Category Archives: Datacenter Management

Datacenter Modernization: a real case with Microsoft solutions

The statistics speak for themselves, beyond the 90% some companies already have or foresee, in the short term, to adopt a hybrid strategy for their IT infrastructure. These data are confirmed by the daily events, where several customers include in their investment plans both the maintenance of workloads on on-premises infrastructures, both the adoption of solutions in the public cloud. At the same time, a process of modernization of applications is supported with the aim of making the most of the potential and innovation offered by these infrastructures. So we live in the era of hybrid cloud and Microsoft offers several interesting solutions to modernize datacenter and easily manage hybrid infrastructure. This article gives a real example of how a customer has embarked on the modernization path of their datacenter thanks to Azure Stack HCI and how, via Azure Arc, was able to extend Azure services and management principles to its on-premises infrastructure as well.

Initial customer request and problems to be solved

The customer in question wanted to activate a new modern and integrated virtualization infrastructure at their datacenter, to allow you to configure quickly, dynamic and flexible application workloads. The infrastructure in use by the customer was not adequate and encountered various problems, including:

Non-scalable and inflexible virtualization solution
Hardware obsolescence
Configurations that did not ensure adequate availability of virtualized systems
Performance and stability issues
Difficulty in managing the various infrastructure components

Characteristics of the proposed solutions, adopted and benefits obtained

The customer has decided to adopt a hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI), where several hardware components have been removed, replaced by software that can merge layers of compute, storage and network in one solution. In this way it made a transition from a traditional "three tier" infrastructure, composed of network switches, appliance, physical systems with onboard hypervisors, storage fabric and SAN, toward hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI).

Figure 1 - Transition from a "Three Tier" infrastructure to a Hyper-Converged Infrastructure (HCI)

Azure Stack HCI: the complete stack of the Hyper-Converged infrastructure

This was all done by adopting the solution Microsoft Azure Stack HCI, which allows the execution of workloads and an easy connection to Azure of the hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI). The main characteristics of the solution are reported in the following paragraphs.

Choosing and customizing your hardware

The customer was able to customize the hardware solution according to their needs, going to configure the processor, memory, storage and features of network adapters, respecting the supplier's compatibility matrices.

Figure 2 - Hardware composition of the Azure Stack HCI solution

There are several hardware vendors that offer suitable solutions to run Azure Stack HCI and can be consulted by accessing this link. The choice is wide and falls on more than 200 solutions of more than 20 different partners. Azure Stack HCI requires hardware that is specifically tested and validated by various vendors.

Dedicated and specific operating system

The operating system of the solution Azure Stack HCI is a specific operating system with a simplified composition and more up-to-date components than Windows Server. Roles that are not required by the solution are not included in this operating system, but there is the latest hypervisor also used in Azure environment, with software-defined networking and storage technologies optimized for virtualization.

The local user interface is minimal and is designed to be managed remotely.

Figure 3 - Azure Stack HCI OS interface

Disaster recovery and failover of virtual machines

The customer also took advantage of the possibility of creating a stretched cluster to extend their cluster Azure Stack HCI, in the specific case in two different buildings. This functionality is based on storage replication (synchronous in this scenario) contemplating encryption, local site resilience and automatic failover of virtual machines in the event of a disaster.

Figure 4 – Stretched cluster dell’architettura hyper-converged di Azure Stack HCI

Updates of the entire solution stack (full-stack updates)

To reduce the complexity and operational costs of the solution update process, the customer can start in Azure Stack HCI the process that involves the full-stack upgrade (Firmware / driver along with the operating system) directly from Windows Admin Center.

Figure 5 - Solution updates of the Dell EMC branded Azure Stack HCI solution

Azure Hybrid Service: familiarity in management and operation

The customer is able to manage their infrastructure based on Azure Stack HCI in a simple way and without adopting specific software tools, as if it were an extension of the public cloud, thanks to the features mentioned in the following paragraphs.

Native integration in Azure

Azure Stack HCI natively integrates with Azure services and Azure Resource Manager (ARM). No agent is required for this integration, but Azure Arc is integrated directly into the operating system. This allows you to view, direct from the Azure Portal, the cluster Azure Stack HCI on-premises exactly like an Azure resource.

Figure 6 - Azure Stack HCI integration into Azure

By integrating with Azure Resource Manager, the customer can take advantage of the following benefits of Azure-based management:

Adopting Standard Azure Resource Manager-Based Constructs (ARM)
Classification of Clusters with Tags
Organizing Clusters in Resource Groups
Viewing all clusters Azure Stack HCI in one centralized view
Managing access using Azure Identity Access Management (IAM)

Furthermore, from the Azure Stack HCI resource you can locate, add, modify or remove extensions, thanks to which you can easily access the management features.

Figure 7 - Azure Stack HCI management capabilities

Arc-enabled VM management

In addition to managing the cluster, the customer can also use Azure Arc to provision and manage virtual machines running on Azure Stack HCI, directly from the Azure portal. Virtual machines and their associated resources (images, disks, and network) are projected into ARM as separate resources using a new multi-platform technology called Arc Resource Bridge.

In this way you can:

achieve consistent management between cloud resources and Azure Stack HCI resources;
automate virtual machine deployments using ARM templates;
guarantee self-service access thanks to Azure RBAC support.

Figure 8 - Features provided by Azure Arc integration for Azure Stack HCI VMs

Azure Backup and Azure Site Recovery

Azure Stack HCI supports Azure Backup and Azure Site Recovery. With Microsoft Azure Backup Server (MABS) the customer backs up hosts and active virtual machines in Azure Stack HCI. Furthermore, using Azure Site Recovery it is possible to activate the replication of virtual machines from Azure Stack HCI to Azure, to create specific disaster recovery scenarios.

Infrastructure monitor with Azure Monitor Insights for Azure Stack HCI

Thanks to the solution Azure Stack HCI Insights the customer is able to consult detailed information on integrity, on the performance and use of Azure Stack HCI clusters connected to Azure and registered for related monitoring. Azure Stack HCI Insights stores its data in a Log Analytics workspace, thus having the possibility to use powerful aggregations and filters to better analyze the data collected over time. You have the option of viewing the monitor data of a single cluster from the Azure Stack HCI resource page or you can use Azure Monitor to obtain an aggregate view of multiple Azure Stack HCI clusters with an overview of the health of the cluster, the state of nodes and virtual machines (CPU, memory and storage consumption), performance metrics and more. This is the same data also provided by Windows Admin Center, but designed to scale up to 500 cluster at the same time.

Figure 9 - Azure Monitor Insights control panel for Azure Stack HCI

Azure benefit for Windows Server

Microsoft offers special benefits when deploying Windows Server in Azure environment, and the same benefits are also available on Azure Stack HCI.

Figure 10 – Azure benefit for Windows Server

Azure Stack HCI allows you to:

Deploy virtual machines with Windows Server 2022 Azure Datacenter edition, which offers specific features not available in the classic Standard and Datacenter editions. To learn more about the features available in this edition, you can consult this article.
Get extended security updates for free, just like in Azure. This is true for both Windows Server 2008 / R2, both for Windows Server 2012 / R2, in addition to the corresponding versions of SQL Server.
Obtain the license and activate the Windows Server machines as in Azure. Azure Stack HCI as well as allowing you to use your own Datacenter license to enable automatic activation of virtual machines (Automatic VM Activation – AVMA), provides the option to pay the Windows Server license for guest systems through your Azure subscription, just like in Azure environment.

Dedicated Azure Support Team

Azure Stack HCI is in effect an Azure solution, therefore the customer can take advantage of Azure support with the following characteristics:

You can easily request technical support directly from the Azure portal.
Support will be provided by a new team of experts dedicated to supporting the solution Azure Stack HCI.
You can choose from different support plans, depending on your needs.

Infrastructure innovation and new evolved scenarios

In the Azure Stack HCI environment, in addition to running virtual machines, you can activate Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) and Azure Virtual Desktop.

Azure Kubernetes Service in Azure Stack HCI

This on-premises AKS implementation scenario allows you to automate the large-scale execution of modern applications based on micro-services. Thanks to Azure Stack HCI, the adoption of these container-based application architectures can be hosted directly in your own datacenter, adopting the same Kubernetes management experience that you have with the managed service present in the Azure public cloud.

Figure 11 - AKS overview on Azure Stack HCI

For more information, you can consult the article Azure Kubernetes Service in an Azure Stack HCI environment.

Azure Virtual Desktop for Azure Stack HCI

In situations where applications are sensitive to latency, such as video editing, or scenarios where users need to take advantage of a legacy system present on-premises that cannot be easily reached, Azure Virtual Desktop adds a new hybrid option thanks to Azure Stack HCI. Azure Virtual Desktop for Azure Stack HCI uses the same cloud management plan as regular Azure Virtual Desktop, but it allows you to create session host pools using virtual machines running on Azure Stack HCI. These virtual machines can run Windows 10 and/or Windows 11 Enterprise multi-session. By placing desktops closer to users, it is possible to enable direct access with low latency and without round trip.

Conclusions

Microsoft operates one of the largest data centers in the world and is making large investments to bring the experience gained and the innovation of the cloud to Azure Stack HCI. This customer, relying on Azure Stack HCI is taking advantage of a subscription service that receives regular feature updates, with the important goal of being able to exploit the technology tested on a large scale in the cloud on-premises. Furthermore, is able to manage the resources of its environment in a unified way and have a continuous innovation of its hybrid infrastructure.

Azure Management services: what's new in March 2022

In March there were several news announced by Microsoft regarding Azure management services. In this series of articles, published on a monthly basis, major announcements are listed, accompanied by the necessary references to be able to conduct further studies on.

The following diagram shows the different areas related to management, which are covered in this series of articles, in order to stay up to date on these topics and to better deploy and maintain applications and resources.

Figure 1 – Management services in Azure overview

Monitor

Azure Monitor

New agent: support for Private Links

The new Azure Monitor agent introduced support for network configurations via private link. This configuration allows you to operate in restricted environments that require special network requirements and a high degree of isolation.

Govern

Azure Cost Management

Automated emails on cost views

To allow you to stay up to date on cost changes in Azure Cost Management and Billing the possibility of sending automated e-mails has been introduced. From the cost analysis, selecting a graphic view, you have the opportunity to subscribe to updates on a daily basis, weekly or monthly and even share those views with people outside the Azure portal.

Updates related toAzure Cost Management and Billing

Microsoft is constantly looking for new methodologies to improve Azure Cost Management and Billing, the solution to provide greater visibility into where costs are accumulating in the cloud, identify and prevent incorrect spending patterns and optimize costs . Inthis article some of the latest improvements and updates regarding this solution are reported.

Secure

Microsoft Defender for Cloud

New features, bug fixes and deprecated features of Microsoft Defender for Cloud

Microsoft Defender for Cloud development is constantly evolving and improvements are being made on an ongoing basis. To stay up to date on the latest developments, Microsoft updates this page, this provides information about new features, bug fixes and deprecated features. In particular, this month the main news concern:

Protect

Azure Backup

Azure Files Snapshot Protection

To protect Azure Files snapshots from accidental deletion, Azure Backup has added an extra layer of security to the snapshot management solution, integrating with the Azure Files platform's ability to acquire a snapshot lease. This lease creates and maintains a lock on snapshots for delete operations. After taking a snapshot of Azure File, Azure Backup acquires it, thus protecting it from accidental elimination. Furthermore, to ensure that the snapshot is not deleted during a restore operation, Azure Backup also checks the lease status at the beginning of the recovery and acquires it if necessary.

Support for Azure virtual machines with technologies trusted launch (preview)

Trusted launch is an easy way to improve the security of second generation virtual machines, which allows you to get protection from advanced attack techniques, combining technologies that can be independently enabled, such as secure boot and the virtualized version of the Trusted Platform Module (vTPM). Azure introduced support, currently in preview, of Azure VMs with trusted launch features enabled.

Azure Site Recovery

On-demand capacity reservation with Azure Site Recovery to safeguard virtual machine failover

Azure Site Recovery is now integrated with the’on-demand capacity reservation, which allows you to take advantage of the capacity reservation to reserve processing capacity in the disaster recovery region (DR) and thus ensure the execution of workloads during failover processes. By assigning a capacity reservation group (CRG) for protected VMs, Azure Site Recovery will fail over the VMs to that CRG. Furthermore, there is a SLA for the Recovery Time Objective (RTO) of 2 hours.

New Update Rollup

For Azure Site Recovery was released theUpdate Rollup 61 that solves several issues and introduces some improvements. The details and the procedure to follow for the installation can be found in the specific KB.

Migrate

Azure Migrate

New Azure Migrate releases and features

Azure Migrate is the service in Azure that includes a large portfolio of tools that you can use, through a guided experience, to address effectively the most common migration scenarios. To stay up-to-date on the latest developments in the solution, please consult this page, that provides information about new releases and features.

Evaluation of Azure

To test for free and evaluate the services provided by Azure you can access this page.

Azure IaaS and Azure Stack: announcements and updates (March 2022 – Weeks: 11 and 12)

This series of blog posts includes the most important announcements and major updates regarding Azure infrastructure as a service (IaaS) and Azure Stack, officialized by Microsoft in the last two weeks.

Azure

Compute

Trusted launch support for Virtual Machines using Ephemeral OS disks (preview)

Trusted launch is a seamless way to improve the security of generation 2 VMs. It protects against advanced and persistent attack techniques by combining technologies that can be independently enabled like secure boot and virtualized version of trusted platform module (vTPM). Now, Trusted Launch support for VMs using Ephemeral OS disks is available in preview.

Best practices assessment for SQL Server on Azure Virtual Machines

You can now evaluate if your SQL Server on Azure Virtual Machines is following configuration best practices using the SQL best practices assessment feature. You can start or schedule an assessment on the SQL virtual machine blade in the Azure portal. Once the feature is enabled, your SQL Server instance and databases are scanned to provide recommendations for things like indexes, retired features, enabled or missing trace flags, statistics, and more.

Select Azure Dedicated Host SKUs will be retired on 31 March 2023

On 31 March 2023, Azure Dedicated Hosts Dsv3-Type1, Esv3-Type1, Dsv3-Type2, and Esv3-Type2 will be retired. Before that date, you must migrate to the new Dedicated Host SKUs.

Azure HBv3 virtual machines for HPC now upgraded

All Azure HBv3 virtual machine (VM) deployments from 21 March 2022 will include AMD EPYC 3rd Gen processors with 3D V-Cache, codenamed “Milan-X”. The enhanced HBv3 VMs are available in the Azure East US, South Central US, and West Europe regions. All VM deployments from today onward will occur on machines featuring Milan-X processors. Existing HBv3 VMs deployed prior to today’s launch will continue to see AMD EPYC 3^rd Gen processors, codenamed “Milan”, until they are de-allocated and you create a new VM in its place.

New planned datacenter region in Finland (Finland Central)

Microsoft will establish a new datacenter region in the country, offering Finnish organizations local data residency and faster access to the cloud, delivering advanced data security and cloud solutions. The new datacenter region will also include availability zones, providing you with high availability and additional tolerance to datacenter failures.

Networking

Inbound NAT rule now supports port management for backend pools

Standard Load Balancer inbound NAT rule now supports specifying a range of ports for the backend instances. Previously, to enable port forwarding, an inbound NAT rule needed to be created for every instance in Load Balancer’s backend pool. This became complex to manage at scale and resulted in management overhead. The addition of port management for backend pool to inbound NAT rules allows you to specify a range of frontend ports pre-allocated for a specific backend pool to enable port forwarding. Upon scaling, Standard Load Balancer will automatically create port mapping from an available frontend port of the specified range to the specified backend port of the new instance. This capability applies to all types of backend pools composed of Virtual Machines, Virtual Machines Scale Sets, or IP addresses across all Azure regions.

Five Azure classic networking services will be retired on 31 August 2024

Azure Cloud Services (classic) will be retired on 31 August 2024. Because classic Azure Virtual Network, reserved IP addresses, Azure ExpressRoute gateway, Azure Application Gateway, and Azure VPN Gateway are dependent on Azure Cloud Services (classic), they’ll be retired on the same date. Before that date, you’ll need to migrate any resources that use these classic networking services to the Azure Resource Manager deployment model.

Azure Stack

Azure Stack Edge

General Availability of Azure Stack Edge Pro 2

Microsoft has announced the general availability of its Azure Stack Edge Pro 2 solution, a new generation of an AI-enabled edge computing device offered as a service from Microsoft. The Azure Stack Edge Pro 2 offers the following benefits over its precursor, the Azure Stack Edge Pro series:

This series offers multiple models that closely align with your compute, storage, and memory needs. Depending on the model you choose, the compute acceleration could be via one or two Graphical Processing Units (GPU) on the device.
This series has flexible form factors with multiple mounting options. These devices can be rack mounted, mounted on a wall, or even placed on a shelf in your office.
These devices have low acoustic emissions and meet the requirements for noise levels in an office environment.

Azure Stack Hub

Azure Kubernetes Service on Azure Stack Hub (preview)

With Azure Stack Hub’s 2108 update, you can preview Azure Kubernetes Service on Azure Stack Hub. The same service that’s currently found in Azure is available in Azure Stack Hub. Manage Kubernetes clusters in the same way you currently do in Azure and utilize a familiar user experience, CLI, and API.

IoT Hub on Azure Stack Hub public preview will be retired on 30 September 2022

On 30 September 2022, the public preview version of IoT Hub on Azure Stack Hub will be retired. Before that date, we recommend you migrate to Azure IoT Edge gateway. Azure IoT Edge gateway is integrated with Azure IoT Hub running in Azure and provides an end-to-end IoT experience with comprehensive diagnostics capabilities. An Azure IoT Edge gateway can be deployed on an Azure Stack Hub Virtual Machine. Alternatively, you can host a VM on another physical hardware of your choice.

Azure Container Registry on Azure Stack Hub (preview)

With Azure Stack Hub’s 2108 update, you can preview Azure Container Registry on Azure Stack Hub. This service uses private container registries on Azure Stack Hub to store and retrieve OCI-compliant images to support both connected and disconnected scenarios for Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), AKS engine, and other container orchestrator engines.

How to accelerate the application modernization process with Azure

There are several companies that undertake a digital transformation process centered on the public cloud with the aim of increasing innovation, agility and operational efficiency. As part of this path, application modernization is fast becoming a milestone that allows important benefits to be achieved. This article explores how it is possible to undertake and accelerate the modernization process of applications with the solutions available in Microsoft Azure and which opportunities can be seized.

Microsoft Azure offers the flexibility to choose from a wide range of options to host your applications, covering the spectrum of Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), Container-as-a-Service (CaaS) and serverless.

The tendency to develop modern applications, that need microservices-based architectures, make containers the ideal solution for efficiently deploying software and operating on a large scale. In addition to the ability to make consistent deployments, reliable and repeatable in all environments, it is possible to obtain a better use of the infrastructure and a standardization of management practices.

Furthermore, customers can increasingly use containers even for applications that are not specifically designed to use microservices-based architectures. In these cases, it is possible to implement a migration strategy for existing applications that only involves minimal changes to the application code or changes to configurations. These are strictly necessary changes to optimize the application in order to be hosted on PaaS and CaaS solutions.

This migration technique is usually used when:

You want to leverage an existing code base
Code portability is important
The application can be easily packaged to run in an Azure environment
The application must be more scalable and there must be the ability to be deployed faster
We want to promote business agility through continuous innovation by adopting DevOps techniques

Repackage application with Azure Migrate: App Containerization

To facilitate this migration process you can use the Azure Migrate solution which includes many tools and features, including the tool App Containerization. This tool offers a "point-and-containerize" approach to "repackage" applications using containers and making, only if necessary, minimal changes to the code. The tool currently supports containerization of ASP.NET applications and Java web applications running on Apache Tomcat.

Figure 1 – Application modernization capabilities by adopting Azure Migrate: App Containerization

The tool App Containerization allows you to perform the following activities:

Remotely connect to application servers to discover applications and their configurations.
Parameterize configurations and application dependencies, such as database connection strings, to enable consistent and repeatable deployments.
Outsource any static content and states stored on the file system, moving them to persistent storage.
Create and publish container images using Azure Container Registry.
Customize and reuse artifacts generated by tools like Dockerfile, container images and Kubernetes resource definition files. This allows you to integrate them directly into the continuous integration and continuous delivery pipeline (CI / CD).

Furthermore, in Azure Migrate: App Containerization is expected to use Azure Key Vault to manage secrets and automatic integration to monitor Java applications with Azure Application Insights.

Azure App Service vs Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS): which one to choose?

App Containerization allows you to migrate containerized applications using Azure App Service or Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS). The following paragraphs contain some considerations for evaluating which service is best suited to host your applications.

Azure App Service: Azure Web App for Containers

For web-based workloads, there is the ability to run containers from Azure App Service, the Azure web hosting platform, using the serviceAzure Web App for Containers, with the advantage of being able to exploit the distribution methodologies, scalability and monitors inherent in the solution.

The automation and management tasks of a large number of containers and the ways in which they interact with each other is known as orchestration. In case therefore there is a need to orchestrate more containers it is necessary to adopt more sophisticated solutions such asAzure Kubernetes Service (AKS).

Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)

Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) is the fully managed Azure service that allows the activation of a Kubernetes cluster.

Kubernetes, also known as "k8s", provides automated orchestration of containers, improving its reliability and reducing the time and resources required in the DevOps field. Kubernetes tends to simplify deployments, allowing you to automatically perform implementations and rollbacks. Furthermore, it allows to improve the management of applications and to monitor the status of services to avoid errors in the implementation phase. Among the various functions there are services integrity checks, with the ability to restart containers that are not running or that are blocked, allowing to advertise to clients only the services that have started correctly. Kubernetes also allows you to automatically scale based on usage and exactly like containers, allows you to manage the cluster environment in a declarative way, allowing version-controlled and easily replicable configuration.

Figure 2 - Example of microservices architecture based on Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)

Next step: innovate using modern application solutions

The migration technique described in the previous paragraphs is often also the first step to undertake further modernization of the application which involves a redesign. In fact,, the next step is to modify or extend the architecture and code base of the existing application, optimizing it for the cloud platform. When integrating modern application platforms into your cloud adoption strategy, innovation is not limited to containers. This integration offers an important innovation that also involves the adoption of hybrid and multicloud strategies.

Figure 3 – Innovation given by modern application platforms

Conclusions

There is a clear and growing trend that sees a modernization of applications aimed at ensuring greater flexibility, a reduction in the footprint of the infrastructure and the possibility of benefiting from the innovation given by the cloud. This modernization does not necessarily have to pass immediately from a strategy of rebuilding the application from scratch by providing for the use of cloud-native technologies, but it can happen gradually. Thanks to the tool App Containerization of Azure Migrate it is possible to undertake the path of modernization with a simple approach that allows you to quickly benefit from the potential offered by cloud solutions. Furthermore, the awareness that Azure provides different infrastructure solutions to host modern applications facilitates the journey of application modernization.

Azure IaaS and Azure Stack: announcements and updates (March 2022 – Weeks: 09 and 10)

Azure Stack

Azure Stack Edge

Azure Stack Edge Pro 2

Azure Stack Edge Pro 2 is a new generation of an AI-enabled edge computing device offered as a service from Microsoft. The Azure Stack Edge Pro 2 offers the following benefits over its precursor, the Azure Stack Edge Pro series:

This series offers multiple models that closely align with your compute, storage, and memory needs. Depending on the model you choose, the compute acceleration could be via one or two Graphical Processing Units (GPU) on the device.
This series has flexible form factors with multiple mounting options. These devices can be rack mounted, mounted on a wall, or even placed on a shelf in your office.
These devices have low acoustic emissions and meet the requirements for noise levels in an office environment.

The Pro 2 series is designed for deployment in edge locations such as retail, telecommunications, manufacturing, or even healthcare. Here are the various scenarios where Azure Stack Edge Pro 2 can be used for rapid Machine Learning (ML) inferencing at the edge and preprocessing data before sending it to Azure:

Inference with Azure Machine Learning: you can run ML models to get quick results that can be acted on before the data is sent to the cloud.
Preprocess data: transform data before sending it to Azure via compute options such as containerized workloads and Virtual Machines to create a more actionable dataset.
Transfer data over network to Azure: use this solution to easily and quickly transfer data to Azure to enable further compute and analytics or for archival purposes.

Azure Management services: what's new in February 2022

The month of February was full of news and there are several updates that have affected the Azure management services. This article provides an overview of the month's top news, so that we can stay up to date on these topics and have the necessary references to conduct further insights.

Monitor

Azure Monitor

Azure Monitor Agent: new feature to update the extension automatically

With the new Azure Monitor agent, you can get important updates and security fixes by enabling the automatic extension update function within the agent. Basically, when an update is published, the extension updates and replaces the existing version present in the virtual machine or in the scale set.

Azure Monitor Agent: improved Syslog RFC compliance

The latest version of the Azure Monitor agent is now capable of collecting syslog events from the following vendors, standard device types and formats:

Cisco Meraki, ASA, FTD
Sophos XG
Juniper Networks
Corelight Zeek
CipherTrust
NXLog
McAfee
CEF (Common Event Format)

Azure IoT Edge monitor

Thanks to a deep integration with Azure Monitor it is possible to simplify the monitor of Azure IoT Edge devices, through a set of built-in metrics, the IoT Edge Metrics Collector module and a set of “curated visualization”. Through this integration it is possible:

Analyze the efficiency of the solution
Choose the hardware to meet the performance demands of the devices
Monitor blocked resources
Proactively identify problems
Resolve problems quickly
Create custom metrics and dashboards

Ability to set an exact time range in queries

In the queries on the Log Analytics workspaces it is now possible to specify a specific time range, in this way it is possible to carry out precise and more targeted searches.

The Azure Monitor ‘action rules’ are now ‘alert processing rules’

Microsoft has renamed the 'action rules” of Azure Monitor in “alert processing rules”, which will continue to provide post-processing capabilities for alerts triggered in Azure Monitor.

Log Analytics data export

The new Azure Monitor Log Analytics data export feature allows you to send log data not only to Log Analytics workspaces, but also to a storage account or Event Hub. Furthermore, data can be streamed continuously from Log Analytics tables to a storage account or to Event Hub if Microsoft has enabled streaming support for those types of tables.

Custom retention for tables AzureActivity and Usage

In Azure Monitor, the ability to set custom retention has been introduced for tables AzureActivity and Usage present in the Log Analytics workspaces . Previously, AzureActivity and Usage had a minimum of retention of 90 days and such data could not be set with a specific retention. Now the minimum retention for those tables remains of 90 days, useful for audit and troubleshooting purposes, but you can customize the retention period.

Possibility to test the Action Groups (preview)

For Azure Monitor action groups, the ability to test notification settings for alerts has been introduced, in order to:

Check if the notifications work as expected when creating or updating an action group
Self-diagnose the cause of notifications not working as expected

Azure Monitor predictive autoscaling for VM Scale Sets (preview)

Predictive autoscaling, released in preview, uses machine learning algorithms to manage and scale Virtual Machine Scale Sets. This mechanism allows you to predict the overall CPU load on the Virtual Machine Scale Sets, based on historical CPU usage patterns. In this way the scale-out takes place in time to satisfy the demand.

Govern

Azure Cost Management

Anomaly detection

Anomaly detection has been introduced in Azure Cost Management. Thanks to this feature it is possible to consult any anomalies on costs, detected by the tool in the Azure subscriptions, in a specific period.

Enterprise agreement component management in Azure Cost Management and Billing

In Azure Cost Management and Billing you can now create, manage and govern departments, accounts, and subscriptions related to enterprise agreement contracts. In particular, from the Azure portal you can perform the following activities:

Manage the roles of the enterprise agreement contract
Create and manage the hierarchy at the enrollment level(department, account, subscription)
View properties and manage policies
View usage and charges
Download the invoice
View and monitor the Microsoft Azure Consumption Commitment balance (MACC)

Updates related toAzure Cost Management and Billing

Secure

Microsoft Defender for Cloud

New features, bug fixes and deprecated features of Microsoft Defender for Cloud

Protect

Azure Backup

Ability to perform multiple Azure File backups throughout the day

In Azure Backup it is now possible to perform multiple backups during the day, with a maximum frequency of four hours, to take multiple snapshots of the file share. This feature allows you to define a backup schedule in line with working hours, useful for frequent updates to Azure File content. Furthermore, you can use Powershell or the Azure command line interface to create backup policies to generate multiple snapshots during the day according to the defined schedule.

Long term retention for Azure PostgreSQL backup

Azure Backup for PostgreSQL is a scalable solution that does not require the presence of an infrastructure, agents or storage accounts, while providing a simple and consistent experience to centrally manage and monitor backups. Support for long-term backup storage was introduced for this solution.

Automatic backup improvements for SQL Server onboard virtual machines

Automatic backup of Azure Backup, a feature given by the extension of the IaaS SQL agent, provides an automatic backup service for SQL Server on board Azure virtual machines. The following improvements have been added to this functionality:

Longer backup retention time in storage account, passing from 30 days to 90 days.
Ability to choose for each Azure virtual machine a specific container of the storage account as a destination for backups. Previously, it was only allowed to specify a storage account and all backups flowed into the same container.

Restore point cross region for virtual machines

The restore points of a virtual machine are snapshots that contain the metadata of the virtual machine and are consistent for all the disks associated with it. These recovery points can be used to protect workloads from data loss and corruption. Now it is possible to restore points of the virtual machine in any region, regardless of the region in which the virtual machine is deployed.

Azure Site Recovery

Recovery point extended to 15 days

Azure Site Recovery through replication policies allows you to adjust the retention history of recovery points. It is now allowed to keep recovery points up to 15 days instead of 72 hours. Recovery points will be stored with a frequency of 5 minutes for the first 2 hours. Later, they will be deleted and archived less frequently. You can enter any value between 0 and 15 days to configure the retention period in a retention policy. Furthermore, if necessary, it is possible to enable type recovery points “application-consistent” (disabled by default).

New Update Rollup

For Azure Site Recovery was released theUpdate Rollup 60 that solves several issues and introduces some improvements. The details and the procedure to follow for the installation can be found in the specific KB.

Evaluation of Azure

To test for free and evaluate the services provided by Azure you can access this page.

Azure IaaS and Azure Stack: announcements and updates (February 2022 – Weeks: 07 and 08)

Azure

Compute

Hotpatch for Windows Server virtual machines

You can patch and install updates to your Windows Server virtual machines on Azure without requiring a reboot using hotpatch. This capability is available exclusively as part of Azure Automanage for Windows Server for Windows Server Azure Edition core virtual machines, and comes with the following benefits:

Lower workload impact with less reboots
Faster deployment of updates as the packages are smaller, install faster, and have easier patch orchestration with Azure Update Manager
Better protection, as the Hotpatch update packages are scoped to Windows security updates that install faster without rebooting

Virtual Machine level disk bursting supports additional VM types

Virtual Machine level disk bursting supports M-series, Msv2-series Medium Memory, and Mdsv2-series Medium Memory VM families allowing your virtual machine to burst its disk IO and throughput performance for a short time, daily. This enables VMs to handle unforeseen spiky disk traffic smoothly and process batched jobs with speed. There is no additional cost associated with this new capability or adjustments on the VM pricing and it comes enabled by default.

Automatically delete a VM and its associated resources simultaneously

Automatically delete disks, NICs and Public IPs associated with a VM at the same time you delete the VM. With this feature, you can specify the associated resources that should be automatically deleted when you delete a VM. This will allow you to save time and simplify the VM management process.

Storage

Azure NetApp Files: new region and cross-region replication

Azure NetApp Files is now available in Australia Central 2. Additionally, cross-region replication has been enabled between Australia Central and Australia Central 2 region pair.

Azure NetApp Files: application consistent snapshot tool v5.1 (preview)

Application consistent snapshot tool (AzAcSnap) v5.1 is a command-line tool enables you to simplify data protection for third-party databases (SAP HANA) in Linux environments (for example, SUSE and RHEL).

The public preview of application consistent snapshot tool v5.1 supports the following new capabilities:

Oracle Database support
Backint Co-existence
RunBefore and RunAfter capability

These new features can be used with Azure NetApp Files, Azure BareMetal, and now, Azure Managed Disk.

Networking

Application Gateway mutual authentication

Azure Application Gateway is announcing general availability for transport layer security (TLS) mutual authentication. Mutual authentication allows for two-way TLS certificate-based authentication, which allows both client and server to verify each other’s identity. This release strengthens your zero trust networking posture and enables many connected devices, IoT, business to business, and API security scenarios.

You can upload multiple client certificate authority (CA) certificate chains on the Application Gateway to use for client authentication. You can also choose to enable frontend mutual authentication at a per-listener level on Application Gateway. Microsoft is also adding enhancements to server variables supported on Application Gateway to enable you to pass additional client certificate information to backend as HTTP headers.

With this release Microsoft is also extending support for listener specific TLS policies which allows you to configure predefined or custom TLS policies at a per listener granularity, instead of global TLS policies.

How to run VMware workloads natively on Azure

Businesses should adopt flexible and cutting-edge solutions to achieve greater stability, continuity and resilience of the main application workloads that support their core business. Azure VMware Solution (AVS) is the service designed, built and supported by Microsoft, and approved by VMware, which allows customers to easily extend or completely migrate their VMware applications residing on-premises to Azure. This article lists the key aspects of this solution that benefits from the efficiency of Microsoft's public cloud, while maintaining operational consistency with the VMware environment.

What is Azure VMware Solution (AVS)?

Azure VMware Solution (AVS) is a service that allows the provisioning and execution of an environment VMware Cloud Foundation full on Azure. VMware Cloud Foundation is VMware's hybrid cloud platform for managing virtual machines and orchestrating containers, where the entire stack is based on a hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI). This architecture model ensures consistent infrastructure and operation across any private and public cloud, including Microsoft Azure.

Figure 1 – Azure VMware Solution overview

The solution Azure VMware allows customers to adopt a full set of VMware features, with the guarantee of holding the validation "VMware Cloud Verified". This solution helps to achieve consistency, performance and interoperability for existing VMware workloads, without sacrificing speed, scalability and availability of Azure global infrastructure.

An Azure VMware Solution Private Cloud includes:

Dedicated bare-metal servers provided with ESXi VMware hypervisor
vCenter server for managing ESXi and vSAN
VMware NSX-T software defined networking for vSphere vMs
VMware vSAN datastore for vSphere vMs
VMware HCX for workload mobility management

Figure 2 – Azure VMware Solution Macro-Architecture

On these infrastructures, it will be possible to create, deploy or migrate VMware virtual machines, but with the advantage of also using the various services offered by Azure.

Main adoption scenarios

The Azure VMware solution can be adopted to address the following scenarios:

Need to expand your datacenter
Disaster recovery and business continuity
Application Modernization
Reduction, consolidation or decommissioning of your datacenter

Thanks to this solution it is possible to redistribute your VMware-based virtual machines in an automated way, scalable and highly available without changing the underlying vSphere hypervisor. Systems can be migrated by adopting native VMware solutions (VMware HCX) or using Azure Migrate.

Benefits of the solution

Among the main benefits of adopting this solution it is possible to mention:

Ability to take advantage of investments already made in the skills and tools for managing on-premises VMware environments.
Modernization of your application workloads by adopting Azure services and without facing interruptions.
Convenience especially for running Windows and SQL Server workloads. In fact,, customers who adopt this solution are entitled to three years of free extended security updates for Windows Server and SQL Server. Furthermore, being in effect an Azure service, Azure VMware Solution supports Azure Hybrid Benefits, that allow you to maximize the investments made in local Windows Server and SQL Server licenses during the migration or extension to Azure. Finally, you can get a financial benefit by buying Reserved Instances (to 1 or 3 years) to save on the cost of the Azure VMware Solution.

Features of the solution

Azure Private Cloud infrastructure contains vSphere clusters on dedicated bare metal systems, able to scale from 3 to 16 host. It also provides the ability to have multiple clusters in a single Azure Private Cloud. The hosts are high-end and equipped with two Intel processors 18 core, 2,3 GHz and 576 GB RAM.

Storage

Azure Private Clouds provide cluster-level storage using software-defined technology vMware vSAN. All local storage of each host in a cluster is used in a vSAN datastore and at-rest data encryption is enabled by default. The vSAN datastore also enables deduplication and data compression.

All disk groups use an NVMe cache of 1,6 TB with a raw capacity of 15,4 TB per host, based on SSD disks. The raw capacity of a cluster is the capacity per host multiplied by the number of nodes.

You can use Azure storage to extend the storage capacity of these private clouds. For more information about storage, see the Microsoft-specific documentation.

Networking

The solution offers a private cloud environment accessible from on-premises and Azure-based resources. Services like Azure ExpressRoute, VPN connections or Azure Virtual WAN are required to ensure connectivity.

In particular, ExpressRoute is used to connect physical components to the Azure backbone. Since Virtual Network Gateways connected to an ExpressRoute circuit cannot pass traffic between two circuits (one circuit will go to the on-premises environment and one will go to the Azure VMware solution) Microsoft uses the feature ExpressRoute Global Reach to directly connect the local circuit to AVS.

Figure 3 – Azure VMware Solution Networking

If ExpressRoute Global Reach cannot be activated, it is possible to evaluate the adoption of a routing solution using third-party appliances (NVA) or Azure Virtual WAN. In the scenario with NVA it becomes useful Azure Route Server, which simplifies dynamic routing between the virtual network appliance (NVA) and the Azure virtual network. Azure Route Server allows you to exchange routing information directly through the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) between any NVA (which supports this protocol) and the Azure virtual network, without the need to configure or maintain routing tables.

When you activate an Azure Private Cloud with Azure VMware Solution private networks are created for management, provisioning and vMotion functionality.

For further information on networking, see the Microsoft documentation and this document where more details are reported on possible scenarios to ensure connectivity.

Access and security

In order to achieve greater security, Azure VMware solution's private clouds use vSphere role-based access control. vSphere SSO LDAP features can be integrated with Azure Active Directory. For more information on this, see this Microsoft's document.

Management of updates and maintenance of the solution

One of the main advantages of this solution is that the platform is maintained by Microsoft and automatic and regular updates are included, providing the latest feature sets and increased security and stability.

The components of the Azure VMware solution that are subject to updates are as follows:

vCenter and ESXi
vSAN
NSX-T
Underlying hardware with bare metal node and network switch drivers and firmware

The following updates are applied to the Azure VMware solution:

Security patches and bug fixes released by VMware.
Major and minor version updates of VMware components.

In addition to performing updates, the Azure VMware solution also provides a backup of the configuration of the following VMware components:

vCenter Server
NSX-T Manager

More details about maintenance and platform updates can be found in this Microsoft article.

Support and Responsibility

Azure VMware Solution is validated, supported and certified by VMware and Microsoft. The support of the solution is provided by Microsoft which is always the first and only point of contact for the customer. If necessary, Microsoft will coordinate with VMware support for specific issues regarding VMware solutions.

Azure VMware Solution uses a shared responsibility model according to the following matrix:

Figure 4 – Azure VMware Solution: shared responsibility matrix

Solution security

Azure VMware Solution can count on a high degree of security consisting of the following factors:

Figure 5 – Factors that make up the security of Azure VMware Solution

Solution availability

The solution can be adopted in production environments and is currently available on several Azure regions, available at this link.

Solution monitor

The complete monitor of the solution can be done via Azure Monitor and, after the solution is activated in the Azure subscription, automatically starts collecting its logs. Furthermore, you can install the Azure Monitor agent on Linux and Windows virtual machines hosted in the private clouds of the Azure VMware solution, you can also enable the Azure diagnostics extension.

Conclusions

Thanks to the close collaboration between Microsoft and VMware, this solution offers customers who already have an on-premises VMware environment the same possibilities also in the Microsoft public cloud., being able to adopt the wide range of services offered by Azure. Furthermore, this solution allows you to take advantage of a consistent operating model that can increase agility, deployment speed and resiliency of your business critical workloads.

Azure IaaS and Azure Stack: announcements and updates (February 2022 – Weeks: 05 and 06)

Azure

Compute

Deployment enhancements for SQL Server on Azure Virtual Machines

A great update to our Azure Marketplace image with SQL is you can now configure the instance during deployment. Most companies have standards for their SQL instances and can now make configuration changes during deployment vs keeping the preconfigured image settings. Items like moving the system database to a data disk, configuring tempdb data and log files, configuring the amount of memory and more. During SQL VM deployment under SQL Server Settings, you have the options to change the defaults by clicking Change Configuration for storage or Change SQL Instance settings for customizing memory limits, collation, and ad hoc workloads.

Networking

New Azure Firewall capabilities

New Azure Firewall capabilities are available:

Azure Firewall network rule name logging: previously, the event of a network rule hit would show the source, destination IP/port, and the action, allow or deny. With the new functionality, the event logs for network rules will also contain the policy name, Rule Collection Group, Rule Collection, and the rule name hit.
Azure Firewall premium performance boost: this feature increases the maximum throughput of the Azure Firewall Premium by more than 300 percent (to 100Gbps).
Performance whitepaper: to provide customers with a better visibility into the expected performance of Azure Firewall, Microsoft is releasing the Azure Firewall Performance documentation.

Azure Bastion now supports file transfer via the native client (preview)

With the new Azure Bastion native client support in public preview and included in Standard SKU, you can now:

Use either SSH or RDP to upload files to a VM from your local computer.
Use RDP to download files from a VM to your local computer.

Custom virtual network support in Azure Container Apps (preview)

You can now create Azure Container Apps environments into new or existing virtual networks. This enables Container Apps to receive private IP addresses, maintain outbound internet connectivity, and communicate privately with other resources on the same virtual network.

Azure IaaS and Azure Stack: announcements and updates (January 2022 – Weeks: 03 and 04)

Azure

Storage

Azure NetApp Files: new features

New features are constantly added to Azure NetApp Files and previously released preview features are moved into general availability. The following capabilities have recently received general availability status and no longer need registration for use:

The following new features have been added in public preview :

Regional coverage continues to expand, and Azure NetApp Files is now generally available in: