Oracle Cloud VMware, Your own vSphere in the Cloud

Posted on January 14, 2021 by Alastair

One of the most exciting projects I worked on last year was the CTOAdvisor Datacentre project around using vSphere-on-Cloud services. The project was for the Oracle Cloud VMware Service (OCVS); they paid for the analysis. We started with the premise (and reality) of an overloaded on-premises infrastructure and a need to rapidly expand capacity to enable a large and sudden work-from-home requirement. The project as a whole looked at the Oracle service plus both VMConAWS and the Google vSphere service. We were unable to test the Azure vSphere service as it was transitioning from the platform built by CloudSimple to a Microsoft developed platform. The short answer is that the Oracle solution’s unique part is that it is not a managed service; you get complete control and responsibility. The other notable aspect is that on OCVS, the vSphere network is far better integrated with the cloud-native network than the other cloud vSphere platforms. My role was primarily around the Build Day TV videos we made, with Thom Greene being the hands-on technical expert. The videos show the practical, technical details of extending on-premises vSphere into OCVS.

Below is the list of videos walking through the deployment process:

  1. Oracle Cloud Virtual Network, Jump Host
  2. vSphere Cluster Deploy Wizard
  3. Fast Connect to On-Premises using MegaPort
  4. Linking vCenter to On-Premises
  5. VMware View deployment
  6. vSphere High Availability on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure

I also wrote some posts on BuildDayLive.com with my thoughts on OCVS and when it is the right solution. The first element is the importance of consistent and straightforward network access. The second is about the Enterprise friendly nature of OCVS and the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) in general. A related topic is the ability to keep more of your existing operational processes as you add OCVS to your existing vSphere. The final post is about how you can easily use the OCI services with OCVS since the networks are all directly connected and under your control. The clear differentiating feature for OCVS is that you get full control of the vSphere hosts and vCenter, which is impossible with other vSphere-on-cloud services.

© 2021, Alastair. All rights reserved.

About Alastair

I am a professional geek, working in IT Infrastructure. Mostly I help to communicate and educate around the use of current technology and the direction of future technologies.
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