Microsoft Azure Cloud

  Cloud Computing

 The popular trend in today's technology driven world is Cloud Computing. Cloud computing can be referred to as the storing and accessing of data over the internet rather than your computer's hard drive. This means you don't access the data from either your computer's hard drive or over a dedicated computer network (home or office network). Cloud computing means data is stored at a remote place and is synchronized with other web information.

 One prominent example of cloud computing is Office 365 which allows users to store, access, edit their MS Office documents online (in browser) without installing the actual program on their device.

Architecture of Cloud Computing

The architecture of cloud computing comprises of the following components −

• Front-end device
• Back-end platform
• Cloud-based delivery
• Network

Front-end Devices − These are basically the devices that are used by clients to access the data or program using the browser or special applications.

Back-end Platform − There are various computers, servers, virtual machines, etc. that combine to become a back-end platform.

Types of Cloud

The storage options on cloud is in 3 forms −

• Public
• Private
• Hybrid

Public Cloud − A service provider makes the clouds available to the general public which is termed as a public cloud. These clouds are accessed through internet by users. These are open to public and their infrastructure is owned and operated by service providers as in case of Google and Microsoft.

Private Cloud − These clouds are dedicated to a particular organization. That particular organization can use the cloud for storing the company's data, hosting business application, etc. The data stored on private cloud can't be shared with other organizations. The cloud is managed either by the organization itself or by the third party.

Hybrid Cloud − When two or more clouds are bound together to offer the advantage of both public and private clouds, they are termed as Hybrid Cloud. Organizations can use private clouds for sensitive application, while public clouds for non-sensitive applications. The hybrid clouds provide flexible, scalable and cost-effective solutions to the organizations.

Benefits of Cloud

There are many benefits of clouds. Some of them are listed below.

·        Cloud service offers scalability. Allocation and de-allocation of resources is dynamically as per demand.

·        It saves on cost by reducing capital infrastructure.

·        It allows the user to access the application independent of their location and hardware configuration.

·        It simplifies the network and lets the client access the application without buying license for individual machine.

·        Storing data on clouds is more reliable as it is not lost easily.

SPI

Next comes how cloud services are categorized. S stand for Software, P stands for Platform and I for Infrastructure in SPI. SaaS is Software as a service; PaaS is Platform as a service and IaaS is Infrastructure as a Service.

Following are the live examples of these models.

·        SAAS Model − E-mail (Gmail, Yahoo, etc.)

·        PAAS Model − Microsoft Azure

·        IAAS Model − Amazon S3

   Setting up and managing servers and infrastructure needed to power our development takes a lot of time. These obstacles could be removed if we developers could provision our own servers. It is also easier for enterprises of all size to benefit from the high performance and availability of the network without the cost of running your own hardware. Azure virtual Machine is an ideal solution in many ways, An Azure virtual machine gives you the flexibility of virtualization without spending the time and money to buy and maintain the hardware that hosts the virtual machine.

Azure Virtual Machines

Azure Virtual Machines is one of the central features of Azure’s IaaS capabilities, together with Virtual Networks. Azure Virtual Machines supports the deployment of Windows Server or Linux virtual machines (VMs) in a Microsoft Azure datacenter. You have total control over the configuration of the VM. You are responsible for all server software installation, configuration, and maintenance, as well as operating system patches.

Virtual Machine Status

Azure VMs have three possible states:

• Running -The VM is on and running normally.
• Stopped -The VM is stopped, but it is still consuming compute resources within Azure.
• Stopped (Deallocated)- The VM is stopped, and it is not consuming compute resources within Azure.

Stopping VM

By default, stopping a VM in the Azure Management Portal puts the VM into the Stopped (Deallocated) state.If you want to stop the VM but keep it allocated, you will need to use a PowerShell

cmdlet: > Stop-AzureVM -Name "az-essential" -ServiceName "az-essential" -StayProvisioned

Shutting down the VM from the operating system of the VM will also stop the VM but will not deallocate the VM.

Billing

Azure Virtual Machines is priced on a per-hour basis, but is billed on a per-minute basis.The cost for a VM includes the charge for the Windows Server operating system.The cost, and the appropriate licensing, for any additional software you want to install is your responsibility.

There is a direct relationship between the VM’s status and billing:

• Running  - Billable
• Stopped - Billable 
• Stopped (Deallocated) -Not billable

Creating Virtual Machines

There are two tiers for Azure Virtual Machines, Basic and Standard. VMs in the Basic tier are well suited for workloads that do not require load balancing or the ability to autoscale. VMs in the Standard tier support all Azure Virtual Machines configurations and features.

Within the Basic and Standard tiers, there are various VM sizes available. The A-series VMs are the ―traditional sizes that have been around since Azure Virtual Machines was first introduced. The D-series VMs were introduced in September 2014, and they feature faster processors, a higher memory-to-core ratio, and a solid-state drive (SSD) for the temporary physical disk.

When you create a VM, you get two disks: an OS disk that is persisted in Azure blob storage and a temporary disk. The temporary disk is a physical disk located within the chassis of the server. The temporary disk (which is referred to as the D drive for Windows VMs uses a traditional HDD platter for the A-series and SSD for the D-series VMs.

You can create a virtual machine in Microsoft Azure by using the Azure Management Portal, Azure PowerShell, the programmable API interface (REST); or the command-line tools provided for Mac and Linux desktops. One of the easiest ways to get started creating Azure VMs is to use the Azure Management Portal or the Azure Preview Portal.

• Log into the Azure Preview Portal at http://portal.azure.com . At this point, you will need an Azure subscription. If you don’t have one, you can sign up for a free trial at http://azure.microsoft.com.
• To get started, click +NEW in the upper-left corner of the screen.
• In the New blade, click Compute, and then click Windows Server 2012 R2 Datacenter for the purposes of this example.

• On the Create VM blade, fill in the Host Name you want for the VM, the administrative User Name, and a strong Password.

Host Name- The name of the VM.

User Name -The administrative user name.

Password -The password for the administrative user.

Pricing Tier -Expand this lens to view all the different pricing .

Optional Configuration- Expand this lens to control several important settings, such as:

The cloud service name (the DNS name; for example, contoso.cloudapp.net).Whether operating system automatic updates (that is, Windows Update) is enabled (default is ON).

The storage account to store the operating system disk’s virtual hard drive (VHD).

Any Virtual Network options (the VM will be placed in its own Virtual Network unless otherwise specified).

Whether diagnostics should be enabled.

Resource Group-Provides a logical container for Azure resources (to help manage resources that are often used together).

Location - The Azure region where the VM should be placed.

• When finished, click the blue Create button to instruct Azure to start creating your VM. This process could take several minutes.
• After Azure creates the VM, you'll see it on your Startboard.

Connect to a virtual machine

When creating a VM using the Azure Preview Portal, Remote Desktop is enabled by default. To connect to the VM, select the Connect button from the top of the desired VM blade.

Open the RDP file and connect to the VM.

You will need to provide the administrative user name and password set when initially provisioning the VM.

 You can now work with the virtual machine.

Scalability

As with most Azure services, Azure Virtual Machines follow a scale out, not scale up, model. This means it is preferable to deploy more instances of the same configuration rather than adding larger, more powerful machines.

Before VMs can be scaled ,the instances must be placed within an availability set. When determining the scale out approach for VMs, it is important to determine the maximum number of VMs, because that maximum number of VMs must be created, configured, and placed into an availability set. When it comes time to scale out, the VMs within the availability set are used to fulfill the scale-out needs. VMs within an availability set should all be the same size to take advantage of Azure’s autoscale feature.

Points of Interest

Microsoft Azure provides massive amounts of infrastructure you can utilize to run your applications and systems. And, you always can scale up or out whenever you like. We now can set up an environment that closely resembles our production environment, and it won't cost much as azure bills us by hour. By distributing load across virtualized machines, Azure VM are able to ensure high availability of applications and data. Even if one server fails, another virtual machine can be spun up with minimal downtime or data loss.

IT Industrial Training .NET Framework

C#, ASP.NET with Window Form Application, Silverlight, WPF, ASP.NET MVC, ASP.NET CORE,Web Service, Web API, Jquery, Bootstraps, Ajax, Javascript , SAP Crystal Report, MS SQL Server, Oracle and Live Projects.