Migration to Microsoft Azure: Optimization using Cloud Services

Transcription

1 Discover Migration to Microsoft Azure: Optimization using Cloud Services A Use Case Migrate Optimize Overview Once organizations migrate on-premises virtual machines to Microsoft Azure, many will want to optimize operational aspects of the new cloud-based solutions. After all, one reason people move workloads to the cloud is to reduce costs. While reducing costs is entirely possible, cloud services are pay-as-you-go, which means costs add up fast unless organizations ensure they are paying for only what they need. The concept of optimization, or continual fine tuning, will be new to many. Optimization tools are expensive and difficult to integrate one reason that many organizations don t have the necessary tools in their on-premises computing environment to accomplish optimal operating states. Also, the reality is that traditional on-premises virtualized environments run into hardware constraints that limit CPU, memory, storage, and networking. These constraints make it difficult to add monitoring and analytics without adversely affecting the operating environment, because those tools would use more resources resources that aren t available. When organizations move workloads to Azure, they can modify CPU, memory, storage, and networking as desired, gain operational insights through data gathered from a wide variety of sources, automate and control administrative processes, plus protect and secure their computing assets while remaining compliant. All these capabilities are enabled as part of the Azure Virtual Machine infrastructure and Azure management and security services, including Cloudyn from Microsoft.

2 This document explores a typical migration process through the perspective of Contoso, a fictitious company. Optimization is the third, and ongoing stage of the three-stage migration process recommended by Microsoft and its partners. 1. Discover. Use available tools to get better visibility on computing systems in your environment and assess the optimal resource level to run them in Microsoft Azure. Use this information to help decide which workloads to move. 2. Migrate. Move selected workloads to Azure from a variety of sources including physical servers, and virtualized workloads hosted on Microsoft Hyper-V or VMware environments. 3. Optimize. Fine tune your Azure-based workloads and maximize your ROI. Use case: Contoso Contoso, a business with more than 20,000 internal customers and several million customers, partners, and prospects that use Contoso online resources, migrated selected workloads to Azure as part of its modernization, cost control, and business expansion initiatives. The company hoped to defer new hardware purchases, software upgrades, and facilities investments and use Azure infrastructure where appropriate. Reducing cost was of interest to the team, and other key reasons included hardware resource scalability, plus improved management and security through integrated tools and analytics. To understand which workloads were appropriate for Phase 1 migration, Contoso assessed its environment and chose workloads that were underutilized or had zero to few dependencies on other systems in its compute estate. This effort is described in a separate use case focused on the discovery stage. Contoso then successfully migrated 30 workloads under its Phase 1 migration plan to Azure, described in an additional, separate use case covering the migration stage. Once the workloads were migrated to Azure, the Contoso team wanted to focus on security and cost containment while maximizing performance and availability of the new cloud applications. The team started by exploring the capabilities of Azure management and security services to manage and protect their new cloud infrastructure. Contoso updated its systems and installed anti-malware. The next priority was to understand how to analyze security events to identify suspicious activity and act on that information to remain secure and compliant, capabilities available in Azure Security Center (ASC). These capabilities also helped Contoso define policies for subscriptions according to its cloud security needs, tailored to the type of applications or sensitivity of the data. After Contoso set up its security solution, the team examined ways it could use analytics to determine optimal operating states and to closely monitor and control costs for its virtual machines. For these functions, they decided to rely on Azure Log Analytics and Cloudyn, technology that was recently acquired by Microsoft. 2

3 Exploring Azure management capabilities Azure Security Center (ASC) helps prevent, detect, and respond to threats with increased visibility and control over the security of your Azure resources. ASC provides a comprehensive view into an organization s IT security posture with built-in search queries for notable issues requiring attention. Cloudyn is a cloud service that is tightly integrated with Azure operations and can monitor and report on overall budget, operational, and cost aspects of Azure workloads. With Log Analytics, the Contoso team monitored virtual machines and applications log data so they could analyze it to address operational and application anomalies related to performance. Once they saw performance issues, they could begin the process to remediate the identified problems. Because some of the migrated websites were used only during certain times of the year, Contoso was able to limit Azure consumption costs by shutting off web sites when sites went unused, based on Cloudyn analytics and reporting. Azure Log Analytics is a visual analytics service that monitors cloud and on-premises environments to help IT professionals optimize and maintain availability and performance. It collects data generated by resources in an organization s cloud and onpremises environments and from other monitoring tools to provide analysis across multiple sources. Azure Automation provides a way for users to automate the manual, long-running, errorprone tasks that are commonly performed in a cloud and enterprise environment. The service saves time and increases the reliability of regular administrative tasks. It also schedules them to be automatically performed at regular intervals. You can automate processes using runbooks or automate configuration management using Desired State Configuration. This Cloudyn VM Efficiency report shows actual usage of Contoso virtual machines over time in Azure. Contoso also wanted to track costs against its budget. They used Cloudyn reports to determine real-time spending. With this information, they could identify which virtual machine types were consuming budget to support decisions on how to modify the Azure environment to maximize ROI. 3

4 A VM Daily Cost Tracking report in Cloudyn shows spend on a daily basis across all virtualmachine types and sizes. Where there was an opportunity to reduce costs with a different virtual machine type and size, Cloudyn recommended virtual-machine sizing changes. This capability translated into savings and significantly reduced the effort otherwise required to make these types of decisions reviewing usage data manually. The Sizing Opportunities report from Cloudyn includes projected cost savings, current instance type, and recommended instance type to simplify virtual-machine sizing decisions. 4

5 Results Migrating workloads to Azure enabled Contoso to transform its Azure operating environment using integrated tools to enhance security, improve operations, and increase cost efficiencies. Contoso had suspected that some of its older websites were inefficient. Previously, however, the company didn t have the on-premises tools or resources to analyze operations and improve the solution. Once the workloads were in Azure, the team was able to use the built-in collection of log and performance data from servers all the way to application code to troubleshoot issues quickly and fine-tune operational aspects of the sites, With Cloudyn, Contoso gained a set of monitoring and cost analysis tools that helped visualize cloud usage and spend to make better decisions to maximize ROI. After reviewing its Phase 1 migration effort, the Contoso team was ready to tackle the more complex workloads identified during the discovery stage and move forward to migrate and optimize them. Find more information about the complete migration process at Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. This document is provided as-is. Information and views expressed in this document, including URL and other Internet Web site references, may change without notice. You bear the risk of using it. Some examples are for illustration only and are fictitious. No real association is intended or inferred. This document does not provide you with any legal rights to any intellectual property in any Microsoft product. You may copy and use this document for your internal reference purposes. September 2017