BareMetal Infrastructure on Azure: Overview and Implementation

Explore the concept of BareMetal Infrastructure on Azure in this 25-minute video tutorial. Learn about normal Azure ARM resources, the definition and functionality of BareMetal Infrastructure, and its implementation as a jointly engineered solution between Microsoft and Nutanix. Discover the components required, including bare metal servers, VXLAN tunnels, and customer virtual networks. Understand the automation process via the NC2 portal, network configurations, and limitations for bare metal hosts. Gain insights into the benefits of this solution, such as retaining on-premises Nutanix management and leveraging Azure PaaS workload adjacency. Clarify misconceptions about global peering, NAT gateways, private endpoints, and load balancer usage for User VMs and bare metal hosts.

- Introduction
- Normal Azure ARM resources
- What is BareMetal Infrastructure
- 3rd part not 1st party offering
- Bare metal servers
- VXLAN tunnel to Nutanix network and setup
- Customer vnet
- Components required
- Why use the solution
- Summary and close
- While NC2 is a 3rd Party Azure offering, it is a jointly engineered solution between Microsoft and Nutanix. It does not require a contract / minimum length commitment, and comes with automation via the NC2 portal to build the end-to-end cluster configuration.
- The NC2 customer retains what they do on-prem with their existing Nutanix management plane, i.e. single control plane. The workloads in User VMs can also benefit from the adjacency to Azure PaaS workloads via private endpoints more on those below.
- The explained setup, ToR switch integration, cutover of addressing from the Nutanix services vNet to the customer vNet, etc is all managed and deployed automatically via the NC2 Portal. The Portal requires simple submission of a form to perform this automation
- Global Peering is not supported for delegated subnets, but is not a restriction for User VMs that can have routes added to control traffic flow.
- NAT Gateway is mandatory for the bare metal hosts, but not for UserVM that can have routes added to control traffic flow. There is also the possibility for the peered network routes or a VPN to be used to control host and Nutanix management traffic.
- Private endpoints do not work for the bare metal hosts on the delegated subnets, but is not a restriction for User VMs.
- NSGs, UDRs, and Private Endpoints are limitations for bare metal hosts only on the delegated subnet. User VMs are not limited by these restrictions.
- While load balancers do not work for workloads that are on the Nutanix-managed network overlay, Azure Load Balancer can be used for the Azure Floating IP addresses that can be assigned to workloads NAT’ed by Nutanix.