Skip to main content

Introduction to Azure Virtual Machines


Introduction to Azure Virtual Machines



In Microsoft Data-centers, Azure Virtual Machines (VMs) are hosted on Windows Server 2012 R2 Hyper-V servers. But these VMs are different from On-Premises VMs in the following aspects:
  • Console access for Azure VMs can be given by enabling monitoring option.
  • Azure supports Generation 1 VMs only.
  • Azure VMs do not support VHDX format.
  • Azure VMs do not support OS upgrade.
  • Azure VMs depend on the VM size and support more than 1 NICs.
Deployment Scenarios
Typical deployment scenarios of VMs are listed below,
  • Create Test and Dev Environments
  • Extending your data center to the cloud
  • Hosting certain applications in the cloud that can leverage benefits of the cloud. Example - Seasonal Applications.
  • Installing Recovery Site using IaaS-based DRS approach that provides significant costs savings.
  • High-performance computing to solve complex problems involving millions of variables or calculations such as an earthquake.
  • Big data analysis that involves processing and mining massive datasets.
Planning Considerations
While planning for the virtual machine deployment, you have to consider the following,
1.    Suitable and Unsuitable Workloads
2.    Supported and Unsupported Server Roles
3.    Supported and Unsupported Server Features
1. Suitable Workloads
Azure VMs can be used for the following Workloads.
  • Highly available service workloads. E.g., Online Stores.
  • Unpredictable Spikes - E.g., News Channels.
  • Periodic workloads - E.g., Retail sales spurt during Holiday Season.
  • Steady workloads - E.g., Extend or offload existing infrastructure to the cloud.
Unsuitable Workloads
When Planning Azure VMs, it is also important to understand that not every application or service is a suitable fit for the cloud.
Examples
·         Low volume or limited growth workloads - such services or applications can be run on commodity hardware on-premise and will be less expensive than in the cloud.
·         Regulated environment workloads - Certain data is regulated by an organization or the local government. Such restricted and confidential data must be kept on-premises.
2. Unsupported Server Roles
Most of the Windows Roles can be enabled on Azure VMs, but few Roles are not supported in Azure VM.
  • Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol Server
  • Hyper-V (Hyper-V role is supported in Azure Ev3 and Dv3 series VMs only)
  • Rights Management Services
  • Windows Deployment Services
3. Unsupported Server Features
The following significant features are not supported.
  • BitLocker Drive Encryption (on the operating system hard disk, may be used on data disks)
  • Internet Storage Name Server
  • Multipath I/O
  • Network Load Balancing
  • Peer Name Resolution Protocol
  • RRAS
  • DirectAccess
  • SNMP Services
  • Storage Manager for SANs
  • Windows Internet Name Service
  • Wireless LAN Service


Azure Cost Optimization Tools
Now you know the consideration, the next major planning factors with any cloud-based service are:
  • Availability of resources
  • Cost optimization.
To help with estimating the potential costs and to achieve the cost optimization following tools are used:
·         Pricing Calculator tool enables you to estimate the cost of different workloads and services in Microsoft Azure.
·         TCO Calculator estimates the cost savings that can be realized by migrating the application workloads to Microsoft Azure.
Pricing Calculator can be used to estimate the costs for Azure VMs.
VM size and Configuration decides the Cost of the VM
VM sizing is based on,
  • Compute: Capacity required
  • Storage: Size, location, and configuration
  • Disk: Size, persistence and caching
VM configuration deals with,
  • Operating System: Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows Server 2016
  • IP Address allocation: Static or Dynamic IP addresses
  • Availability: Uptime requirements, geo-distribution, service level agreements, and accessibility.
  • Scale set: Type of scaling and threshold

Create Azure VM:





Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Troubleshooting transient connection errors to Azure SQL Database

Troubleshooting transient connection errors to Azure SQL Database Dear friends, I'm Yogesh. At my work place, I have faced these type of issues at times.  Let us understand what is this transient error?  A transient error has an underlying cause that soon resolves itself. It causes occasionally is when the Azure system quickly shifts hardware resources to better load-balance various workloads. Most of these reconfiguration events finish in less than 60 seconds.  During this reconfiguration time span, you might have connectivity issues to SQL Database.  To handle them, implement retry logic in their code instead of surfacing them to users as application errors. If your client program uses ADO.NET, your program is told about the transient error by the throw of  SqlException . What is the solution? Can Retry logic works? When your program communicates with SQL Database through third-party middleware, ask the vendor whether the middle ware contains retry logic for tr

Geo-Replication in SQL Azure Database

Geo-Replication in SQL Azure Database Geo-Replication  is one of the Azure SQL features which allows making 3 readable replicas to your database in same or different data centers. Geo-Replication option is available for all databases and service tiers in all region. If it is enabled, the application initiates to a secondary database. we will review how to set up Geo-Replication on Azure SQL databases. Geo-Replication is an Azure SQL database feature that allows you to create a readable secondary database in the same region or cross-region. We can failover to the secondary database in case of an outage for a long time on the primary database server. We can also use this feature to migrate a database from one server to another server in the same or cross region with minimal downtime. Geo-replication uses the Always-on feature to replicate committed transactions to the secondary database asynchronously. Select the database, Click on 'Geo Replication' in left hand

DTU and eDTU in Azure SQL

DTU and eDTU in Azure SQL The performance of SQL Database is based on DTU. According to Microsoft, a DTU is a unit of measure of the resources that are guaranteed to be available to a single Azure SQL Database at a specific performance level within a single database tier. A DTU combines CPU, memory, data I/O, and transaction I/O. Databases can be placed into an  elastic pool  on a SQL Database server that shares a pool of resources among those databases. The shared pool of resources are measured by  elastic Database transition units (eDTU) . The advantages of an elastic pool are: They are scaled automatically. They provide predictable costs. They are widely used for  varying  and  unpredictable usage patterns . Determining DTUs for Workloads ·          If you are planning to move your on-premises Databases to Azure SQL Database, Azure provides a  DTU Calculator  to find the approximate DTUs required for setting up the database. ·