Microsoft Azure → Amazon Web Services
AWS equivalent of Azure VMware Solution
The closest AWS equivalents of Azure VMware Solution are Amazon EC2 bare metal instances and Amazon Elastic VMware Service (EVS).
About Azure VMware Solution
| Provider | Microsoft Azure |
|---|---|
| Status | Generally available |
| What it is | Microsoft-operated VMware vSphere, vSAN, and NSX private clouds on dedicated Azure bare-metal hosts (AV36/AV36P/AV48/AV52/AV64, with a three-node minimum). All SKUs require a portable VCF subscription from Broadcom. Generation 2 (AV64 only) attaches hosts directly to Azure virtual networks. |
| Documentation | learn.microsoft.com |
| Pricing | Official pricing page |
AWS mappings (2)
| Capability | AWS equivalent | Match |
|---|---|---|
| General-purpose bare-metal servers | Amazon EC2 bare metal instances | Partial match |
| VMware environment in the cloud | Amazon Elastic VMware Service (EVS) | Partial match |
Virtual machines & images(1)
General-purpose bare-metal servers Partial match
EC2 offers .metal sizes for many instance families, and Azure doesn't. On Azure, the closest options are Azure Dedicated Host (single-tenant but still virtualized), nested virtualization on supported VM sizes, or purpose-built bare-metal services such as Azure VMware Solution hosts.
- EC2 bare metal instances behave like regular instances (EBS, VPC, Auto Scaling) and run your own hypervisor if you want one.
- Azure Dedicated Host gives physical isolation and host-level control, but VMs still run on the Azure hypervisor.
- For VMware workloads specifically, Azure VMware Solution (dedicated bare-metal hosts) and Amazon EVS (EC2 bare metal) are the comparable pair. See the VMware row.
Hybrid, edge & VMware(1)
VMware environment in the cloud Partial match
Amazon Elastic VMware Service (EVS) maps to Azure VMware Solution. Both run VMware Cloud Foundation on the provider's bare metal, and both now require a portable VCF subscription from Broadcom. The difference is operations. EVS is self-managed (or partner-managed), while Azure VMware Solution is operated by Microsoft.
- Operations. With EVS, AWS deploys VCF into your VPC, then you (or a partner) operate it with full admin access. Azure VMware Solution is a first-party service where Microsoft manages the hosts, vSphere, vSAN, and NSX lifecycle.
- Licensing. Both require you to bring a portable VMware Cloud Foundation subscription from Broadcom. Azure VMware Solution's pricing page lists every host SKU as "VCF BYOL" and says prices exclude the VCF subscription.
- Minimum size. Azure VMware Solution private clouds need at least three nodes. EVS deploys onto EC2 bare-metal hosts (i4i.metal at launch).