Elastic SAN and Nutanix Move for Azure VMware Solution With NC2
By Dwayne Lessner, Principal Technical Marketing Engineer, Nutanix
We are excited to announce the upcoming tech-preview of Elastic SAN support for Nutanix Cloud Clusters (NC2) on Azure solution and the ability to easily move workloads from Azure VMware Solution (AVS) to NC2 on Azure with the Nutanix Move migration tool.
Starting this January, Nutanix will open a tech preview for Elastic SAN integration with the NC2 Azure solution. This will let you attach remote storage volumes from Azure Elastic SAN directly to your NC2 clusters, scaling storage independently from compute. You will be able to provision clusters with flexible storage capacity—up to almost 4X your local NVMe capacity per node—without spinning up unnecessary bare-metal instances. The Elastic SAN volumes will integrate as a second storage tier alongside your local NVMe (Tier 1), and the system will manage the lifecycle transparently to your guest VMs.
Want to run storage-intensive databases or data analytics workloads? You'd need to add more nodes just to get the capacity, driving up your TCO even when you don't need the compute. That trade-off ends with Elastic SAN.
How It Works
When you deploy NC2 through the portal, you will be able to add Elastic SAN volumes uniformly across the cluster at time of deployment. Each node gets a balanced share of remote storage, and AOS treats the combined pool as unified storage. For AN36 nodes with 18.56 TB local NVMe, you can add up to 60 TB of Elastic SAN per node. AN36P nodes support up to 75 TB, and the newer AN64 nodes (general purpose G9) can handle up to 144 TB per node—though network constraints mean you'll need to consider cluster size when maximizing Elastic SAN capacity.
Node layout in Azure when enabling Elastic SAN for more storage capacity.
The architecture is straightforward: your CVMs will persist data to local NVMe first (Tier 1), with Elastic SAN volumes acting as Tier 2 remote storage. This tiered approach maintains performance for hot data while giving you the capacity headroom needed for databases, VDI environments, or data-heavy workloads that previously required more nodes. Each Elastic SAN volume delivers a minimum of 5000 IOPS and 150 MB/s throughput per TiB with around 4ms latency based on Azure numbers from the Elastic configuration—SSD-backed performance that keeps workloads responsive.
Architecture when using Elastic SAN on NC2 on Azure
New mandatory architectural components will include the use of Azure Virtual WAN with a dedicated vHub to use with Elastic SAN. The vHub is used to connect to Elastic SAN by using a private endpoint. There is also an additional vNet to host the Elastic SAN private endpoint. The additional vNet is required due to the delegated subnet in use in the bare-metal subnet. Both the private endpoint and Elastic SAN configuration are all taken care of by the NC2 console on deployment.
You can see how easy this in action by walking thru this deployment demo:
Getting Started with Elastic SAN
Elastic SAN will be available across all NC2 Azure regions, except Qatar Central. Storage increments are fixed at 5 TB for AN36/AN36P nodes and 9 TB for AN64 nodes, and you'll need to bring your own networking rather than using NC2 portal-generated configurations. All deployments will require NCI Ultimate licensing.
If you want to test Elastic SAN in your environment, reach out to the NC2 product management team at nc2-tech-preview@nutanix.com to enroll in the tech-preview. This is your chance to shape feedback before GA and prepare your architecture for storage-independent scaling. We will also be at Microsoft Ignite, come by the Nutanix Booth #1733 (Moscone South, Lower Level) to ask any questions.
If storage capacity has been the bottleneck keeping your workloads off NC2 Azure, it's time to test what's possible when that limit disappears.
Nutanix Move Support for AVS workloads
The new support to be provided by Nutanix Move for migrating workloads from Azure VMware Solution (AVS) to NC2 on Azure addresses a critical pain point for organizations re-evaluating their VMware commitments in the wake of Broadcom's licensing changes. For businesses already running AVS that are facing unexpected cost increases or restrictive bundling, this capability offers a clear exit path to NC2's simplified consumption model without leaving Azure's infrastructure. Best of all, Nutanix Move is included at no cost for Nutanix customers. The business value is compelling: you maintain your Azure presence and gain access to Nutanix's predictable per-node licensing while escaping the VMware ecosystem complexity - all without the risk and expense of repatriating workloads back on-premises or re-architecting for native Azure services that your teams aren't equipped to manage.
Simply add source and destination environments and start moving VMs to NC2.
Nutanix Move will make the technical migration straightforward by connecting directly to your AVS environment and handling the conversion from VMware formats to AHV native workloads running on NC2. You’ll be working through a guided workflow that maps source VMs, defines network translations between AVS and NC2 segments, and orchestrates the cutover with minimal downtime. For organizations worried about the risk of moving production workloads between hypervisors, the incremental replication provided by Move means you can test applications in NC2 before final cutover, and the familiar Azure networking constructs (VNets, ExpressRoute, connectivity to Azure services) remain unchanged from the workload's perspective. This positions NC2 as the natural destination for AVS customers seeking VMware independence while keeping their Azure footprint.
You can keep watch for the release date for Nutanix Move with AVS support on the support portal and look over required network ports if you’re looking to get prepared for your move to NC2.
NC2 Azure has achieved SOC 2 Type 2 compliance
Continuing with our focus on providing assurances to our customers about the security and compliance of our Cloud Services, Nutanix Cloud Clusters (NC2) on Azure successfully completed its annual SOC 2 Type 2 audit and achieved the renewal of its ISO 27001, 27017, 27018, 27701, and 22301 certifications. Additionally, in 2025 NC2 on Azure has received its CSA Star Level 2 Certification for the first time. These attestations and certifications provide independent validation that NC2 controls supporting the security, availability, confidentiality, and privacy of the system have operated effectively and been maintained against these audited standards for the 2024-2025 period. This helps to assure NC2 customers can rely on a globally recognized set of audited controls for the system managed by Nutanix.
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