The Oracle Cloud VMware Solution (OCVS) is a hybrid cloud solution that allows VMware workloads to run directly on Oracle Cloud infrastructure. This solution enables businesses to move their existing VMware environments to the cloud without the need to make significant changes to their applications or infrastructure. OCVS allows customers to continue using their familiar VMware tools and processes while taking advantage of the benefits of public cloud, such as scalability, agility, and security.
Instead of migrating workloads to a new platform, Oracle Cloud VMware Solution offers a native VMware environment, enabling users to run vSphere, vCenter, NSX, and vSAN on Oracle Cloud without any changes. This integration is done transparently, providing an easier transition to the cloud without the need to reconfigure or rewrite applications.
The Oracle Cloud VMware Solution (OCVS) provides high-performance dedicated hardware that leverages Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) and runs the entire VMware software suite. Launched in August 2020, this solution allows VMware and Oracle customers to benefit from several key advantages:
- Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) model with VMware overhead: This model abstracts the functionality in the software, giving customers full control over management while consuming the underlying infrastructure as a service. It eliminates traditional data center maintenance tasks such as hardware patching, firmware updates, and troubleshooting, making management easier.
- Cloud migrations with lower risk and business continuity: Use cases include migrating out of data centers, horizontal infrastructure expansion, disaster recovery solutions, and improving system availability.
- Hybrid applications and result-oriented refactoring: VMware-based workloads can run natively on Oracle Cloud infrastructure, but a gradual transition or refactoring of applications is also possible when clear business reasons justify such a change, maximizing the benefits.
- Secure single-tenant infrastructure: OCVS offers highly secure cloud data centers, with Level 3 and 4 certifications, as well as an exclusive government cloud operating in a dual-region for the UK public sector in London and Newport. All of this is connected via a high-speed private network, ensuring data protection and communication reliability.
Key Features of Oracle Cloud VMware Solution (OCVS)
Oracle Cloud VMware Solution stands out for several key features that make it attractive to organizations already using VMware:
- Full VMware Compatibility: OCVS allows you to run VMware applications and workloads in the cloud without the need to reconfigure or rebuild the infrastructure. This includes the use of vSphere, vCenter, vSAN, and NSX in Oracle Cloud.
- Flexible Scalability: The solution allows scaling VMware resources in the cloud according to business needs. Compute nodes can be added or removed without interruption, offering flexibility to adapt to different workloads.
- VM and VMware Application Management: Virtual machines (VMs) created in VMware can be moved transparently between on-premises environments and the cloud, simplifying migration and leveraging existing infrastructure.
- Reduced Operational Complexity: By integrating VMware into Oracle Cloud, organizations can simplify the management of their IT infrastructure, using familiar tools and processes without the need to learn new cloud platforms.
- Integration with Oracle Cloud Services: VMware workloads benefit from Oracle Cloud’s infrastructure, which provides advanced services such as autonomous databases, analytics tools, and world-class security.
- Enhanced Security: Oracle Cloud provides an additional layer of security with customer-defined security policies, data encryption, and full control over access and management.
Architecture of Oracle Cloud VMware Solution
The architecture of Oracle Cloud VMware Solution is designed to offer a hybrid cloud solution with high availability, which can be easily integrated with on-premises VMware deployments. The basic architecture of OCVS consists of several key components:
- vSphere Cluster: Each OCVS deployment is based on a vSphere cluster (the VMware virtualization environment). This cluster may consist of multiple compute hosts to provide high availability and scalability.
- vCenter Server: vCenter Server is used to manage the vSphere cluster, enabling the management of virtual machines (VMs), orchestration tasks, and monitoring the health and performance of the infrastructure.
- vSAN: vSAN (Virtual Storage Area Network) is VMware’s distributed storage solution that manages block storage within the OCVS environment. It provides storage in clusters of compute hosts.
- NSX: NSX is VMware’s network virtualization solution, used to create networks and manage connectivity within OCVS environments. This allows the creation of isolated virtual networks and the application of specific security policies.
- Interconnection with Oracle Cloud: The VMware environment connects directly to Oracle Cloud’s infrastructure, providing integration between the public cloud and the on-premises private VMware cloud.
- Management and Orchestration Capabilities: The solution integrates with management and automation tools such as vRealize Automation to efficiently manage operations and optimize infrastructure.
The following diagram illustrates how the various components of Oracle Cloud VMware Solution’s SDDC are deployed on OCI’s dedicated hardware compute instances and how the solution is integrated into the OCI environment.
The diagram shows three ESXi hosts of an SDDC residing in an OCI VCN. The central host displays the VMware software components installed for compatibility with compute resources (vSphere), networking (NSX-T), and storage (vSAN). The NSX overlay manages traffic flow between virtual machines and between virtual machines and other solution resources. The VCN here includes several gateways enabling connectivity between the SDDC, an on-premises network, the Internet, and Oracle Services Network.
Software or Components of the Oracle Cloud VMware Solution
Oracle Cloud VMware Solution includes several essential components for efficient operation in a virtualized and cloud environment:
- vSphere: VMware’s virtualization platform that allows you to create and manage virtual machines.
- vCenter Server: A centralized management platform for vSphere, which enables the management of virtualized infrastructure.
- vSAN: The software-defined storage system that manages block-level storage in the OCVS environment.
- NSX: VMware’s network and security solution, which provides network segmentation and micro-segmentation security.
- vRealize Operations: A performance monitoring and management tool that helps optimize VMware infrastructure operations.
- VMware HCX (Hybrid Cloud Extension): A tool that facilitates workload migration between the on-premises environment and Oracle Cloud, simplifying application mobility.
- Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI): Oracle’s public cloud infrastructure that interacts with OCVS, offering databases, storage, and cloud networking services.
OCVS Cluster with 1 Host or 2 or More Hosts
The cluster configuration in Oracle Cloud VMware Solution can vary depending on scalability and availability requirements.
- With 1 Host: The basic OCVS cluster can start with a single compute host. In this configuration, all virtual machines run on that one host, which may be suitable for testing or low-load environments. However, this option does not provide high availability or redundancy.
- With 2 or More Hosts: To improve high availability and scalability, it is recommended to use multiple compute hosts in the OCVS cluster. With 2 or more hosts, the system can distribute the load across hosts, providing redundancy and avoiding points of failure. Additionally, virtual machines can be migrated between hosts without interruptions (vMotion).
- High Availability: If a host fails, virtual machines can be automatically relocated to another host within the cluster without interrupting the service.
- Scalability: More hosts can be added as needed to meet additional capacity demands.
Conclusions
The Oracle Cloud VMware Solution is a powerful tool that allows organizations to leverage VMware capabilities on Oracle Cloud infrastructure, providing a seamless and low-risk solution for cloud migration. The solution offers scalability, high availability, and security without compromising the familiarity that IT teams have with VMware tools.
By integrating VMware directly with Oracle’s public cloud, OCVS helps organizations avoid the need to restructure their applications and configurations while enabling the use of powerful cloud services such as autonomous databases and analytics tools.
Oracle Cloud VMware Solution is ideal for businesses that want to maintain their existing VMware infrastructure while benefiting from the advantages of the public cloud, offering an integrated, flexible, and scalable solution.
