Optimize your workloads with Azure Expert Assessment offering and jump-start remediations

Thank you for your interest in Azure Expert Assessments, this pilot offering has concluded. If you would like to participate in a Solution Assessment please connect with your Microsoft Partner or field representative. To learn more about Microsoft Solution Assessments please visit: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/solutionassessments/

In our previous Azure Architecture blog post, we discussed how the Azure Expert Assessment offering can help organizations identify the best cloud solutions for their business goals by offering no-cost, expert-led assessments and solutions for SQL Server Migration, Windows Server Migration, and Optimization best practices. In this blog, we will explore how the Azure Expert Assessment offering can quickly assess and jump start remediations for customers to optimize costs, enhance security, and improve reliability based on insights from Well-Architected Framework Assessments.

Azure Expert Assessment is a cost-free service offering that provides customers with a comprehensive review of their Azure environment by a Azure Certified Expert.  It is designed with automation in every step of the engagement and is open to any Azure customers worldwide, who can self-nominate. Azure Expert Assessment can expedite a customer’s unique assessment needs for optimizing their workloads for Security, Reliability, Cost Management and Fin-Ops. This assessment is conducted by a team of Azure Certified Experts who walk through the assessment with the customer, analyze their environment and provide recommendations on how to improve it.

Benefits:

One of the key benefits of Azure Expert Assessment is that it helps customers identify issues in their workloads that are not aligned with the best practices outlined in the Azure Well-Architected Framework. The assessment team provides customers with a detailed report that includes recommendations on how to remediate these issues related to the WAF pillars of Cost Management, Security, and Reliability. The report also includes a prioritized list of specific recommendations, so customers can focus on the most critical issues first.

The topics of remediations are:

• Azure Cost Management and Billing
• Azure Subscription, Service Limits, Quotas, and Constraints
• Azure Security Center
• Azure Advisor
• Azure Monitor
• Azure Sentinel (Coming Soon)
• Azure Optimization Workbook (Coming Soon)

Examples of Well-Architected Remediations:

Below are some examples of common issues that can be resolved using Well-Architected Framework Assessment based remediations, and how to configure them. These remediations showcase how Azure Certified Experts can provide actionable recommendations to optimize cost management, enhance their security posture, and improve reliability based on insights from WAF Assessments.

Cost Management Remediations:

1. Rightsized Underutilized Resources
   • Issue: WAF Assessment identifies virtual machines with underutilized resources, leading to unnecessary costs.
   • Remediation: Azure Expert recommends resizing VMs based on actual usage patterns, optimizing costs without compromising performance. This aligns with the Cost Management pillar.
2. Implement Reserved Instances
   • Issue: WAF Assessment detects a lack of Reserved Instances, resulting in higher on-demand costs.
   • Remediation: Azure Expert advises the purchase of Reserved Instances for predictable workloads, providing significant cost savings over pay-as-you-go pricing. This addresses the Cost Management pillar.

Security Remediations:

3. Enhance Network Security Rules
   • Issue: WAF Assessment identifies overly permissive network security rules, posing a security risk.
   • Remediation: Azure Expert recommends refining network security rules to adhere to the principle of least privilege, enhancing overall security posture. This aligns with the Security pillar.
4. Implement Encryption for Data at Rest
   • Issue: WAF Assessment reveals data at rest without encryption, posing a security vulnerability.
   • Remediation: Azure Expert suggests implementing Azure Disk Encryption or Azure Storage Service Encryption for securing data at rest, enhancing confidentiality. This addresses the Security pillar.

Reliability Remediations:

5. Configure Autoscaling for Workloads
   • Issue: WAF Assessment identifies workloads without autoscaling, leading to potential performance issues during traffic spikes.
   • Remediation: Azure Expert recommends configuring autoscaling to dynamically adjust resources based on demand, ensuring optimal performance and reliability. This aligns with the Reliability pillar.
6. Implement Azure Traffic Manager for Redundancy
   • Issue: WAF Assessment detects a lack of redundancy in workload deployment across regions.
   • Remediation: Azure Expert advises implementing Azure Traffic Manager for workload redundancy, ensuring high availability and reliability. This addresses the Reliability pillar.

Conclusion:

By using Azure Expert Assessment, customers can ensure that their workloads are aligned with the best practices outlined in the Azure Well-Architected Framework. This can help customers avoid potential issues and ensure that their workloads are running efficiently, resiliently and securely, which in turn, can help customers increase their Azure Advisor Score which helps to improve the posture of their workloads and further optimize their Azure deployments.  Start the journey today!

Resources:

1. Azure Expert Assessment Registration Page
2. Azure Well-Architected Framework
3. Microsoft Solution Assessment Program
4. Azure Expert Assessment Site
5. Questions or request additional materials