Updated; This comparison is updated on December 1st 2020. It includes both VMware server offerings, the new Azure offering (not cloudsimple based) and the new regions and price changes for Azure and Google.
If you want to extend your on-premise VMware environment to the public cloud, you wil find that most public clouds offer a VMware solution for their platform. Recently the Oracle Cloud also introduced an official VMware solution called OCVS (Oracle Cloud VMware Solution), so I thought it would make sense to make a comparison of the offerings.
Let’s start high level with the actual offerings. VMware (on AWS), Azure and Google offer managed VMware solutions, which mean they have full admin rights and manage the environment for you, while you typically get a subset of access to provision your virtual machines. The Oracle offering is different. It is not a managed platform, the VMware environment is provisioned automatically for you on baremetal servers, but the customer is the only one that has access to the environment (including root access to ESXi servers). So you do have to manage this your self (like on-premise), but do not run into compliance issues that the cloud vendor has access to your VM instances and data.
Service Offerings
| VMware Cloud on AWS | Azure VMware Solution | Google Cloud VMware Engine | Oracle Cloud VMware Solution | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Contolled and Managed by | VMware | Microsoft | Customer | |
| Full system access | No | No | No | Yes |
| Runs in Customer's Tenenacy | No | Yes | No | Yes |
| Connect to other Cloud Services | need account linking for connecting to AWS Services | Run as private cloud in customer's tenancy | Requires gateway to bridge google Cloud to Vmware Engine Curcuit | Runs directly in customer's own Virtual Cloud Networks |
All offerings are subscription based. This not only includes the actual hardware, but also the VMware licenses. There are some differences with regards to HCX and SRM, if those elements are part of the subscription, or are an additional subscription cost or if you need to bring your own license for that element (BYOL).
Included VMware Software
| VMware Cloud on AWS | Azure VMware Solution | Google Cloud VMware Engine | Oracle Cloud VMware Solution | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| vSphere, vSAN, NSX-T, vCenter | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| HCX | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| SRM | Possible to subscribe to separately | BYOL | BYOL | BYOL |
While Oracle is the last one to offer this solution, they have globally the best coverage. This is due to the fact that bare metal servers are part of every region, and the OCVS is just an “image” (with some extra configuration automation) that be run on these bare metal servers.
Availability in Regions
| VMware Cloud on AWS | Azure VMware Solution | Google Cloud VMware Engine | Oracle Cloud VMware Solution | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| North America | 5 | 4 | 2 | 5 |
| South America | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| Europe | 5 | 1 | 3 | 5 |
| Middle East | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 |
| India | 1 | 0 | 0 | 2 |
| Asia | 3 | 1 | 1 | 4 |
| Australia | 1 | 1 | 1 | 2 |
| Total | 16 | 7 | 7 | 21 |
So what type of servers are these cloud providers using? Well here an overview of the actual bare metal servers:
Production environment - Shapes
| VMware Cloud on AWS | Azure VMware Solution | Google Cloud VMware Engine | Oracle Cloud VMware Solution | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Shape Name | i3.metal | i3en.metal | AV36 | ve1-standard-72 | BM.DenseIO2.52 |
| CPU | Intel Xeon E5-2686 v4 (Broadwell) | Intel Xeon Platinum 8000 series processor (Skylake-SP or Cascade Lake) | ? | Intel Xeon Gold 6240 (Skylake) 2.6 GHz (3.9 GHz Turbo) x2, 36 cores/72 hyper-threads | Intel Xeon Platinum 8167M. Base frequency 2.0 GHz, max turbo frequency 2.4 GHz |
| CPU Cores | 36 | 48 | 36 | 36 | 52 |
| Memory | 512 | 768 | 576 | 768 | 768 |
| NVME Storage | 10,7 | 45,8 | 15,36 | 19,2 | 51,2 |
| Minimum Servers | 2 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 3 |
As all these solutions are based on vSAN, you need at least 3 servers to have redundancy for the storage layer. This is there for also the minimum of servers for all these offerings. So here an overview of the minimum configuration in each cloud environment.
Minimum Server Production Environment
| VMware Cloud on AWS | Azure VMware Solution | Google Cloud VMware Engine | Oracle Cloud VMware Solution | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CPU Cores | 72 | 144 | 108 | 108 | 156 |
| Memory GiB | 1024 | 2304 | 1728 | 2304 | 2304 |
| NVME Storage TiB (RAW Storage) | 21,4 | 137,4 | 46,08 | 57,6 | 153,6 |
So how much do you have to pay for these solutions? Well VMware (on AWS), Azure and Google sell the subscription based on a on-demand pricing or with a 1 or 3 year commit model. Also the pricing is different for every location where they offer this. Oracle’s offering is the same price globally! and without having to commit for 1 or 3 years.
Minimum Server - Monthly Price North America East
| VMware Cloud on AWS | Azure VMware Solution | Google Cloud VMware Engine | Oracle Cloud VMware Solution | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| On Demand | $12.217,37 | $37.832,69 | $20.169,90 | $20.345,10 | $23.129,03 |
| 1 year fixed | $8.664,37 | $28.184,21 | $13.599,90 | $15.373,80 | $23.129,03 |
| 3 year fixed | $6.075,79 | $20.386,05 | $9.417,00 | $11.694,60 | $23.129,03 |
Minimum Server - Monthly Price Europe
| VMware Cloud on AWS @ Frankfurt | Azure VMware Solution @ Amsterdam | Google Cloud VMware Engine | Oracle Cloud VMware Solution @ Frankurt or Amsterdam | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| On Demand | $14.566,87 | $45.198,33 | $21.067,00 | $23.279,70 | $23.129,03 |
| 1 year fixed | $10.330,81 | $33.755,35 | $14.016,00 | $17.585,70 | $23.129,03 |
| 3 year fixed | $7.244,37 | $24.434,05 | $9.855,00 | $13.380,90 | $23.129,03 |
Comparing cost is always difficult as every offering is based on a different amount or CPUs, Memory, Storage space and included software components, but here an overview if we take the total price and divide it by the amount of CPUs, Memory and available storage.
Relative price Virginia based on 1 year fixed
| VMware Cloud on AWS | Azure VMware Solution | Google Cloud VMware Engine | Oracle Cloud VMware Solution | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 CPU | $120,34 | $195,72 | $124,10 | $142,35 | $148,26 |
| 1 Memory GiB | $8,46 | $12,23 | $7,76 | $6,67 | $10,04 |
| 1 TiB Storage | $404,88 | $205,13 | $290,86 | $266,91 | $150,58 |
Relative price Frankfurt based on 1 year fixed
| VMware Cloud on AWS | Azure VMware Solution | Google Cloud VMware Engine | Oracle Cloud VMware Solution | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 CPU | $143,48 | $234,41 | $129,78 | $162,83 | $148,26 |
| 1 Memory GiB | $10,09 | $14,65 | $8,11 | $7,63 | $10,04 |
| 1 TiB Storage | $482,75 | $245,67 | $304,17 | $305,31 | $150,58 |
Looking globally, you will see that the global single-rate strategy of Oracle really helps to provide a VMware Solution around the globe at a competitive price.
more information:
VMware Cloud on AWS: https://cloud.vmware.com/vmc-aws/pricing|
Azure VMware soltion: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/details/azure-vmware/
Google VMware engine: https://cloud.google.com/vmware-engine
Oracle VMware Solution: https://www.oracle.com/cloud/compute/vmware/
If you are missing any information or see incorrect information, please let me know at richard@oc-blog.com
Pingback: Want to learn more about VMware on OCI (OCVS)? – Oracle Cloud Blog
I am little confused by your use of decimal and periods in currency value.
Thanks.
-Paul
Thanks! Updated the whole document, including this fix 🙂
Wrong info on AZURE VMWARE SOLUTION for Service Offerings. Its Customer driven
Why not be completely transparent and fair in your comparison and also show VMware Cloud on AWS i3 Metal as well as i3 Metal with a 2-node configuration? Is that because that comparison chart at the bottom of your blog would show customers a dramatically lower cost of entry into the service for VMC on AWS as compared to OCVS?
No bad intensions, initially just wanted to use one shape per cloud to compare. But I have also added the i3 shape now 🙂
unfortunately on 3y OCI offer is not competitive for the price 🙁