Q: Can I use virtual machine provisioning in Windows Azure Pack to deploy virtual machines to VMware hosts?
A: Windows Azure Pack brings many of the Microsoft Azure experiences to your on-premises environment, including website deployment, database deployment, and virtual machine deployment. The virtual machine provisioning capability is exposed through integration with the Service Provider Foundation, which connects to an on-premises System Center Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) installation. Even though VMM can manage ESX hosts, the Windows Azure Pack virtual machine provisioning feature is only for Hyper-V hosts and won't work with ESX.
If you want to enable provisioning virtual machines to ESX through Windows Azure Pack, you need to leverage some additional software. The following options are available:
- Create runbooks in System Center Orchestrator that provision to VMware (using VMM or not), which are then called using Service Manager service offerings. The service offerings are made available in Windows Azure Pack using GridPro (Request Management for Windows Azure Pack).
- Cloud Assert's V Connect (Windows Azure Pack extension for VMWare VSphere and VCloud) enables ESX integration to Windows Azure Pack.
