Google Cloud VMware Engine overview

Google Cloud VMware Engine is a fully managed service that lets you run the VMware platform in Google Cloud. This service helps you to retain operational continuity with your existing VMware environments, and enables seamless integration with Google Cloud services. It also offers the following benefits:

  • The ability to scale your capacity as needed and only pay for what you use (pay-as-you-grow flexibility)
  • On-demand provisioning
  • Storage efficiency with vSAN deduplication and compression

When you use Google Cloud VMware Engine, your VMware environments run directly on Google Cloud bare metal infrastructure in Google Cloud locations and fully integrate with the rest of Google Cloud. Google manages the infrastructure and all the necessary networking and management services so you can consume the VMware platform efficiently and securely.

VMware Engine includes vSphere, vCenter, vSAN, NSX, HCX, and corresponding tools, so it's fully compatible with your existing VMware tools, skills training, and the processes used by teams already familiar with VMware. This compatibility enables your team to manage workloads without disrupting existing policies, such as those related to networking, security, data protection, and auditing.

Features and benefits

VMware Engine provides the following features:

  • Infrastructure monitoring, troubleshooting, and support. Google operates your underlying infrastructure as a service and manages VMware platform deployments and upgrades, management plane backups, health and capacity monitoring, alerting, troubleshooting, and remediation. Failed hardware is automatically replaced.
  • Security. VMware Engine provides edge-type networking services—including VPN, public IP, and internet gateways. These services run on Google Cloud and use Google Cloud security features, including distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) protection. Infrastructure is fully dedicated to you and physically isolated from other customers' infrastructure.
  • Hybrid platform. VMware Engine enables high-speed, low-latency connectivity to the rest of Google Cloud and to your on-premises environment. VMware Engine also provides the underlay networking services that VMware requires, including L2/L3 services and firewall rule management.
  • Monitoring. You can use provided tools for monitoring platform activity, resource usage, user account management, billing, and metering.
  • Automation. VMware Engine provides high levels of automation and operational efficiency. Google also publishes solution architectures for using Google Cloud services in an integrated VMware cloud in a public cloud architecture.
  • Operational continuity and policy compatibility. Google offers direct access to VMware platforms. The architecture is compatible with your existing:
    • VMware-based applications
    • Security procedures
    • Disaster recovery backups
    • Audit practices
    • Compliance tools and certifications
  • On-demand provisioning and scaling. On-demand self-service provisioning of VMware cloud environments, with the ability to add and remove capacity on demand or reserve capacity.

Use cases

Retire or migrate data centers
Scale data center capacity in the cloud and stop managing hardware refreshes. Cloud migrations reduce risk and cost by 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
Establish remote access to data, apps, and desktops in Google Cloud. High-bandwidth connections let you quickly upload and download data to recover from incidents. Low-latency networks give you fast response times similar to those of a desktop app. Use the VMware Engine portal and familiar VMware tools to replicate all your policies and networking in the cloud. Recovery and replication with VMware Engine greatly reduces the effort and risk of creating and managing DR and VDI implementations.
Power high-performance applications and databases
Google provides a hyper-converged architecture designed to run your most demanding VMware workloads. Run Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server, middleware systems, and high-performance noSQL databases. Experience the cloud as your own data center with high speed network connections that let you run hybrid apps that span your on-premises environment, VMware on Google Cloud, and Google Cloud private workloads without compromising performance.
Unify DevOps across VMware and Google Cloud
Optimize VMware administration by using Google Cloud services and solutions that can be applied across all your workloads. Access public cloud services without having to expand your data center or re-architect your applications. Centralize identities, access control policies, logging, and monitoring for VMware applications on Google Cloud.

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