Archive
#Microsoft #Azure (#IaaS) Cost Estimator Tool version 1.2 released
Have a look at the new version of the Microsoft Azure Cost Estimator Tool, here is a good summary by Courtenay Bernier. It currently only supports US pricing but would give you a good estimate at least and hopefully it’s updated with all other country pricing as well soon!
Back in August of 2014 Microsoft released version 1.0 of the Azure (IaaS) Cost Estimator Tool (view my previous post here). Today I’m happy to announce the release of version 1.2!
The following new features have been updated/added:
- Support for all regions (apart from US) along with associated currencies.
- Support for D-Series virtual machines.
- Export data with new regions and currency symbols.
- Updated instance prices for all regions and currencies.
- Total monthly costs are now calculated over 31 days that’s 744 hours and is aligned with the costs displayed in the Azure portal. (In version 1.0 costs were calculated over 30 days).
Download: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=43376
Estimated runtime of 31 days
D-Series VMs Added Read more…
Cloud Platform Integration Framework–Overview – #Microsoft, #IaaS, #PaaS, #CPIF
Another great blog series from Thomas W Shinder – MSFT and contributors!
The Cloud Platform Integration Framework (CPIF) provides workload integration guidance for onboarding applications into a Microsoft Cloud Solution. CPIF describes how organizations, Microsoft Partners and Solution Integrators should design and deploy Cloud-targeted workloads utilizing the hybrid cloud platform and management capabilities of Azure, System Center and Windows Server
Table of Contents
1.1 Cloud Platform Integration Framework (CPIF) Overview
2 Azure Architectural Pattern Concepts
2.1 Overview of Azure Architectural Patterns
Prepared by:
Joel Yoker – Microsoft
David Ziembicki – Microsoft
Tom Shinder – Microsoft
Cloud Platform Integration Framework Overview and Patterns:
Cloud Platform Integration Framework – Overview and Architecture
Modern Datacenter Architecture Patterns-Multi-Site Data Tier
Modern Datacenter Architecture Patterns – Offsite Batch Processing Tier
Modern Datacenter Architecture Patterns-Global Load Balanced Web Tier
Introduction
1.1 Cloud Platform Integration Framework (CPIF) Overview
The Cloud Platform Integration Framework (CPIF) provides workload integration guidance for onboarding applications into a 
Microsoft Cloud Solution. CPIF describes how organizations, Microsoft Partners and Solution Integrators should design and deploy Cloud-targeted workloads utilizing the hybrid cloud platform and management capabilities of Azure, System Center and Windows Server. The CPIF domains have been decomposed into the following functions:
Figure 1: Cloud Platform Integration Framework
By integrating these functions directly into workloads….
Continue reading here!
//Richard
Microsoft Infrastructure as a Service Foundations – #IaaS, #Cloud, #PaaS, #Microsoft, #Azure
This series of blog posts by Thomas W Shinder – MSFT and contributors is really great and do cover the best practises and principles behind building Microsoft based private or hybrid IaaS services. Have a look at their great work!
The goal of the Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) Foundations series is to help enterprise IT departments and cloud service providers understand, develop, and implement IaaS infrastructures. This series provides comprehensive conceptual background that combines Microsoft software, consolidated guidance, and validated configurations with partner technologies such as compute, network, and storage architectures, in addition to value-added software features.
The IaaS Foundations Series utilizes the core capabilities of the Windows Server 2012 R2 operating system, Hyper-V, System Center 2012 R2, Windows Azure Pack and Microsoft Azure to deliver on-premises and hybrid cloud Infrastructure as a Service.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1: Microsoft Infrastructure as a Service Foundations (this article)
Chapter 2: Microsoft Infrastructure as a Service Compute Foundations
Chapter 3: Microsoft Infrastructure as a Service Network Foundations
Chapter 4: Microsoft Infrastructure as a Service Storage Foundations
Chapter 5: Microsoft Infrastructure as a Service Virtualization Platform Foundations
Chapter 6: Microsoft Infrastructure as a Service Design Patterns–Overview
Chapter 7: Microsoft Infrastructure as a Service Foundations—Converged Architecture Pattern
Chapter 8: Microsoft Infrastructure as a Service Foundations-Software Defined Architecture Pattern
Chapter 9: Microsoft Infrastructure as a Service Foundations-Multi-Tenant Designs
Microsoft Infrastructure as a Service Foundations is written and presented in a way that enables architects, designers, implementers and operators to view the content that is most relevant to them. Some readers will choose the read the entire “book”, while others will focus on areas that are most interesting and relevant to them.
At this time, the Microsoft IaaS Foundations “book” is available in web format only. In the coming days, individual files (one for each chapter) and a single file that represents a compilation of all the chapters, will be made available for download. A link to these files will be included in this article, and in each of the articles included in this “book”.
The world of cloud computing moves quickly and the underlying technologies supporting the infrastructure that powers the cloud change and improve just as fast. For this reason, each of the chapters includes a published date and the versions of the software that are discussed in the text. For non-versioned software and services (such as Microsoft Azure), a note of “feature set and capabilities as of…” date is included.
Your feedback is crucial
A lot of time, energy and expense goes…
Continue reading here!
//Richard
Which #DaaS architecture is right? – #Azure, #RemoteApp, #Microsoft, #Citrix, #Workspace
I really feel for you Solution Architects out there that have to struggle with how to revamp your companies or customers Hosted Desktop/App services. They may be provided by a service provider today, or you do it yourself on-premise and manage them, or you’ve already taken the step to purchase it as a true DaaS/SaaS service from a public cloud provider. Today the options are many, and too many if you add all the hosting models and the technology options you have. From a business perspective you’re getting the heat to deliver something with the word “cloud” in it just because it’s hot, and management then expect that TCO is sooooo low and that you have now problems in delivering at all within a couple of weeks and you can scale up and down without any issues at all from a financial or technical perspective… 😉
Often you also don’t even have the business, security, functional or technical requirements either so you’re supposed to come with the magic solution that fits all needs! 😉
My personal view is also that some of our vendors/partners out there don’t seem to have one (1) clear strategy either (at least not officially).
Some are building and providing their own “cloud architecture” models for DaaS for partners to build on (VMware, Citrix, Microsoft etc.), and then they also are providing specific models for certain partners as well that run on top of other cloud solutions, like Citrix Service Provider (CSP) offerings on Azure or on-premise. As a partner to these companies you also are in a tough spot, are you to partner with them and deliver their technology on your infrastructure, or shall you wait until they deliver a fully working public cloud offering (like WorkSpace Services) and then add your added value on top of that? Options are many and I don’t think that Citrix has given their whole story yet, I still think that they business wise need to go where Microsoft is going by providing a DaaS service by themselves directly to customers and thereby also “cut” the partner network out because once the technology and self-service becomes to easy then what shall they add as value then? There will always be customers that wants help to onboard, operate etc. of course but this will be another type of service and many Citrix and Microsoft partners need to be become more solution focused and get away from the SME space and deliver integration and more IT management consulting skill sets instead.
But let’s get back to more technology…
I’ve been kind of waiting to get some time over to test the RemoteApp service in Azure. I personally think that this is the future and they way that many small to medium size business fairly short shall start to look at. Not all of these companies have the skill set or financials to look at building a good Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) offerings of Windows applications internally. I’m a bit annoyed though that out of the box there isn’t any Desktop-as-a-Service (DaaS) offering and that it’s still just the RDS/Hosted Shared Desktop model that is provided. A real Hosted Virtual Desktop or VDI offering would be nice and a license model that goes with it from Microsoft.
There are today so many different options that companies that want to provide or consume a DaaS service can leverage today, Citrix Service Providers have all of their options in terms of technology stacks (CloudStack, CloudPlatform, CSP for Azure, App Orchestration 2.5, Microsoft System Center, Azure Pack and all options that are out there)… but which one shall/can you select? And what if you’re NOT a Citrix service provider and have a huge datacenter and haven’t already done your CAPEX investments around compute, network and storage etc..? Where do you then turn?
I think that here is where RemoteApp and a future Workplace Services offerings with Citrix on top would be great! You as a customer can turn to a partner/consultant company to get guidance and assess all your requirements and then easily be provisioned an environment that is of the “standard cloud offering” or get a customised one tailored specifically for your needs.
Like in my little demo scenario here I provisioned a fully functional RemoteApp environment that hosted all of the Microsoft Office 2013 apps that I use and also got a lot of storage at the same time… in almost no time at all!
Azure RemoteApp helps employees stay productive anywhere, and on a variety of devices – Windows, Mac OS X, iOS, or Android. Your company’s applications run on Windows Server in the Azure cloud, where they’re easier to scale and update. Users can access their applications remotely from their Internet-connected laptop, tablet, or phone. While appearing to run on the users’ local device, the applications are centralized on Azure’s protected, reliable platform.
Azure RemoteApp combines Windows application experiences with the powerful capabilities of Remote Desktop Services on Microsoft Azure – the cloud for modern business.
I also like the licensing model:
- Azure RemoteApp is priced per user and is billed on a monthly basis.
- The service is offered in two tiers: Basic and Standard. Basic is designed for lighter weight applications (e.g. for task workers). Standard is designed for information workers to run productivity applications.
- Pricing: Each service has a starting price per user that includes 40 hours of service per user. Thereafter, a per hour charge is applied for each user hour up to a capped price per user. You will not pay for any additional usage beyond the capped price in a given month.
RDS on Azure example quote:
More Azure solution pricing examples: http://blogs.technet.com/b/uspartner_ts2team/archive/2014/10/14/more-azure-solution-pricing-examples.aspx
What if you then also shall put Citrix on top of that… cost increases of course and still you’re kind of limited of being a SPLA or CSP in order to build this, or you go and ask a SPLA/CSP to provide it for you if you’re an end-customer.
But back *again* to the test-drive that I did of RemoteApp…
Official GA of Dell with Nutanix!! – #Dell, #Nutanix, #IaaS, #Web-Scale
It’s official! Finally! 😀
WEB-SCALE CONVERGED APPLIANCE
This disruptive solution integrates Dell PowerEdge servers, storage, and Nutanix software to create a scalable, simple, and easy-to-deploy, Web-scale appliance.
WHAT IS WEB-SCALE?
Web-scale is a transformative approach to buying, deploying and managing infrastructure. Pioneered by Internet companies, now available to enterprises. Benefits include:
- Predictable scale: Scale with the needs of your business, one node at a time
- Business agility: Deploy within an hour, update latest software within minutes, and shorten business processes
- Low total cost of ownership: Reduce upfront and ongoing costs by automating processes and spending less time trouble shooting
DELL XC SERIES
Meet the Dell XC Web-scale Converged Appliance – With Software by Nutanix.
FORRESTER REPORT
Forrester Research Evaluates the Web-scale Converged Appliance from Dell and Nutanix.
Read more here!
GARTNER REPORT
Why Your Legacy Storage Vendor Doesn’t Want You to Adopt Web-scale IT Infrastructure.
//Richard
Metro Availability – Nutanix site-to-site cluster! Sooo cool! – #Nutanix, #EnvokeIT
This is a really cool feature, I know many companies right now that are thinking about refreshing their platform (computer, network and storage) solution(s) and datacenter strategy. Most have dual datacenters today and would like to simplify the setup and ensure that they don’t have to handle two private clouds and manually create disaster recovery processes and technical solutions for ensuring that they can ensure high availability of their applications running on top of the IaaS solution.
This is where this new feature from Nutanix comes into play, now you can get data protection and mirroring of your data across two or more sites built into the product. Think about it, you can ensure your application availability in the event of downtime (planned or unplanned). Really cool!! 🙂
Introducing Metro Availability
Business-critical applications demand continuous data availability. This means that access to applications and data must be preserved even during a datacenter outage or planned maintenance event. Many IT teams use metro area networks to maintain connectivity between datacenters so that if one site goes down the other location can run all applications and services with minimal disruption. To keep the applications running, however, requires immediate access to all data.
Nutanix is the first hyper-converged infrastructure vendor to deliver continuous data protection across multiple datacenters. Using synchronous mirroring, Metro Availability stretches datastores for virtual machine clusters across two or more sites located up to 400km apart. All functionality is natively integrated into Nutanix software, and supported across all Nutanix platforms with no hardware changes. Enterprise IT teams benefit from improved business operations by maintaining application availability during planned and unplanned site downtime.
Virtualization teams can now non-disruptively migrate virtual machines between sites during planned maintenance events, providing continuous data protection with zero recovery point objective (RPO) and a near zero recovery time objective (RTO). Metro Availability is deployed within minutes and managed directly from Nutanix Prism UI, eliminating any need for additional management consoles.
- More Flexibility – Only Nutanix enables customers to deploy different configurations for primary and secondary sites, and support one-to-many and many-to-one topologies. Customers are no longer forced to have identical platforms and hardware configurations at each site
- VM Awareness – Individual VMs can be mirrored across sites using Metro Availability, giving administrators unparalleled flexibility in configuring multi-site deployments and improving overall system efficiency
- 2X Greater Distances Between Sites – Nutanix Metro Availability supports single datastores stretched up to 400km – twice what current systems support today
Metro Availability enhances and extends the already rich set of integrated data protection and high availability capabilities in the Nutanix solution, catering to the diverse needs of enterprise customers.
Official release not you can find here!
And contact EnvokeIT if you want more information on how this can provide value to you!
//Richard
Gartner Identifies the Top 10 Strategic Technology Trends for 2015 – #Nutanix, #WebScale, #Dell, #EnvokeIT, #Gartner
As usual it’s very interesting when Gartner takes a look at the trends for the coming year. I must say that I agree with many of them, one of the trends is very close to my heart and what I think should have been on the agenda of most CIO’s prior to 2015, and this is: Web-Scale IT.
Why haven’t more enterprise and solution architects been looking earlier at how to simplify the delivery of the “commodity” service that IaaS should be in todays IT world. Yes I know that most enterprises have a “legacy” environment that is hard to just transform, they have a service delivery organisation with certain competences and are being bombarded by salesmen from the older legacy providers that this new way is scary (up until they themselves come up with a story on web-scale of course). But it’s time to wake up and look at how you can change your Compute, Network and Storage components to reduce complexity, increase flexibility/agility, focus on core business (apps and services on top) and also reduce your TCO.
One way is of course to move to the cloud and let someone else bother about this, but I yet don’t see that the larger enterprises are looking at this and there is a hesitation though most haven’t gotten to the point of understanding the TCO model and how to compare their As-Is costs to the cost that they get from the costing tools of Azure, Amazon etc. Why is this? My view is that most don’t have a clear understanding of their own As-Is TCO, they understand how much a server costs, and storage costs, but not the TCO when it comes to facility/datacenter costs, power & cooling, HW costs, support and operational costs, license costs and the overview of that in a TCO model they can understand or compare with “the cloud”.
Ok, as usual I’m getting a bit sidetracked but I love this topic and I must encourage you to contact EnvokeIT if you need help to understand the Web-Scale IT concept and how it can add value to you and your business. We work with Nutanix and Dell and can assist in assessing your existing As-Is solution and forming the To-Be target architecture and the strategy to get there based on your requirements and needs. Of course we’re not locked into Dell or Nutanix and have experience within Azure and other public cloud providers as well as other hardware vendor solutions like HP, NetApp etc.
If you like to see a really cool solution that is coming then have a look at my previous post including a short and cool video: Dell + Nutanix = awesome!
Here we have the top 10 trends for 2015 that Gartner have identified:
Analysts Examine Top Industry Trends at Gartner Symposium/ITxpo 2014, October 5-9 in Orlando
Gartner, Inc. today highlighted the top 10 technology trends that will be strategic for most organizations in 2015. Analysts presented their findings during the sold out Gartner Symposium/ITxpo, which is taking place here through Thursday.
Gartner defines a strategic technology trend as one with the potential for significant impact on the organization in the next three years. Factors that denote significant impact include a high potential for disruption to the business, end users or IT, the need for a major investment, or the risk of being late to adopt. These technologies impact the organization’s long-term plans, programs and initiatives.
Read more…
Magic Quadrant for Enterprise File Synchronization and Sharing – #ShareFile, #Citrix, #EMC, #Box, #Microsoft
It’s not new but it’s something that I discussed the other day with a customer; who is the market leader when it comes to “corporate dropbox” solutions for enterprises? Gartner did update the Magic Quadrant for Enterprise File Synchronization and Sharing services/solutions and it’s a good read I must say.
You know I am a Citrix fan and a like their story and think that they from an overall virtual workplace offerings are far superior to the other players if you look across the stack from providing “legacy” services like Windows Apps and Desktop, Enterprise Mobility Management capabilities and all the network capabilities to provide the end-to-end service delivery. So it’s really nice to see that they are picking up in the ability to execute and are competing with EMC in the Leaders box!
I just hope that Citrix can stay int he lead and ensure that they price and capacity wise stay in synch with the up comers that are starting to offer really large storage capacity as a part of their cloud offerings. I still see that the capabilities and features of ShareFile are really great, and in some aspects others like Box, Microsoft and others are coming with nice features as well. So let’s see who will rule this market, but currently I think that ShareFile is a really strong player for enterprises but Microsoft will continue to grow and I just wish they add the additional features around security etc that enterprises often require so they can go into the bigger companies as well.
Source: Gartner (July 2014)
Market Definition/Description
This document was revised on 14 July 2014. The document you are viewing is the corrected version. For more information, see the Corrections page on gartner.com.
EFSS refers to a range of on-premises or cloud-based capabilities that enable individuals to synchronize and share documents, photos, videos and files across multiple devices, such as smartphones, tablets and PCs. File sharing can be within the organization, as well as externally (e.g., with partners and customers) or on a mobile device as data sharing among apps. Security and collaboration support are critical capabilities of EFSS to address enterprise priorities.
Beyond file synchronization, sharing and access, EFSS offerings may include different levels of support for:
- Mobility, with native apps for a variety of mobile smartphones, tablets, notebooks and desktops, as well as Web browser support.
- Security, for protection of data on the device, in transit and in cloud services (or servers), such as password protection, remote wipe, data encryption, data loss prevention, digital rights management (DRM), access tracking and reporting. Mature products ensure that files leaving the sharing location are DRM-encrypted and only readable by those authorized to access the data. Audit and compliance support are also present in complete products.
- Administration and management, including integration with an Active Directory and Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) policy enforcement.
- Back-end server integration, e.g., with SharePoint and other corporate platforms. Integration is achieved through connectors (e.g., based on the Content Management Interoperability Services [CMIS] standard and APIs).
- Content manipulation, such as file editing, PDF annotations and note taking.
- Collaboration, such as cooperative editing on a shared document using change tracking and comments; and document-based workflow process support.
- Simplicity and usability, with optimized UIs and interactions, such as file drag and drop and file open in applications.
- Storage, i.e., cloud-based EFSS services often include cloud storage as part of the bundle to implement the EFSS repository. Software EFSS products, instead, may integrate with repositories on-premises or be implemented with a separate repository on-site.
Typical architectures for EFSS offerings are:
- Cloud: Corporate files are accessed via mobile devices, or shared and are stored in the provider’s cloud. Organizations that want to replace the personal cloud services adopted by employees with an enterprise-class alternative under IT control, while preserving the user experience and enhancing mobile collaboration, prefer the cloud method.
- On-premises: The remote access, synchronization and sharing component is deployed on-premises and integrates with corporate data repositories, without file replicas. This method is preferred by organizations under strict regulations about data storage.
- Hybrid: The user and device authentication, security and search mechanisms are implemented in the provider’s cloud. Files and documents are kept in their original location, or can be in third-party clouds. Organizations that want to simplify mobile users’ access to corporate data through the cloud, without creating data replicas in someone else’s cloud, prefer the hybrid method.
There are two types of EFSS offerings:
- Destinations — Stand-alone products with file sync and share as a core capability, which represents a new purchase for an organization.
- Extensions — File sync and share capabilities added, and wrapped around established products or applications — e.g., for collaboration, content management or storage. Organizations can use extensions as part of the broader platform (see “Destinations and Wraparounds Will Reshape the Enterprise File Synchronization and Sharing Market”).
Continue reading here!
//Richard
Dell + Nutanix = awesome! – #Nutanix, #Dell, #EnvokeIT
Hi all,
It’s been a while since I posted something… so the blog backlog is huge right now but I’ll try to finalise all of the items I have prepared soon when time allows!
But this is a really cool thing that I think that many don’t understand the capabilities of! Dell will now provide the awesome Nutanix distributed file system on their XC series!
You all know much I already like Nutanix and the the way that it “just works”! Think about it for a while, it’s so easy just to build a platform that you can scale and manage in such a simple manner. It’s also like a match in heaven for the Hyper-V Failover cluster and VMM world with storage presented over SMB3.. so easy to setup, so simple to manage, and what a performance and scalable solution!
If you have any thoughts, questions or simply just want to learn more about Nutanix or Dell then contact us at EnvokeIT, we know how this works and can help you to simplify and modernise your IaaS service in a true web-scale way!
//Richard
Azure ExpressRoute is a really cool and important feature – #Microsoft, #Azure, #ExpressRoute
Everyone talks about the “cloud” and how you can leverage all the benefits or a public, private or hybrid cloud model. And one challenge and huge risks that enterprises see with moving into a public cloud like Azure is the dependency to the public Internet.
Is the connection secure, stable, available and how can you determine that I have the connectivity between my on-premise stuff and Azure..?
It’s here where I think that Microsoft really has made a HUGE step towards getting more traction with the larger enterprises with the new ExpressRoute feature! Now you can get your own dedicated connection to Azure through it’s partner network of service providers like AT&T and Verizon etc.!
Microsoft Azure ExpressRoute lets you create private connections between Azure datacenters and infrastructure that’s on your premises or in a co-location environment. With ExpressRoute, you can establish connections to Azure at an ExpressRoute partner co-location facility or directly connect to Azure from your existing WAN network (such as a MPLS VPN provided by a Network Service Provider). Read more…
The IT Melting Pot! 