As part of my recent move to Google, I’m working on quickly getting up to speed on the Google Cloud VMware Engine service.

There is a lot of good content out there already, however, it is in various different places. So I’ve decided to create a quick post linking to the various resources that I found. At this stage, they are in no particular order and the list will likely grow over time.

Google Cloud VMware Engine

• Homepage: https://cloud.google.com/vmware-engine
• Documentation: https://cloud.google.com/vmware-engine#section-5
• Use Cases: https://cloud.google.com/vmware-engine#section-6

Google Cloud VMware Engine Overview – Hands-on Lab

• Link: https://docs.hol.vmware.com/HOL-2021/hol-2179-01-ism_html_en/
• A VMware hosted Hands-On lab covering an overview of the GVCE service and also looking at migration to GCVE using VMware HCX.

Google Cloud VMware Engine Logical Design Poster for Workload Mobility

• Link: https://cloud.vmware.com/community/2021/02/25/introducing-google-cloud-vmware-engine-logical-design-poster-workload-mobility/
• The goal of this poster is to provide customers a logical view of what is required to start migrating workloads to GCVE

Google Cloud VMware Engine cheat sheet

• Link: https://cloud.google.com/blog/topics/developers-practitioners/google-cloud-vmware-engine-cheat-sheet
• Video: https://youtu.be/FJGNj_j2BY8
• This blog post will take you through Google Cloud VMware Engine, its benefits, features, and use cases.

Intro to Google Cloud VMware Engine – Deploying a GCVE SDDC with HCX (Matt Elliott)

• Link: https://networkbrouhaha.com/2021/02/gcve-sddc-with-hcx/
• This first post walks through the prerequisites, deploying an SDDC with VMware HCX, and accessing vCenter via VPN Gateway (i.e., OpenVPN).

Intro to Google Cloud VMware Engine – Network and Connectivity Overview (Matt Elliott)

• Link: https://networkbrouhaha.com/2021/03/gcve-network-overview/
• This post provides an overview of the networking configuration and capabilities, and how to connect to it from an external site.

Intro to Google Cloud VMware Engine – Connecting a VPC to GCVE (Matt Elliott)

• Link: https://networkbrouhaha.com/2021/02/gcp-vpc-to-gcve/
• This post shows the process of connecting a VPC to your GCVE environment, and we will use Terraform to do the vast majority of the work.

Intro to Google Cloud VMware Engine – Bastion Host Access with IAP (Matt Elliott)

• Link: https://networkbrouhaha.com/2021/03/gcve-bastion/
• This post builds on the previous posts in this series by deploying a Windows Server 2019 bastion host to manage our Google Cloud VMware Engine (GCVE) SDDC.

Intro to Google Cloud VMware Engine – Common Networking Scenarios (Matt Elliott)

• Link: https://networkbrouhaha.com/2021/05/gcve-networking-scenarios/
• This post will cover some common networking scenarios in Google Cloud VMware Engine (GCVE), like exposing a VM via public IP, accessing cloud-native services, and configuring a basic load balancer in NSX-T.

Horizon on Google Cloud VMware Engine Architecture

• Link: https://techzone.vmware.com/resource/horizon-on-google-cloud-vmware-engine-architecture
• This post provides information about architecting VMware Horizon on Google Cloud VMware Engine.

Google Cloud VMware Engine – Short Demo Video

• Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HYBjhyuyG54&ab_channel=GoogleCloudTech
• This demo provides an overview of the platform and shows how you provision an instance and manage it – all from within the Google Console

Introduction to Google Cloud VMware Cloud Engine – Training Course

• Link: https://acloudguru.com/course/introduction-to-google-cloud-vmware-cloud-engine
• This course will teach you the fundamentals of Google Cloud VMware Engine

How to use multi-VPC networking in Google Cloud VMware Engine

• Link: https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/compute/how-to-use-multi-vpcs-with-google-cloud-vmware-engine
• This post explores in more detail the benefits and use cases that multi-VPC networking enables

How to leverage global address resolution using Cloud DNS in Google Cloud VMware Engine

• Link: https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/vmware-engine/how-to-use-cloud-dns-with-google-cloud-vmware-engine
• This post explains how to leverage Google Cloud DNS with GCVE

I am delighted to announce the next chapter in my career. Today is my first day working for Google! Google Cloud to be specific. The Google Cloud VMware Engine, Center of Excellence to be even more specific!

For me, this a very exciting point in my career. Since the very very days of my IT career, I’ve always been an admirer of Google and all of the services they offer. I was an early Gmail Beta user, back in the day when someone had to invite you to use it. I’ve been an Android user since I brought my HTC Hero back in 2009. I’m all in on Google Home, GoogleTV, YouTubeTV, the list goes on.

Here are a couple of photos of me, the first taken back in 2013 on probably one of my first trips to the US. I just had to visit the Google campus! Who knew that 8 years later, I’d end up working for Google.

The second photo was taken just after I accepted my role at Google a few weeks ago. (I’m not sure why its arms are now missing)

Google Cloud VMware Engine (GCVE)

So what will I be doing? I’ll be working in various ways with the Google Cloud VMware Engine service. Assisting Google customers, creating solution/reference architectures, whitepapers, enablement content, speaking at conferences, etc.  If you’ve not heard of GCVE before now, you soon will! I can promise you that.

Taken from the Google Cloud VMware Engine official website, this sentence sums GCVE up nicely.

Migrate and run your VMware workloads natively on Google Cloud.

So I’ll still be working closely with VMware technologies as I have done for the past 15 years. However, in addition, I will be helping our Google Cloud customers on their journey to integrate their existing legacy VMware workloads with the plethora of cloud services offered on the Google Cloud Platform.

It’s an exciting time to be working in the public cloud and to be working for a company that is continuously innovating and pushing the boundaries of what’s possible. I cannot wait to get stuck in.

In the past few months, there has been a surge in public cloud providers announcing their hosted VMware Cloud Foundation services. Here are a few examples:

• Announcing Google Cloud VMware Engine
• Microsoft announces next evolution of Azure VMware Solution
• Oracle Cloud VMware Solution – A New beginning of a Strategic relationship

In an attempt to try and keep up with the various cloud services that are becoming available, I’ve created the following page: Comparison: Public Cloud-Hosted – VMware Cloud Foundation Services to help me learn more about each individual service offering. Data on each service has been collected in order to have data points from all service providers available in a single place.

At the moment, the table includes information from the following cloud services:

• VMware Cloud on AWS
• Google Cloud VMware Engine
• IBM Cloud® for VMware Solutions
• Oracle Cloud VMware Solution
• Azure VMware Solution (Preview Only)

The page will evolve over time as new services/features become available, so follow me twitter @Simonlong_ for updates. If a cell is empty it’s because I haven’t been able to find the information yet. If you notice any incorrect information, please contact me via twitter @Simonlong_ and I will do my best to update ASAP.