal change. It suits datacenter exit, capacity expansion, and disaster recovery where you want to keep VMware tooling and operations while gaining Azure proximity and scale.
Avoid Azure VMware Solution if you're building cloud-native or can re-platform to Azure-native services — those are more cost-effective and elastic. It's specifically for preserving an existing VMware investment, not for greenfield workloads.
| Hosting model | IaaS (managed VMware) |
|---|---|
| Container support | Not container-based |
| Minimum nodes | 3 |
| State management | Stateless or stateful |
| Web hosting | Agnostic |
| Autoscaling | Built-in service |
| Load balancer | Integrated (VMware NSX) |
| Scale limit | 3 to 16 VMware ESXi hosts per vCenter |
| Multiregion | Single region only — external router plus multiple instances |
| Virtual network integration | Supported |
| Hybrid connectivity | Supported |
| GPU support | Not supported |
| TLS | Set up in the VM |
| Architecture styles | VM workloads based on the VMware format |
| Required skills | VMware administration |
| Operational overhead | Medium — VMware-managed infrastructure |
| Best for teams | Teams with VMware platform requirements |
Yes. It runs the full VMware stack — vSphere, vSAN, and NSX — on dedicated Azure bare-metal hosts, so existing workloads and tooling carry over with little change.
A private cloud starts with three ESXi hosts and scales up; three is the minimum for a supported configuration.
Once a workload can be re-platformed to App Service, AKS, or Azure VMs cost-effectively. AVS is ideal as a fast migration landing zone, with native modernization as a later step.
This is one candidate from the Azure compute decision guide. The right choice depends on your full requirements — evaluate scaling, cost, and operational fit before committing.
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