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JamesvandenBerg
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Joined 9 years ago
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From On-premises Datacenter to Azure Hybrid with Azure Arc for Servers
With Microsoft Azure Arc services you can bring Great Azure features to your on-prem datacenters, or to other Cloud providers. I wrote a #MVPLABSerie Blogposts about the benefits of Azure Hybrid which I like to share with the Tech Community: #MVPLABSerie Azure Hybrid with Arc Enabled Windows Servers on-premises #MVPLABSerie Azure Arc enabled Servers #MVPLABSerie Azure Update Management Center (Preview) and Azure Arc enabled Servers #MVPLABSerie Azure Arc enabled SQL Server Health Assessment #MVPLABSerie Azure Defender for Cloud with Azure Arc enabled SQL Server Security Baseline for Azure Arc enabled Servers and Arc Kubernetes As an IT Specialist of Datacenter(s) and Cloud I really like these Azure hybrid benefits to keep your datacenter up-to-date and secure! Hope this #MVPLABSerie is helpful for you and your Business. Cheers, JamesDeploy a 10 – Node Azure Service Fabric Standalone Cluster #microservices #Containers
Azure Service Fabric Standalone Cluster Earlier I wrote a blogpost about MicrosoftAzure Service Fabric Standalone Cluster for Dev testing. This was 5 – Node Azure Service Fabric Cluster locally installed, but now I like to have a bigger ASF Cluster on myWindows Server 2019 for testing with Visual Studio. When you havedownloaded the Microsoft Azure Service Fabric SDKinto a directory Here you see the JSON Cluster config files I used the same JSON template for deploying a Azure Service Fabric Standalone Cluster : Creating Cluster but with aChangedJSON Template. Here you find the 10 – Node Azure Service Fabric Cluster Config file on Github 10 – Node Microsoft Azure Service Fabric Standalone Cluster for Dev Testing Important :Use this Azure Service Fabric Standalone Cluster only for Learning and testing and not for production! Here you find moreinformation and documentation about Azure Service Fabric for Production. Have fun with creating and testing Cheers, @JamesvandenbergUpgrading and Monitoring 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. When you go tosettingsof your Azure AKS Kubernetes Cluster and then toUpgrade,there you can see your version of Kubernetes and the New versions of Azure AKS Services. Before you upgrade : Important :Never skip an Upgrade version of Azure AKS Kubernetes. Here you find all the information aboutAzure 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. Here you read the Complete Blogpost AboutUpgrading and Monitoring Azure AKS Kubernetes Cluster @JamesvandenbergMicrosoft Azure Migrate Assessments in Action VMware to Cloud
Azure Migrate This blogpost is about theMicrosoft Azure Migrate toolin 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. Azure Migrate preparation for VMware workload 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 onehere 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 theData Migration Assistantfor 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. Read the Complete blogpost about Azure Migrate Assessments in Action here You can follow me on Twitter:@JamesvandenBergMicrosoft System Center DPM 2019 and Azure Backup Services
Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager 2019 In a Earlier blogpost I wrote about Backup – Restore – DR Strategy in a fast changing world Microsoft Products for Backup – Restore -DR, we have: Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager Microsoft Azure Backup Microsoft Azure Site Recovery (DR) 1. Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager (DPM) You can install Microsoft SCDPM on different solutions, like: As a physical standalone server As a Hyper-V virtual machine As a Windows virtual machine in VMWare As an Azure virtual machine 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. 2. Microsoft Azure Backup 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. Read the complete Blogpost on System Center DPM 2019 and Azure Backup hereBackup – Restore – DR strategy in a Fast changing World
The world of data is moving and changing a lot with new IT technologies coming up like leaves on a tree. Data is everywhere, on Servers, workstations, BYOD Devices in the Cloud but how do you keep your data save and protected for your business today and in the future? There are a lot of reasons why you should Backup your data : One of your employees accidentally deleted important files for example. Your data got compromised by a virus. Your Server crashed You have to save your data for a period of time by Law And there will be more reasons why you should do backup…..... A lot of Enterprise organizations are moving to the Cloud with workloads for the Business, but how is your Backup and Disaster Recovery managed today? A lot of data transitions are made but what if your Backup and Disaster Recovery solution is out dated or reaching end of Life? You can have a lot of Questions like : What data should I backup? Should I just upgrade the Backup Solution? How can I make my Data Management Backup -DR Solution Cheaper and ready for the future? How can I make my new Backup-DR Solution independent? ( Vendor Lockin) And there will be more questions when you are in this scenario where you have to renew your Backup – DR Solution. Here we have the following Great Backup Solution from 2014 : Read the complete blogpost of Data Management Strategy Transformation Journey here Cheers, @JamesvandenBergMicrosoft Azure Central Monitoring for your Team Dashboards
Full Screen Monitoring When you install Azure Virtual Machines or Kubernetes Clusters in the Microsoft Cloud, It’s important to monitor your workload and keep your IT department in Control for the Business. Metric alerts in Azure Monitor work on top of multi-dimensional metrics. These metrics could be platform metrics, custom metrics, popular logs from Azure Monitor converted to metrics and Application Insights metrics. When you have important alerts, you want to take action based on your rules. Take action on Alerts Make your Own rules based on Alerts. IT Department of a company has most of the time different teams with each having it’s own responsibility of workloads in the Microsoft Cloud. For example, the Servicedesk is supporting the Business and they like to see if all the Services are up and running for the Business. The Infrastructure Team wants the same, but on deep level components of the Services like Memory, Network, Storage, CPU, Performance, Availability and more. The Technical Application Team is interested if the application is running and working with all the Interfaces, Databases, and/or Azure Pipelines. Each Team can build there own Azure Dashboard(s) in the Microsoft Cloud. Read the complete blogpost here @JamesvandenbergInstalling and Maintaining Azure Kubernetes Cluster with Multi Pool Nodes (Preview) #Winserv
Install AKS-Preview extension via Azure Cloudshell NOTE ! This is a Preview blogpost, do not use in production! (only for test environments) To create an AKS cluster that can use multiple node pools and run Windows Server containers, first enable the Windows Preview feature flags on your subscription. The Windows Preview feature also uses multi-node pool clusters and virtual machine scale set to manage the deployment and configuration of the Kubernetes nodes. Register the Windows Preview feature flag using the az feature register command as shown in the following example: I Have registered the following Preview Features from the Azure CloudShell : az feature register –name WindowsPreview –namespace Microsoft.ContainerService az feature register –name MultiAgentpoolPreview –namespace Microsoft.ContainerService az feature register –name VMSSPreview –namespace Microsoft.ContainerService This will take a few minutes and you can check the registration with the following command : az feature list -o table –query “[?contains(name, ‘Microsoft.ContainerService/WindowsPreview’)].{Name:name,State:properties.state}” When ready, refresh the registration of the Microsoft.ContainerService resource provider using the az provider register command: Creating Azure Kubernetes Cluster First you create a Resource Group in the right Azure Region for your AKS Cluster to run: az group create –name myResourceGroup –location eastus I created Resource Group KubeCon in location West-Europe. Creating KubeCluster Read here the complete blogpost on my Cloud and Datacenter Management blogMicrosoft Azure CloudShell for Management tasks
https://shell.azure.com Azure Cloud Shell is an interactive, browser-accessible shell for managing Azure resources. It provides the flexibility of choosing the shell experience that best suits the way you work. Linux users can opt for a Bash experience, while Windows users can opt for PowerShell. In this quick overview you will see the possibilities of Microsoft Azure Cloudshell functionalities and tools. Azure Cloudshell Editor Azure Cloud Shell includes an integrated file editor built from the open-source Monaco Editor. The Cloud Shell editor supports features such as language highlighting, the command palette, and a file explorer. This can be handy with JSON and YAML files. When you have your App YAML file for your Azure Kubernetes Cluster on your Cloud drive, you can edit the file online with your browser and save it in the Azure Cloud. I like this editor in the Cloudshell, especially when you are not behind your own laptop or pc and you have to make a quick change. I have a Kubernetes Cluster installed on Azure and with this editor I can explore my Azure logs, Cache, and config files for the information I need to work with in Bash, Powershell to do my CLI commands for example 😉 For the Powershell Gurus Azure PowerShell provides a set of cmdlets that use the Azure Resource Manager model for managing your Azure resources. Learn here more about Azure Powershell Azure Kubernetes CLI Kubectl Kubectl is a command line interface for running commands against Kubernetes clusters. kubectl looks for a file named config in the $HOME/.kube directory. You can specify other kubeconfig files by setting the KUBECONFIG environment variable or by setting the –kubeconfig flag. Read here more about Kubectl Terraform CLI is Available What is Terraform? Terraform is a tool for building, changing, and versioning infrastructure safely and efficiently. Terraform can manage existing and popular service providers as well as custom in-house solutions. Configuration files describe to Terraform the components needed to run a single application or your entire datacenter. Terraform generates an execution plan describing what it will do to reach the desired state, and then executes it to build the described infrastructure. As the configuration changes, Terraform is able to determine what changed and create incremental execution plans which can be applied. The infrastructure Terraform can manage includes low-level components such as compute instances, storage, and networking, as well as high-level components such as DNS entries, SaaS features, etc. The key features of Terraform are: Infrastructure as Code Infrastructure is described using a high-level configuration syntax. This allows a blueprint of your datacenter to be versioned and treated as you would any other code. Additionally, infrastructure can be shared and re-used. Execution Plans Terraform has a “planning” step where it generates an execution plan. The execution plan shows what Terraform will do when you call apply. This lets you avoid any surprises when Terraform manipulates infrastructure. Resource Graph Terraform builds a graph of all your resources, and parallelizes the creation and modification of any non-dependent resources. Because of this, Terraform builds infrastructure as efficiently as possible, and operators get insight into dependencies in their infrastructure. Change Automation Complex changesets can be applied to your infrastructure with minimal human interaction. With the previously mentioned execution plan and resource graph, you know exactly what Terraform will change and in what order, avoiding many possible human errors. More information on Terraform It’s really easy to Upload or Download your Files. AzCopy is a command-line utility designed for copying data to/from Microsoft Azure Blob, File, and Table storage, using simple commands designed for optimal performance. You can copy data between a file system and a storage account, or between storage accounts. More information about Features & tools for Azure Cloud Shell here Conclusion : Microsoft Azure Cloudshell is very powerful to work with, creating your infrastructure from the Command Line Interface (CLI) or with JSON / YAML scripts. Some features or commands are not available in the Azure portal and that’s where Azure Cloudshell can help you out. Try the different Azure Cloudshell Tools and look what you like most to use for your work. From here you can work on any device with a browser and do your work. #MVPBuzz@Jamesvandenberg
