Microsoft Virtual Training Day | NL this Wednesday March 11th. This day will be full of technical sessions based on our Microsoft Learning Paths.
Explore the tracks
We offer 7 tracks including 5 sessions per track, based on the Learning Paths of Azure Cloud Native, Azure Data, Azure Infra & Ops, Business Applications, Power Platform, Modern Workplace and Surface. On the day itself you can join sessions of different tracks. Please register your sessions here :
This blogpost is about the Microsoft Azure Migrate tool in the Cloud doing Azure Migrate assessments to see if your on-premises Datacenter is ready for Azure Cloud Services. Before you migrate your workloads with Azure Migrate to the Microsoft Azure Cloud, you want to know the costs before the migration and what your options are in the transition. For example when you have hardware in your on-premises Datacenter which is too high qua hardware specs like Memory, CPU and storage and you can do with less Compute power, then the performance assessments are really interesting. From here you see a step-by-step guide for VMWare workload assessment(s) to Azure Cloud.
When you search for ‘Azure Migrate’ in your Azure Subscription and click on the services you will see the Azure Migrate Overview screen. When you don’t have a Microsoft Azure subscription yet, you can get one here
Click on Assess and Migrate Servers.
Before we go further with the server migration assessments for VMware, there are more Azure Migration tools available to do assessments and migrations like the following goals :
For Databases Microsoft Azure Migrate uses the Data Migration Assistant for the Assessment and the Data migration to Azure SQL Cloud.
The Data Migration Assistant (DMA) helps you upgrade to a modern data platform by detecting compatibility issues that can impact database functionality in your new version of SQL Server or Azure SQL Database. DMA recommends performance and reliability improvements for your target environment and allows you to move your schema, data, and uncontained objects from your source server to your target server.
To identify the right Azure SQL Database / Managed Instance SKU for your on-premises Database you can use the CLI with a Script :
Here you find more detailed information about the Data Migration Assistant
When you have a Virtual Desktop Infrastructure on-premises and you want to migrate to Windows Virtual Desktop (WVD) you can use this Azure Migrate tool :
ISV Lakeside with SysTrack
You can vote for the tools or scenarios that you would like to be integrated with Azure Migrate via this Online form
When you are in the beginning of your Cloud Transition journey, what will go first to the Cloud?
Of course there are much more scenarios like Lift and Shift or modernize your workload in the Cloud like moving to Azure Kubernetes Services for example instead of IaaS Virtual Machines.
So when you want to start moving your On-premises Website(s) or WebApp, Microsoft Azure Migrate Services has a tool for that too :
Assess any app with an endpoint scan. Download the Migration Assistant and start your .NET and PHP app migration to Azure App Service.
Click on Assess
and from here you can plan your migration.
At last when you have to move a big enterprise On-premises Datacenter to the Azure Cloud with a lot of Servers for example 10.000, you can use Azure Data Box Migration
The Microsoft Azure Data Box cloud solution lets you send terabytes of data into Azure in a quick, inexpensive, and reliable way. The secure data transfer is accelerated by shipping you a proprietary Data Box storage device. Each storage device has a maximum usable storage capacity of 80 TB and is transported to your datacenter through a regional carrier. The device has a rugged casing to protect and secure data during the transit.
Azure Data Box
When you want to read more about Microsoft Azure Migrate go to the website.
First we make the Azure Migrate Project ready in the Microsoft Azure Portal.
Select the right Azure Subscription and Resource group to collect the metadata reported by your On-premises environment. Give your Migrate project a name and select the geography.
Here you can select from different Assessment Tools
Select Azure Migrate Server Assessment
Here you can select from different Migration Tools
Select Azure Migrate Server Migration
Add your Tools in the Azure Portal.
Here you see both Microsoft Azure Migrate tools for the Assessment and the Migration as well.
We are going for the Assessment quick start, so click on discover
From here we select with VMware vShere Hypervisor, so you can download the Azure Migrate Appliance for VMware ( 12GB Ova file).
You can also work with an Import CSV file but that’s Preview.
Now you can download and Install the Azure Migrate Virtual Appliance on VMware.
Follow the instructions here
When you have installed the Microsoft Azure Migrate Virtual Appliance for VMware successfully in your environment and has access to all the Virtual Machines then you can run the setup in the Appliance to make connectivity with your Azure subscription.
This will check all the prerequisites and get the updates.
Getting access to vCenter Server with the right permissions.
Now when your Azure Migrate Virtual Appliance for VMware is ready and collecting metadata, we see in the Microsoft Azure Portal the discovery running :
Discovery is in Progress.
After a view minutes we have discovered the Servers running on VMware platform On-premises.
Discovered Servers
Now we have the Servers in our metadata, we can do the Assessment(s) to get all the information we want for preparing to migrate to Azure Cloud Services. Click on Assess.
From here you give the Assessment a name and then you go to the properties of the assessment by clicking on View All
Here you can set the parameters for the assessment for example based on :
Here I made different Azure Migrate Assessment groups with different parameters to see the difference in Costs.
Here you see for example Migrate As Is On-Premises and Performance-Based, but also an Azure Migrate Assessment without SQL Cluster Nodes. In this way you can make your own Azure Migrate Assessment with all your Servers or just a view Servers of your On-premises solution which you want to Migrate to Azure Cloud Services.
Overview of your Azure Migrate Assessment
Server is ready for migration
Server Ready but with conditions
Microsoft Azure Migrate gives you all the information to make the right decisions to migrate you workload from VMware to Microsoft Azure Cloud. When the Azure Migrate Assessment(s) are ready you can make a CSV export file to check the information before you migrate.
Overview of the Azure Migrate Assessment
Azure Migrate Assessment based on Performance for the VM
and there is a separated tab for Storage.
When your assessment is done, you can do the migration by replicating them to Microsoft Azure.
Here you can see the Azure Migrate for VMware (Agentless) steps
Dependency mapping helps you to visualize dependencies across machines
Setup Agentless Dependency visualization for assessment (Preview)
Microsoft Azure Migrate gives you insight information about your own On-Premises Datacenter by doing assessments to get the right migration information to move to Microsoft Azure Cloud. It gives you Azure Cloud costs before you do any migration at all, based on Total Cost of Owner (TCO) ship you can calculate if your solution in the Microsoft Azure Cloud is cheaper or not. Realize that’s it is not always about the money but also :
Hope this blog post helps you by your transition journey to Microsoft Azure Cloud
Microsoft Azure AKS Kubernetes Cluster
Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) makes it simple to deploy a managed Kubernetes cluster in Azure. AKS reduces the complexity and operational overhead of managing Kubernetes by offloading much of that responsibility to Azure. As a hosted Kubernetes service, Azure handles critical tasks like health monitoring and maintenance for you. The Kubernetes masters are managed by Azure. You only manage and maintain the agent nodes.
Azure AKS Kubernetes Services in Resource Group.
When you go to settings of your Azure AKS Kubernetes Cluster and then to Upgrade, there you can see your version of Kubernetes and the New versions of Azure AKS Services. Before you upgrade :
Here you find all the information about Azure AKS Kubernetes Change Log on GitHub
You can Upgrade from here by clicking on version 1.15.5 and click on Save at the top.
Azure Activity log.
When the first upgrade is succeeded you can do the next version upgrade.
With Azure Monitoring Insights you can view the live data and see what’s going on.
Azure Monitoring Container Insights.
When the upgrade is completed, you want to see if your new Azure AKS Cluster Services is Healthy.
This Health (Preview) feature is handy to see if all Services are running good.
Azure Monitoring Insights Health of the AKS Kubernetes Services.
The Upgrades are of course also possible via Microsoft Azure Cloud Shell with Azure CLI
Azure CloudShell
To Upgrade your AKS Services via Microsoft Azure CLI
As a DevOps person you like to work with Microsoft Visual Studio Code
Deploying and managing your Azure AKS Kubernetes Cluster services from there with the right extensions.
Here you see also that the KubeProxyVersion is v1.15.7
The extension for developers building applications to run in Kubernetes clusters and for DevOps staff troubleshooting Kubernetes applications.
Features include:
Upgrade Azure AKS Kubernetes Services is Done 😉
When you manage and monitor your Azure AKS Kubernetes Cluster Services, have also a look at Microsoft Azure Advisor for new features and security issues :
Azure Advisor recommendations for Kubernetes services.
The cool thing is that Microsoft also give you the solution to solve a high risk :
Remediation steps.
Microsoft Azure AKS Kubernetes is a managed services and made upgrading for customers really easy to do. You can monitor the upgrades and see the Health status of the Azure AKS Kubernetes services. You get free advise to improve the Services and this all keeps you in control and your business running.
Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager 2019 (DPM)
In a Earlier blogpost I wrote about Backup – Restore – DR Strategy in a fast changing world
Microsoft Products for Backup – Restore -DR, we have:
You can install Microsoft SCDPM on different solutions, like:
If you don’t want to manage hardware like a physical Server, you can virtualize your DPM Server on-Premises on Hyper-V or VMware but you can also install DPM into the Cloud as an Azure VM.
Here you can read What’s New in System Center DPM 2019
Before you begin you should know what Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager support and can protect by Backup. Here you find the highlights.
For Customers there are different installation scenarios possible :
For the first bulletpoint, when you behind with Upgrading to the latest System Center DPM 2019 and you are still using DPM 2012 R2 for example with a SQL 2012 Database on old hardware, you have to follow a work flow.
When you installed Windows Server 2019 on your new hardware, you have to install DPM 2012 R2 and the same SQL version as before and then restore the latest DPM 2012 R2 database of your old hardware. When that’s done you can proceed with upgrading to DPM 2016 and with the right SQL version. You can’t upgrade from DPM 2012 R2 straight to DPM 2019. Here you can read more about Upgrading your System Center DPM Solution
The Second bullitpoint is installing a brand new Windows Server 2019 with System Center Data Protection Manager on new hardware or on a Virtual Machine. Here you find the Prerequisites and the installation on Microsoft Docs.
Microsoft MVP @CHARBELNEMNOM :
He wrote this blogpost which can help you out with the installation of System Center DPM 2019.
The third bullitpoint, is upgrading your existing DPM Backup Solution. Important is that you have a Backup of the DPM database on a other Server or storage then the Server your are going to Upgrade. You must have a rollback scenario if something went wrong. Read more about Upgrade path of System Center DPM
Use Azure Backup to protect the data for on-premises servers, virtual machines, virtualized workloads, SQL server, SharePoint server, and more. Because this is a Microsoft Cloud Service, you don’t have to buy expensive hardware like Physical Servers, Storage, Tape Library, you just pay for what you are using in Azure, Here you find the Microsoft Azure Calculator to calculate your Backup costs.
First you have to create a Recovery Services Vault :
Click on Review + Create a Recovery Services Vault.
Security features to help protect cloud workloads that use Azure Backup
When you Click on Create, the Microsoft Azure Recovery Services Vault will be made.
I already made a Azure Recovery Services Vault.
Overview of the Azure Recovery Services Vault.
You can backup of course Azure Virtual Machines.
You can Backup SQL Server in a Azure VM
You can Backup Azure FileShares. ( Preview)
You can Backup AzureStack workloads
You can backup On-premises workloads.
Azure Backup Policies to set different policies for the right Backup Job
Example of creating a Backup Policy with retensions
Here you see the backup en snapshots of an Azure Virtual Machine.
When you start with Microsoft Azure backup, begin with reading the backup Documentation here
Site Recovery helps ensure business continuity by keeping business apps and workloads running during outages. Site Recovery replicates workloads running on physical and virtual machines (VMs) from a primary site to a secondary location. When an outage occurs at your primary site, you fail over to secondary location, and access apps from there. After the primary location is running again, you can fail back to it.
Here you can read everything about Azure Site Recovery (ASR)
Hope this Backup – Restore – DR Microsoft Overview is helpful for you and your Business.
Cheers @JamesvandenBerg 😉
You don’t want to miss this Awesome Microsoft Ignite 2019 Event of the Year in Orlando, Florida !
If you can’t attend, don’t worry you can follow the Live Stream of MS Ignite here
Or here on Microsoft Ignite YouTube Channel
Have a look at the Microsoft Ignite 2019 Agenda
Plan your sessions for Microsoft Ignite 2019 ( More 1000+)
Download the Microsoft Events Mobile App for MS Ignite 2019 here
Follow @MS_Ignite on Twitter here
Microsoft Azure Cloud Services is evolving really fast with New solutions and features every day for your business. In the following step-by-step guide we will see all the options and features when you create a virtual machine in the Azure Cloud. For this you need a Microsoft Azure subscription to start. When you are in the Azure Portal you begin with + Create a Resource and from there you see all the create items. Click on Compute and you will see the picture above what you can create. I’m going to create a Windows Server 2019 datacenter edition Virtual Machine in the Microsoft Azure Cloud. In the Azure Portal is a step by step wizard to help you with your choices.
We start by selecting the right Azure subscription ( if you have Multiple) like a Hub-Spoke model design
you can choose for your deployment. Then select a Resource Group or Create New. I made a new Resource Group called RSG-Winserv.
When you go further down, you must give your Virtual Machine a name and select the Microsoft Azure region where your VM will run. I Choose West Europe because I life in the Netherlands. For availability options of the Virtual Machine you can choose out of three options :
Availability Zones is a high-availability offering that protects your applications and data from datacenter failures. Availability Zones are unique physical locations within an Azure region. Each zone is made up of one or more datacenters equipped with independent power, cooling, and networking
An Availability Set is a logical grouping capability that you can use in Azure to ensure that the VM resources you place within it are isolated from each other when they are deployed within an Azure datacenter. Azure ensures that the VMs you place within an Availability Set run across multiple physical servers, compute racks, storage units, and network switches
Microsoft Azure got a lot of software operating images, I installed Windows Server 2019 Datacenter but have a look at Browse all Public and Private images :
Small Disk Images
More images like Kali and Red Hat
The next step is the VM Size, the “hardware” requirements of the Virtual Machine. When you choose your VM size you have to know the possibilities and feature set of the Virtual Machine. This article describes the available sizes and options for the Azure virtual machines you can use to run your Windows apps and workloads. It also provides deployment considerations to be aware of when you’re planning to use these resources.
Here is Microsoft Azure showing 250 different VM sizes
In this window you see the following items of the Virtual Machine specs :
So pick the right VM Size for your solution to do the job.
Allow Public Internet Inbound Port Rules
If you need this for example a website, then you can set it right away, but you can set it on None and change the Network Security Group (NSG) or Azure App Gateway or Azure Firewall later and keep it Closed for now. I will show this in the NSG later to get RDP access.
Hybrid Benefit
You can enable great savings in Azure with Windows Server Software Assurance by using Azure Hybrid Benefit for Windows Server. Azure Hybrid Benefit for Windows Server allows you to use your on-premises Windows Server licenses and run Windows virtual machines in Microsoft Azure at a reduced cost (i.e. at Linux rates). You can use your licenses for Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2012, Windows Server 2012 R2, and Windows Server 2016. The Azure Hybrid Benefit for Windows Server is applicable to Windows Server Standard and Datacenter editions as well as other versions obtained via custom images. With Azure Hybrid Benefit for Windows Server, you can save 40 percent or more1 on Windows Server virtual machines by paying only the base compute2 rates—adding value to your Software Assurance investments. The benefit is available across all Azure regions. Read more here
Disk storage is important for performance, that’s why you can choose for Standard HDD, Standard SSD or
Premium SSD for your OS Disk. When your server need a Data disk, you can add it here or later on.
Here you can read more on Managed disks
What disk types are available in Azure?
Here you create your Virtual Network / subnet with a public IP. You can see here when you choose for a specific Virtual machine, you can not use accelerated networking because It’s not supported by the VM size selection.
Here you can choose for a Load Balancer or a Application Gateway
Azure Application Gateway is a web traffic load balancer that enables you to manage traffic to your web applications. Traditional load balancers operate at the transport layer (OSI layer 4 – TCP and UDP) and route traffic based on source IP address and port, to a destination IP address and port.
Azure Application Gateway
With Azure Load Balancer, you can scale your applications and create high availability for your services. Load Balancer supports inbound and outbound scenarios, provides low latency and high throughput, and scales up to millions of flows for all TCP and UDP applications.
Load Balancer distributes new inbound flows that arrive on the Load Balancer’s frontend to backend pool instances, according to rules and health probes.
Additionally, a public Load Balancer can provide outbound connections for virtual machines (VMs) inside your virtual network by translating their private IP addresses to public IP addresses.
Azure Load Balancer is available in two SKUs: Basic and Standard. There are differences in scale, features, and pricing. Any scenario that’s possible with Basic Load Balancer can also be created with Standard Load Balancer, although the approaches might differ slightly. As you learn about Load Balancer, it is important to familiarize yourself with the fundamentals and SKU-specific differences.
When you have deployed your virtual machine, you want to manage it like monitoring and backup for example.
You can do these options also after the Virtual Machine deployment.
Backup of the Virtual Machine can be added when you deploy the VM.
I have a existing Backup Vault called WACvault1
From here you can create your own backup recovery Vault with your Own backup policy and retention times.
The feature provides Azure services with an automatically managed identity in Azure AD. You can use the identity to authenticate to any service that supports Azure AD authentication, including Key Vault, without any credentials in your code. What is managed identities for Azure resources?
In the advanced tab you can select extensions for your Virtual Machine. These are add-ons and will installed during the deployment. You can now also select Gen 2 VM in Preview. Microsoft Azure has a lot of extensions for your Virtual machine :
List of extensions for your VM
Click on Create for adding Microsoft Antimalware on your VM
Select the options and exclusions
Here you can Tag your deployment
After you apply tags, you can retrieve all the resources in your subscription with that tag name and value. Tags enable you to retrieve related resources from different resource groups. This approach is helpful when you need to organize resources for billing or management. Read more on Tags here
At this moment the validation has passed for deployment with all your settings, but don’t forget to have a look at “Download a template for Automation” before you hit Create.
Here you can download or save the JSON ARM Template
When you you go Back and click on Create the Virtual Machine, this will deploy the VM in Minutes.
The following Azure items are deployed in RSG-Winserv
Now your Virtual Machine is deployed in Microsoft Azure Cloud and is running, you can have a look at all the features of the Virtual Machine in the Portal.
To connect to the Virtual Machine you have to Manage access for your RDP session via the NSG in my case:
Double click on the NSG
I added a new rule to give my IP-address access to the VM
From here you can access the Windows Server 2019 Datacenter Virtual Machine in Microsoft Azure Cloud.
When your Azure Virtual Machine with Windows Server 2019 is running, you want to monitor the VM and see what is happening inside the Virtual Machine. Azure Monitor Insights can help you with this.
Health State of the VM
Connections
When Microsoft Azure Monitoring is on and running you want have important alerts on your Mobile by sms or
via E-mail notification to take action.
Alerts on Winserv2019 VM
High CPU Alert
Here we make an Alert about the CPU which is going higher then 80% average.
Making an Action group for email notification of the Alert
Action Group made
Alert made for the VM
Alert details
Alert rule is set and running for this Virtual Machine.
And keep watching your Azure Advisor for better changes :
New Advise will come !
and of course there are more features and options on this Virtual Machine, Have a look :
Settings of the VM
Operations and Management of the VM
Support and Troubleshooting of the VM
Advisor is a personalized cloud consultant that helps you follow best practices to optimize your Azure deployments. It analyzes your resource configuration and usage telemetry and then recommends solutions that can help you improve the cost effectiveness, performance, high availability, and security of your Azure resources.
With Advisor, you can:
You can access Advisor through the Azure portal. Sign in to the portal, locate Advisor in the navigation menu, or search for it in the All services menu.
The Advisor dashboard displays personalized recommendations for all your subscriptions. You can apply filters to display recommendations for specific subscriptions and resource types. The recommendations are divided into four categories:
Azure Advisor Overview
High Availability Advise
Azure Advisor on Security
Here you find the Microsoft Azure Advisor Website with all the information
The Microsoft Azure Cloud is always on the move with better features, Security, and Cost efficiency.
Azure Advisor will help you with all the changes and great features to keep you secure and up-to-date and lower your Cloud solution cost if possible.
Have a look at Azure Advisor and get your new Advise in your Microsoft Azure Subscription!
