Unlock cost savings with utilization-based storage recommendations in Azure Migrate
We’re thrilled to announce a game-changing enhancement in Azure Migrate. The storage utilization-based recommendations, a feature designed to help you right-size your storage workloads and maximize savings. By focusing on actual storage usage instead of allocated capacity, you can significantly reduce costs and accelerate their cloud journey. This feature brings a new level of precision to your migration planning and business case. Why This Matters In our analysis across thousands of on-premises environments, we observed a striking trend: nearly 40% of allocated storage is overprovisioned. This means customers are paying for capacity they don’t actually use. Traditional assessments often rely on allocated storage, leading to inflated cost estimates and suboptimal resource planning. What’s New Azure Migrate now honors actual storage utilization rather than allocated capacity when generating: Assessment recommendations for right-sizing your storage workloads. Business case calculations for accurate cost projections. This shift ensures: Lower migration cost projections: Pay for what you use, not what you’ve overprovisioned. Optimized cloud footprint: Reduce unnecessary storage allocation in Azure. Faster ROI: Build a business case that reflects true utilization, accelerating decision-making. Customer Impact By leveraging utilization-based insights, organizations can unlock significant savings and operate with greater efficiency. For example, if 40% of your storage is overprovisioned, this feature could cut your projected Azure storage costs dramatically, freeing up budget for innovation. How to Get Started Deploy an appliance in your on-premises environment. Build the business case or create an Azure Migrate Assessment for your on-premises workloads. Review the utilization-based recommendations in your assessment report or business case. Learn More Visit Azure Migrate documentation for detailed guidance and start optimizing your migration journey today.
Cost-effective alternatives to control table for processed files in Azure Synapse
Hello, good morning.In Azure Synapse Analytics, I want to have a control table for the files that have already been processed by the bronze or silver layers. For this, I wanted to create a dedicated pool, but I see that at the minimum performance level it charges 1.51 USD per hour (as I show in the image), so I wanted to know what other more economical alternatives I have, since I will need to do inserts and updates to this control table and with a serverless option this is not possible.Introducing Azure Migrate Explore with AI Assistant
We're thrilled to announce the Public Preview of Azure Migrate Explore with an AI assistant! This exciting update enhances our existing Azure Migrate Explore (AME) utility, making migration assessments smarter, faster, and more impactful. What is Azure Migrate? Azure Migrate serves as a comprehensive hub designed to simplify the migration journey of on-premises infrastructure, including servers, databases, and web applications, to Azure Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) and Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) targets at scale. It provides a unified platform with a suite of tools and features to help you identify the best migration path, assess Azure readiness, estimate the cost of hosting workloads on Azure, and execute the migration with minimal downtime and risk. Revolutionizing Executive Presentations Azure Migrate Explore already simplifies how organizations leverage Azure Migrate discovery and assessment data, turning it into polished executive presentations. The utility integrates seamlessly with Microsoft’s familiar tools like Power BI, Excel and PowerPoint, enabling easy customization and intuitive visualizations. What's New: The Power of AI Assistant With this upgrade, Azure Migrate Explore now incorporates an innovative AI Assistant, significantly boosting productivity and effectiveness for our sales force. This new capability, "Summarize with AI," leverages advanced natural language generation to craft concise and compelling summaries, helping sellers easily convey key insights and recommendations. Enhanced Capabilities with "Summarize with AI" The AI-generated summaries deliver tailored insights specific to each customer, including: Industry-specific analysis: Understand unique industry needs and compliance requirements, ensuring Azure meets customer-specific regulations and standards. Data center insights: Gain detailed location-based suggestions aligned with customer’s existing data centers. Cost optimization: Receive precise PaaS and IaaS cost estimates, coupled with practical savings options, empowering informed migration decisions. AI-driven opportunities: Uncover customized AI use-cases designed specifically for your customers' unique business challenges. Intuitive visual clarity: Easily interpret complex graphical representations generated by AME through concise, AI-driven explanations. Introducing Conversational Mode The new conversational mode transforms user interactions, making them more natural, intuitive, and efficient. Users can now seamlessly ask questions and receive immediate, context-aware responses from the AI assistant, enhancing understanding and accelerating decision-making. Enhance Your Sales Pitch With Azure Migrate Explore’s AI Assistant, sellers can now effortlessly deliver persuasive, customized presentations and summaries, driving faster customer commitment toward Azure migrations. Leverage this new intelligent capability today and take your migration conversations to the next level! Experience the power of Azure Migrate Explore with AI assistant in our Public Preview—where insights meet innovation! Check out the Github repository: Azure Migrate Explore Download and run the utility from: Azure Migrate Explore utility Documentation: Azure Migrate Explore documentationMigration planning of MySQL workloads using Azure Migrate
In our endeavor to increase coverage of OSS workloads in Azure Migrate, we are announcing discovery and modernization assessment of MySQL databases running on Windows and Linux servers. Customers previously had limited visibility into their MySQL workloads and often received generalized VM lift-and-shift recommendations. With this new capability, customers can now accurately identify their MySQL workloads and assess them for right-sizing into Azure Database for MySQL. MySQL workloads are a cornerstone of the LAMP stack, powering countless web applications with their reliability, performance, and ease of use. As businesses grow, the need for scalable and efficient database solutions becomes paramount. This is where Azure Database for MySQL comes into play. Migrating from on-premises to Azure Database for MySQL offers numerous benefits, including effortless scalability, cost efficiency, enhanced performance, robust security, high availability, and seamless integration with other Azure services. As a fully managed Database-as-a-Service (DBaaS), it simplifies database management, allowing businesses to focus on innovation and growth. What is Azure Migrate? Azure Migrate serves as a comprehensive hub designed to simplify the migration journey of on-premises infrastructure, including servers, databases, and web applications, to Azure Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) and Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) targets at scale. It provides a unified platform with a suite of tools and features to help you identify the best migration path, assess Azure readiness, estimate the cost of hosting workloads on Azure, and execute the migration with minimal downtime and risk. Key features of the MySQL Discovery and Assessment in Azure Migrate The new MySQL Discovery and Assessment feature in Azure Migrate (Preview) introduces several powerful capabilities: Discover MySQL database instances: The tool allows you to discover MySQL instances within your environment efficiently. By identifying critical attributes of these instances, it lays the foundation for a thorough assessment and a strategic migration plan. Assessment for Azure readiness: The feature evaluates the readiness of your MySQL database instances to migrate to Azure Database for MySQL – Flexible Server. This assessment considers several factors, including compatibility and performance metrics, to ensure a smooth transition. SKU recommendations: Based on the discovered data, the tool recommends the optimal compute and storage configuration for hosting MySQL workloads on Azure Database for MySQL. Furthermore, it provides insights into the associated costs, enabling better financial planning. How to get started? To begin using the MySQL Discovery and Assessment feature in Azure Migrate, follow this five-step onboarding process: Create an Azure Migrate Project: Initiate your migration journey by setting up a project in the Azure portal. Configure the Azure Migrate Appliance: Use a Windows-based appliance to discover the inventory of servers and provide guest credentials for discovering the workloads and MySQL credentials to fetch database instances and their attributes. Review Discovered Inventory: Examine the detailed attributes of the discovered MySQL instances. Create an Assessment: Evaluate the readiness and get detailed recommendations for migration to Azure Database for MySQL. For a detailed step-by-step guidance check out the documentation for discovery and assessment tutorials. Documentation: Discover MySQL databases running in your datacenter Assess MySQL database instances for migration to Azure Database for MySQL Share your feedback! In summary, the MySQL Discovery and Assessment feature in Azure Migrate enables you to effortlessly discover, assess, and plan your MySQL database migrations to Azure. Try the feature out in public preview and fast-track your migration journey! If you have any queries, feedback or suggestions, please let us know by leaving a comment below or by directly contacting us at AskAzureDBforMySQL@service.microsoft.com. We are eager to hear your feedback and support you on your journey to Azure.Forward Azure VMware Solution logs anywhere using Azure Logic Apps
Overview As enterprises scale their infrastructure in Microsoft Azure using Azure VMware Solution, gaining real-time visibility into the operational health of their private cloud environment becomes increasingly critical. Whether troubleshooting deployment issues, monitoring security events, or performing compliance audits, centralized logging is a must-have. Azure VMware Solution offers flexible options for exporting syslogs from vCenter Server, ESXi Hosts, and NSX components. While many customers already use Log Analytics or third-party log platforms for visibility, some have unique operational or compliance requirements that necessitate forwarding logs to specific destinations outside the Microsoft ecosystem. With the advent of VMware Cloud Foundation on Azure VMware Solution, customers can now have more choices and can leverage tools like VCF Operations for Logs to monitor, analyze, and troubleshoot their logs. In this post, we’ll show you how to use Azure Logic Apps, Microsoft’s low-code, serverless integration platform, to forward Azure VMware Solution private cloud logs to any log management tool of your choosing. With a newly released workflow template tailored for Azure VMware Solution, you can set this up in minutes—no custom code required. Figure 1. Architectural flow of syslog data from an Azure VMware Solution private cloud to a log management server via Azure Logic Apps Background The Azure VMware Solution and Azure Logic Apps product teams have partnered to deliver a built-in integration that allows Azure VMware Solution customers to forward logs to any syslog-compatible endpoint—whether in Azure, on-premises, or another cloud. This new Logic Apps template is purpose-built for Azure VMware Solution and dramatically simplifies log forwarding. Figure 2. Azure VMware Solution template in Azure Logic Apps template catalog Historically, forwarding logs from Azure VMware Solution required customers to develop custom code or deploy complex workarounds, often involving multiple services and significant manual configuration. These methods not only introduced operational overhead but also made it difficult for platform teams to standardize logging across environments. With this new integration, customers who previously spent days in frustration trying to get their private cloud logs have now done so in under an hour, a massive improvement in both speed and simplicity. This new capability is particularly timely given recent industry changes. Following VMware’s announcement to discontinue the SaaS versions of Aria Operations, including Aria Operations for Logs, many customers have begun exploring alternative solutions for their log management needs. For those looking to use the on-premises alternative of Aria Operations for Logs, the ability to send Azure VMware Solution logs directly from Azure to their self-managed VCF Operations for Logs servers is now possible—with zero custom code. Using Azure Logic Apps, customers can seamlessly bridge their hybrid cloud monitoring environments and avoid gaps in visibility or compliance. This solution empowers Azure VMware Solution customers with more flexibility, shorter time-to-value, and a consistent logging strategy across both legacy and modernized environments. Why Azure Logic Apps? Azure Logic Apps is a powerful, low-code integration platform that enables IT administrators and platform teams to automate workflows and connect services—without having to manage any infrastructure. With over 1,400 connectors to Azure services, popular SaaS applications, and on-premises APIs, and more, Logic Apps provides a flexible and reliable foundation for routing log data across infrastructure environments. For Azure VMware Solution users, this means you can now easily forward logs from your Azure VMware Solution private cloud to any log management solution—on-premises or in the cloud—without writing custom code. Logic Apps acts as a dynamic “translator” or “dispatcher” in your architecture, listening for logs streamed to Event Hubs and securely forwarding them to your target syslog endpoint with the required formatting, headers, and authentication. This new capability not only accelerates time-to-value for log forwarding but also gives Azure VMware Solution customers the freedom to integrate with the logging platform of their choice—improving visibility, operational efficiency, and compliance in hybrid cloud environments. Future iterations of this integration will include support with Azure Blob Storage as well, another common method Azure VMware Solution customers use to retain and forward their logs. How to get started In addition to this blog, check out the links below to learn more about this integration, understand how Azure Logic Apps work, and use the pricing calculator to cost and size Azure Logic Apps. With large enterprise solutions for strategic and major customers, an Azure VMware Solution Architect from Azure, Broadcom, or a Broadcom Partner should be engaged to ensure the solution is correctly sized to deliver business value with the minimum of risk. If you are interested in using Logic Apps with Azure VMware Solution, please use the resources to learn more about the service: Detailed instructions on sending logs via Logic Apps: Send VMware syslogs to log management server using Azure Logic Apps - Azure VMware Solution | Microsoft Learn An overview of Logic Apps: Overview - Azure Logic Apps | Microsoft Learn Pricing calculator: Pricing - Logic Apps | Microsoft Azure -- Azure VMware Solution is a VMware validated first party Azure service from Microsoft that provides private clouds containing VMware vSphere clusters built from dedicated bare-metal Azure infrastructure. It enables customers to leverage their existing investments in VMware skills and tools, allowing them to focus on developing and running their VMware-based workloads on Azure. Author Bio Varun Hariharan is a Senior Product Manager on the Azure VMware Solution team at Microsoft, where he is focusing on observability and workload strategies for customers. His background is in Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), log management, enterprise software, and DevOps. Kent Weare is a Principal PM Manager on the Azure Logic Apps team at Microsoft, where he is focusing on providing enterprise integration and automation capabilities for customers.What's new in Azure Migrate?
Introduction The journey to the cloud is an essential step for modern enterprises looking to leverage the benefits of scalability, flexibility, and cost-efficiency. A crucial part of this transformation is understanding the current state of your IT infrastructure, including workloads, applications, and their interdependencies. Often, organizations aim to set their migration goals based on the applications they want to move to the cloud, rather than focusing on individual servers or databases in isolation. I am thrilled to share that Azure Migrate is evolving to both simplify and enrich your cloud adoption journey. We are introducing new capabilities in Azure Migrate to help you achieve your goals. Introducing Application awareness in Azure Migrate [limited preview] A key step in any cloud transformation plan is a current state analysis of the entire IT estate covering workloads and applications, and relationships/ dependencies among them. I am excited to announce the limited preview of application aware experiences in Azure Migrate – across every phase of the migration journey. This allows you to gain insights into the total cost of ownership, identify suitable IaaS and PaaS targets, and receive tailored migration and modernization guidance. To get started with Azure Migrate, simply create an Azure Migrate project on Azure portal, and leverage Azure Migrate’s wide-ranging discovery capabilities, including the Azure Migrate appliance or importing inventory via RVTools to discover your environment. This allows you to explore inventory across Infra-Data-Web tiers and use the updated dependency analysis to identify application boundaries. As part of the application aware experiences, we are introducing the concept of tags within Azure Migrate. So once dependencies are identified, you can group the dependent workloads comprising an application via tags. Then, Azure Migrate can be used to create application-specific business cases to identify savings and ROI, assess ideal migration strategies, and get recommendations for Azure services, SKUs, resource costs, and migration/modernization tools. Further, as part of executing the migration and onboarding to Azure, customers can use the recommended tools to modernize via re-platform and refactor (out of band) techniques or use the integrated rehost migration experience to rehost to Azure VM. Complemented with a refreshed user experience As part of delivering application awareness and sustainability insights, Azure Migrate will also feature a refreshed user interface. The new experience is designed to help customers across every step of the migration journey – across Decide, Plan and Execute phases. The experience provides you with a new intuitive table of contents and overview page to allow easy navigation. You can explore discovered workloads and their relationships through effective search, sort, and seamless transition from Azure Migrate to other specialized migration tools, depending on your specific goals and requirements. Finally, you can quickly create and visualize different migration and modernization strategies side-by-side. Expanded support for workloads and platforms In addition to the capabilities described above, Azure Migrate continues to evolve to support capabilities provided by Azure for customers to evaluate and execute as part of their cloud adoption journey. As part of this effort, I am pleased to announce public preview of the following capabilities. These capabilities are available for customers, partners and sellers to try today! ROI/TCO of Azure Arc in Azure Migrate Business Case [public preview] We understand that customers are looking to understand the best path as they evaluate the cloud. This includes continuing to stay on-premises in their current environment while benefiting from Azure services such as Azure Arc. Knowing the varying needs of every customer and with the goal to meet customers where they are, we are introducing the envisioning of ROI for Azure Arc in Azure Migrate Business Case. This includes - Azure Migrate business case to help you compare the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) for on-premises estates versus Azure, including year-on-year cash flow analysis. With this new capability, the Azure Migrate Business Case now includes the added value of Azure Arc for resources remaining on-premises during the customer’s migration journey. You can now visualize cost savings and other benefits of using Azure security and management tools via Azure Arc for your on-premises servers and see licensing benefits such as Extended Security Updates and SQL Pay-As-You-Go. In addition to visualizing the business case for Arc, customers can identify and at-scale onboard machines that are not yet Arc-enabled directly from the Azure Migrate portal. Additional details and step by step instructions can be found here. Support for migrations to Azure Stack HCI [public preview] Azure Stack HCI enables customers to run workloads in the private cloud or edge and offers an ideal platform for modernizing workloads with enhanced performance, scalability, simplified management, and cost efficiency. To support this modernization, we have introduced the ability to migrate virtual machines from Hyper-V and VMware environments to Azure Stack HCI using Azure Migrate: Server Migrations. Like Azure migrations, you can leverage Azure Migrate to discover virtual machines from VMware and Hyper-V environments at scale, without needing prior agent installation. After discovery, you can migrate virtual machines to Azure Stack HCI through an easy-to-use Azure Migrate portal experience, ensuring zero data loss and minimal downtime. This migration keeps data flow locally from on-premises to Azure Stack HCI. Learn more about this capability here. Expanded OSS Support in Azure Migrate [public preview] Azure Migrate has been diligently expanding its capabilities to better support customers using Linux. We are thrilled to highlight three significant updates that enhance your migration experience: Support for newer Linux Distributions [public preview] Azure Migrate now supports a range of newer Linux distributions, including Rocky Linux, Alma Linux, SLES 15, RHEL 9, and Ubuntu 22.04. This enhancement ensures a broader compatibility for Linux workloads, allowing you to migrate seamlessly, whether using agentless or agent-based migrations. Azure Hybrid Benefit (AHB) for Enterprise Linux [public preview] We've integrated Azure Hybrid Benefit (AHB) for Enterprise Linux (RHEL and SLES) into the migration process. Customers can visualize the savings from AHB directly in Azure Migrate business case assessments, maximizing their return on investment. To leverage AHB, you can directly enable the appropriate licenses for migrating Enterprise Linux machines within Azure Migrate. This integration eliminates the need for manual installation of the AHB extension post migrations, streamlining the migration workflow and ensuring compliance. Discovery and Assessment of MySQL Databases [public preview] In our endeavor to increase coverage of OSS workloads in Azure Migrate, we are announcing discovery and modernization assessment of MySQL databases running on Linux servers. Customers previously had limited visibility in their MySQL workloads and often received generalized VM lift-and-shift recommendations. With this new capability, you can now accurately identify the MySQL workloads and assess them for right-sizing into Azure Database for MySQL: Flexible Server. CSV Import powered discovery for SQL Servers [limited preview] We understand that deploying an appliance may not be the quickest way to generate migration assessments to enable planning. Further, many times customers can’t provide credentials for SQL Server instances, to allow Azure Migrate to capture relevant details and provide accurate readiness and right-sized recommendations. Hence, we are now adding the ability to import SQL Server details which can then be used to discover SQL Server instances and databases and generate accurate assessment reports. Use existing repositories such as SQL Server Dynamic Management Views, SCOM etc. to populate the CSV schema required to discover SQL Server. Interested in trying the limited preview experience? The capabilities described above are currently in limited preview. To take advantage of these capabilities for your environment, please share your interest here. Conclusion The enhancements in Azure Migrate underscore our commitment to providing comprehensive, user-friendly, and efficient migration solutions. Stay tuned for more updates and join us at Ignite 2024 for a detailed demo of these exciting new features. Curious to learn more? Here is a sneak peek of what we plan to announce at Ignite - https://youtu.be/aquRVLvau7cRapidly scope NC2 on Azure using Nutanix Sizer
Overview A global enterprise wants to migrate thousands of Nutanix AHV or VMware vSphere virtual machines (VMs) to Microsoft Azure as part of their application modernization strategy. The first step is to exit their on-premises data centers and rapidly relocate their legacy application VMs to the Nutanix Cloud Clusters on Azure (NC2 on Azure) service as a staging area for the first phase of their modernization strategy. How can they quickly size NC2 on Azure to meet their workload requirements? NC2 on Azure is a third-party Azure service from Nutanix that provides private clouds containing Nutanix AHV clusters built from dedicated bare-metal Azure infrastructure. It enables customers to leverage their existing investments in Nutanix skills and tools, allowing them to focus on developing and running their Nutanix-based workloads on Azure. In this post, I will introduce the typical customer workload requirements, describe the NC2 on Azure architectural components, and describe how to use Nutanix Sizer to quickly scope an NC2 on Azure solution. In the next section, I will introduce the typical sizing requirements of a customer’s workload. Customer Workload Requirements A typical customer has multiple application tiers that have specific Service Level Agreement (SLA) requirements that need to be met. These SLAs are usually named by a tiering system such as Platinum, Gold, Silver, and Bronze or Mission-Critical, Business-Critical, Production, and Test/Dev. Each SLA will have different availability, recoverability, performance, manageability, and security requirements that need to be met. For the initial sizing, customers will have CPU, RAM, Storage and Network requirements. This is normally documented for each application and then aggregated into the total resource requirements for each SLA. For example: SLA Name CPU RAM Storage Network Gold Low vCPU:pCore ratio (<1 to 2), Low VM to Host ratio (2-8) No RAM oversubscription (<1) High Throughput or High IOPS (for a particular I/O size), Low Latency, Low Capacity, RAID policy, Redundancy Factor High Throughput, Low Latency Silver Medium vCPU:pCore ratio (5 to 8), Medium VM to Host ratio (10-15) Medium RAM oversubscription ratio (1.1-1.3) Medium Latency, Medium Capacity Medium Latency Bronze High vCPU:pCore ratio (10-15), High VM to Host ratio (20+) High RAM oversubscription ratio (1.5-2) High Latency, High Capacity High Latency Table 1 – Typical Customer SLA requirements for Performance The concepts introduced in Table 1 have the following definitions: CPU: CPU model and speed (this can be important for legacy single threaded applications), number of cores, vCPU to physical core ratios. Memory: Random Access Memory size, Input/Output (I/O) speed and latency, oversubscription ratios. Storage: Capacity, Read/Write Input/Output per Second (IOPS) with Input/Output (I/O) size, Read/Write Input/Output Latency, RAID policy, RF policy. Network: In/Out Speed, Network Latency (Round Trip Time). A typical legacy business-critical application will have the following application architecture: Load Balancer layer: Uses load balancers to distribute traffic across multiple web servers in the web layer to improve application availability. Web layer: Uses web servers to process client requests made via the secure Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTPS). Receives traffic from the load balancer layer and forwards to the application layer. Application layer: Uses application servers to run software that delivers a business application through a communication protocol. Receives traffic from the web layer and uses the database layer to access stored data. Database layer: Uses a relational database management service (RDMS) cluster to store data and provide database services to the application layer. The application can also be classified as OLTP or OLAP, which have the following characteristics: Online Transaction Processing (OLTP) is a type of data processing that consists of executing several transactions occurring concurrently. For example, online banking, retail shopping, or sending text messages. OLTP systems tend to have a performance profile that is latency sensitive, choppy CPU demands, with small amounts of data being read and written. Online Analytical Processing (OLAP) is a technology that organizes large business databases and supports complex analysis. It can be used to perform complex analytical queries without negatively impacting transactional systems (OLTP). For example, data warehouse systems, business performance analysis, marketing analysis. OLAP systems tend to have a performance profile that is latency tolerant, requires large amounts of storage for records processing, has a steady state of CPU, RAM and storage throughput. Depending upon the requirements for each service, the infrastructure design could be a mix of technologies used to meet the different application SLAs with cost efficiency. Figure 1 – Typical Legacy Business-Critical Application Architecture In the next section, I will introduce the architectural components of the NC2 on Azure service. Architectural Components The diagram below describes the architectural components of the NC2 on Azure service. Figure 2 – NC2 on Azure Architectural Components Each NC2 on Azure architectural component has the following function: Azure Subscription: Used to provide controlled access, budget, and quota management for the NC2 on Azure service. Azure Region: Physical locations around the world where we group data centers into Availability Zones (AZs) and then group AZs into regions. Azure Resource Group: Container used to place Azure services and resources into logical groups. NC2 on Azure: Uses Nutanix software, including Prism Central, Prism Element, Nutanix Flow software-defined networking, Nutanix Acropolis Operating System (AOS) software-defined storage, and Azure bare-metal Acropolis Hypervisor (AHV) hosts to provide compute, networking, and storage resources. Nutanix Move: Provides migration services. Nutanix Disaster Recovery: Provides disaster recovery automation and storage replication services. Nutanix Files: Provides filer services. Nutanix Self Service: Provides application lifecycle management and cloud orchestration. Nutanix Cost Governance: Provides multi-cloud optimization to reduce cost & enhance cloud security. Azure Virtual Network (VNet): Private network used to connect AHV hosts, Azure services and resources together. Azure Route Server: Enables network appliances to exchange dynamic route information with Azure networks. Azure Virtual Network Gateway: Cross premises gateway for connecting Azure services and resources to other private networks using IPSec VPN, ExpressRoute, and VNet to VNet. Azure ExpressRoute: Provides high-speed private connections between Azure data centers and on-premises or colocation infrastructure. Azure Virtual WAN (vWAN): Aggregates networking, security, and routing functions together into a single unified Wide Area Network (WAN). In the next section, I will describe how to use the Nutanix Sizer to quickly scope the NC2 on Azure service for a customer workload. Using the Nutanix Sizer The Nutanix Sizer is available to Nutanix Employees and Nutanix Partners. If you are a Nutanix Customer, please reach out to your Nutanix, Microsoft, or Partner account team to engage an architect to size your NC2 on Azure solution. Customers also have access to Nutanix Sizer Basic. Unless specified, all other settings can be left at the default values. Once the scenario is built, it can be later tweaked to meet the customer requirements as they are clarified. Step 1: Access My Nutanix and select the Nutanix Sizer Launch button. Figure 3 – My Nutanix Dashboard Step 2: Select the Create Scenario button. Figure 4 – Nutanix Sizer My Scenarios Step 3: Enter the Scenario Name, Install Country, and select the Create button. Figure 5 – Nutanix Sizer Create New Scenario Optionally, if you have a good understanding of the problem the customer is trying to solve, you can fill out the Scenario Objectives (Executive Summary, Requirements, Constraints, Assumptions, and Risks) to start building out the design. This will also allow you to use the advanced export features at the end of the sizing process. Step 4: Press the Add button in the Create Workloads pane. If you want to import a Nutanix Collector or RVTools file as the source for a workload, select the Import button instead. Figure 6 – Nutanix Sizer Create Workloads Step 5: Define the Workload Name, Workload Type, Server Profile Size, and Number of VMs. Then select the Save & Review Cluster button. Figure 7 – Nutanix Sizer Add Workload Step 6: Select NC2 on Azure from the Vendor section of the Platform Settings. Then scroll down to the Cluster Settings. Figure 8 – Nutanix Sizer Platform Settings Step 7: Select the Environment Type from the Cluster Settings and press the Apply button. Figure 9 – Nutanix Sizer Cluster Settings Step 8: In the Workloads Summary page, select the Solution tab. Figure 10 – Nutanix Sizer Workloads Summary Step 9: In the Solution Summary page, verify the NC2 on Azure tag is present in each cluster. Figure 11 – Nutanix Sizer Solution Summary Step 10: In the Solution Summary page, scroll down to the Sizing Details for the detailed breakdown. Figure 12 – Nutanix Sizer Solution Sizing Details Step 11: To share the Scenario with others: Select BOM, then Download BOM Select Quote, then Generate Budgetary Quote or Generate Frontline Quote Select More, then Share Scenario or Create Proposal Figure 13 – Nutanix Sizer Export & Sharing Options In the following section, I will describe the next steps that need to be made to progress this initial sizing estimate towards a high-level design. Next Steps The NC2 on Azure sizing estimate has been assessed using Nutanix Sizer. With large enterprise solutions for strategic and major customers, a Nutanix Solutions Architect from Azure, Nutanix, or a trusted Nutanix Partner should be engaged to ensure the solution is correctly sized to deliver business value with the minimum of risk. This should also include an application dependency assessment to understand the mapping between application groups and identify areas of data gravity, application network traffic flows, and network latency dependencies. Summary In this post, we took a closer look at the typical sizing requirements of a customer workload, the architectural building blocks, and the use of Nutanix Sizer to quickly scope the NC2 on Azure service. We also discussed the next steps to continue an NC2 on Azure design. If you are interested in NC2 on Azure, please use these resources to learn more about the service: Homepage: Elevate Azure Clusters with Nutanix Documentation: What is BareMetal Infrastructure for Nutanix Cloud Clusters on Azure? Use-cases: Use cases and supported scenarios Solution Design: Solution design - Azure Baremetal Infrastructure Architecture: Architecture of BareMetal Infrastructure for NC2 Getting Started: Microsoft Azure Marketplace Solution Requirements: Requirements - Azure Baremetal Infrastructure Azure Regions: Supported instances and regions SKUs: SKUs - Azure Baremetal Infrastructure User Guide: Nutanix Cloud Clusters on Azure Deployment and User Guide Nutanix Sizer: Sizer 6.0 User Guide FAQ: FAQ - Azure Baremetal Infrastructure Author Bio René van den Bedem is a Principal Technical Program Manager at Microsoft. His background is in enterprise architecture with extensive experience across all facets of the enterprise, public cloud & service provider spaces, including digital transformation and the business, enterprise, and technology architecture stacks. René works backwards from the problem to be solved and designs solutions that deliver business value with the minimum of risk. In addition to being the first quadruple VMware Certified Design Expert (VCDX), he is also a Dell Technologies Certified Master Enterprise Architect, a Nutanix Platform Expert (NPX), an NPX Panelist, and a Nutanix Technology Champion.Build business case with Azure Migrate - Do More with Less (DMWL)
Justifying the move to cloud is a crucial decision for a business and it could be difficult to know where to start. To make an informed decision to move to cloud, customers are looking into all available migration strategies and associated costs. They are also looking for ways to build and validate such proposals to be able to decide quickly. With the current economic situation, it is becoming much more important to address cashflow challenges, add capacity and prevent security attacks while ensuring business continuity. Microsoft is committed to helping you navigate this journey with confidence and eliminate the guess work involved in the cost planning process with Azure Migrate’s new data driven business case capability. With this feature, you can conduct financial analysis with just a few clicks and create customized proposals, which can then be shared with decision makers for quick decisions. Azure Migrate Azure Migrate is Microsoft’s unified platform for migrating to and modernizing in Azure. It provides discovery, assessment, planning, migration, and modernization capabilities for various workloads on your premises. Azure Migrate allows you to run and manage your migration and modernization projects from a unified, secure portal. About Business Case Capability The Azure Migrate business case in preview helps you to understand the return on investment for migrating your servers, SQL Server deployments and ASP.NET web apps running in your datacenter to Azure. Till April 2023, this feature was available only for servers and workloads running in your VMware environment. To continuously keep supporting our customers accelerate their decision-making process to Azure, we have added some of the enhancements this month: You will also be able to build business cases on servers and workloads discovered from your Microsoft Hyper-V and Physical/ Bare-metal environments as well as IaaS services of other public clouds. If you are looking for a quick business case, without the need to deploy an appliance to collect your server inventory, you can now also use .csv-based import and build a quick business case. Learn more You can build business cases for SQL Server Always On Failover Cluster Instances and Always On Availability Groups. Learn more The business case can be created with just a few clicks and can help you understand how Azure can bring the most value to your business. It highlights: On-premises vs Azure total cost of ownership and year on year cashflow analysis. Resource utilization-based insights to identify servers and workloads that are ideal for cloud and right-sized recommendations in Azure. Azure Hybrid Benefits savings by bringing your existing Windows and SQL Server licenses to Azure Quick wins for migration and modernization including end of support Windows OS and SQL versions. Long term cost savings by moving from a capital expenditure model to an Operating expenditure model, by paying for only what you use. How to get started? Please refer to the steps below: If you have an existing Azure Migrate project: 1. The Business Case feature is already enabled on your existing Azure Migrate projects once the discovery from Azure Migrate appliance has been completed. If you already have a business case with VMware servers and workloads scoped in, you can recalculate the business case to scope in servers and workloads from Hyper-V or Physical environments. To create a new business case, simply click on ‘Build business case’ to get started: 2. Build a business case using minimal inputs 3. Review the Business Case reports including the Overview, on-premises vs Azure, Azure IaaS and Azure PaaS reports. You can also create different what-if scenarios by editing the assumptions that went into the calculations. 4. Get buy-ins from stakeholders and start your migration and modernization journey with confidence. If you are new to Azure Migrate: You will first need to set up an Azure Migrate project. Once you have created a project, you can choose to use one of the two discovery sources: 1. To use more accurate data insights collected via Azure Migrate appliance, you need to deploy and configure the Azure Migrate appliance. This appliance enables you to perform discovery from your datacenter. 2. To build a quick business case using existing server inventory available, you can import the server details via a .csv file Click here to learn more to understand the two discovery sources. After the discovery, you can build and review the business case reports. Create an Azure Migrate project from the Azure Portal, and download the Azure Migrate appliance or download the Azure Migrate template to import. Customers who already have an active Azure Migrate project can start using the feature directly. Based on your use case and chosen discovery source: Deploy a new Azure Migrate appliance for discovery . To enable you to discover your datacenter easily, the appliance lets you enter multiple credentials – Windows authentication (both Domain and non-Domain) and SQL Server authentication. The Azure Migrate appliance will automatically map each server to the appropriate credential when multiple credentials are specified. These credentials are encrypted and stored on the deployed appliance locally and are never sent to Microsoft. For import via .csv, you need to populate the template with the server inventory and import the .csv View the summary of the discovered IT estate from your Azure Migrate project and click on ‘Build business case’. You can view details of the discovered servers such as their configurations, software inventory (installed apps), dependencies, count of SQL instances and ASP.NET web apps etc. Click on 'Build business case' 5. Build a business case using minimal inputs 6. Review the Business Case reports including the Overview, on-premises vs Azure, Azure IaaS and Azure PaaS reports. You can also create different what-if scenarios by editing the assumptions that went into the calculations. 7. Get buy ins from stakeholders and start your migration and modernization journey with confidence. Learn more Check out our demo to see the preview in action. Check out this documentation for more details. Learn more about Azure Migrate. Get migration assistance from the Azure migration and modernization program (AMMP). AMMP is now a comprehensive program for all migration and modernization needs of our customers. Join AMMP today.
