Azure Stack laaS – part two

This blog post was co-authored by David Armour, Principal Program Manager, Azure Stack.

Start with what you already have

Every organization has a unique journey to the cloud. This journey is based on the organization’s history, business specifics, culture, and maybe most importantly, their starting point. While it can be hard for some to say goodbye to their current virtualization environment and way of doing things, the journey to the cloud provides many options, features, functionalities, and opportunities to improve existing governance, operations, and implement new ones. The journey to the cloud can also provide the opportunity to redesign applications and take advantage of the cloud architecture. Additionally, Microsoft Azure gives you the option to host your virtual machines (VMs) in the public cloud or in your own facility with Azure Stack.

In most cases, this journey starts with a lift and shift of the existing servers, either virtual machines or physical servers. Because Azure Stack at its core is an infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) platform, the right way to think about this first phase of the journey is as a lift and optimize process. Moving the servers should be the first step towards enabling modern operations across your workloads. That could mean something as little as selecting the right size for your VMs so that you “pay for what you use,” enabling self-service by doing it yourself, automating deployments, or even building on the success of others.

What to think about when migrating

The Azure migration center provides a good model to help start the assessment, make sure you have the right stakeholders involved and help create the proper frame for your migration.

As you start this assessment, there are several factors which you can use to identify what is the best suited platform for your workload, whether that is Azure or Azure Stack:

Cost
Connectivity requirements
Potential regulations and data gravity requirements
High availability and regional requirements

After you complete the assessment and planning, you will need to select the right tool for the migration.

Our partner ecosystem includes ISVs that have built solutions which range from simple migrations, to “as a Service” solutions. There are also Microsoft migration options which require manual steps to implement, but offer a potential lower cost.

Partner options

Azure Stack has ISV solutions for every stage of application migration, from envisioning and/or discovery, to modernization by leveraging PaaS capabilities. Each have their own capabilities and improve the process in their own way.

Carbonite – Offers server migration, backup, high availability of Windows Servers, and enterprise protection for Microsoft Windows endpoints.
Cloudbase – Offers a migration-as-a-service solution called Coriolis which integrates with Azure Migrate and uses it for the initial assessment, as well as the VM-size mapping.

Coriolis will be available as a trial version in the Azure Stack Marketplace, offering free VM migrations to validate the process and make sure it is the right solution. 

   Commvault – Complements migration, management, protection, and activation of data on Microsoft Azure Stack and other hybrid cloud infrastructure solutions. Commvault helps enterprises increase agility, reduce costs, and discover valuable insights.

Commvault is available in the Azure Stack Marketplace and it offers a 60-day free trial that can be upgraded in place to a full version.   

Corent – Offers a migration-as-a-service solution. See below for published cases studies:

“Migrating a BFSI(Banking, Financial Services and Insurance) Application to Microsoft Azure Stack using SurPaaS MaaS”     

“Calligo delivers successful migration to Azure Stack using Corent Technology SurPaaS platform”

Corent Technology is offering a free POC of scanning and migrating of up to five VMs to readers of this blog.  Email sales@corenttech.com with #AzureStackBlog to set up your free PoC. 

ZeroDown – Provides business continuity and high availability across multiple stamps, and even during a migration process. 

This isn’t really a migration tool, instead it can offer fault tolerance and high availability for your solution.     

This solution can also help with creating fault tolerance and high availability across multiple stamps. Please see our demo of an application running across two Azure Stack stamps.

It is also available in the Azure Stack Marketplace and offers a 30-day free trial   

Microsoft migration options

The Storage Migration Service makes it easier to migrate servers and to target VMs in Azure Stack. You can use the graphical tool that inventories data on servers and then transfer that data and configuration to the VMs already deployed on Azure Stack. The service works without apps or users having to change anything. Depending on the assessment, some of these workloads might go to Azure IaaS, or Azure Files.

Use Storage Migration Service because you’ve got a server or lots of servers that you want to migrate to Azure Stack virtual machines. Storage Migration Service is designed to help by doing the following:

Inventory multiple servers and their data.
Rapidly transfer files, file shares, and security configuration from the source servers.
Optionally take over the identity of the source servers, also known as cutting over, so that users and apps don’t have to change anything to access existing data.
Manage one or multiple migrations from the Windows Admin Center user interface.

Typically, in your migration journey, you will use a mixture of tools. So you will need to understand the options available in order to select the right tool for the specific workloads.

Learn more

Use Storage Migration Service to migrate a server
Install Windows Admin Center

In this blog series

We hope you come back to read future posts in this blog series. Here are some of our planned upcoming topics:

Azure Stack at its core is an Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) platform
Fundamentals of IaaS
Start with what you already have
Do it yourself
Pay for what you use
It takes a team
If you do it often, automate it
Protect your stuff
Build on the success of others
Journey to PaaS

Quelle: Azure

Azure Marketplace new offers – Volume 32

We continue to expand the Azure Marketplace ecosystem. From January 16 to January 31, 2019, 70 new offers successfully met the onboarding criteria and went live. See details of the new offers below:

Virtual machines

Admin Password Manager for Enterprise: Admin Password Manager for Enterprise simplifies password management while helping customers implement recommended defenses against possible cyberattacks.

Appiyo BPM – Simple lightweight process engine: Appiyo's compute engine helps you implement simple business processes and API integration scenarios. It can be used for enterprise linkage to conversational BOTs and for IOT scenarios and document management.

Attendize Open-source ticket selling system: Attendize offers a wide array of ticket and event management features, including mobile-friendly event pages, attendee management, data export, real-time event statistics, and support for multiple currencies.

AVReporter Azure: The AVReporter energy management software contains desktop, web, and mobile interfaces; reports and graphical elements; alerts; ready-to-use dashboards; and more.

Celebrus Enterprise Customer Data Platform: Celebrus captures a complete picture of customer behavior and experience, creating events and profiles in real time for 1-to-1 personalization and streaming analytics.

DNS Safety Filter: This solution is a DNS server with extensive filtering capabilities. It allows you to filter access to domain names by categories and block access to specified domains, and it provides access policies for different groups of machines in your network.

EDLIGO: EDLIGO is a fully integrated solution that delivers real-time insights for data-driven decisions in education. It features easy-to-use dashboards and advanced predictive, causal, and prescriptive analytics.

IOTA Full Node: A full node is a program that fully validates transactions. Setting up your own full node saves you from relying on third parties, giving you more financial control.

Jamcracker CSB Service Provider Version 7.0: Jamcracker CSB, a purpose-built appliance for service providers, is a cloud brokerage solution for Software-as-a-Service and Infrastructure-as-a-Service products. It automates order management, provisioning, and billing.

JFrog Artifactory VM: This virtual machine comes with Java 8, JFrog Artifactory, and Nginx.

Joomla on Windows Server 2016: Joomla is a free and open-source content management system for building websites and powerful online apps. With Joomla, you can connect your sites to databases like MySQL, MySQLi, or PostgreSQL to manage content and delivery.

Joomla on Windows Server 2019: Joomla is a free and open-source content management system for building websites and powerful online apps. With Joomla, you can connect your sites to databases like MySQL, MySQLi, or PostgreSQL to manage content and delivery.

MediaWiki on Windows Server 2016: MediaWiki is a powerful, free, and open-source wiki engine written in the PHP programming language. MediaWiki software is fully customizable, with more than 1,800 extensions available for enabling features.

MediaWiki on Windows Server 2019: MediaWiki is a powerful, free, and open-source wiki engine written in the PHP programming language. MediaWiki software is fully customizable, with more than 1,800 extensions available for enabling features.

NVIDIA Quadro Virtual Workstation – Ubuntu 18.04: Spin up a GPU-accelerated virtual workstation in minutes, without having to manage endpoints or back-end infrastructure. NVIDIA Tesla GPUs in the cloud power high-performance simulation, rendering, and design.

NVIDIA Quadro Virtual Workstation – WinServer 2016: Spin up a GPU-accelerated virtual workstation in minutes, without having to manage endpoints or back-end infrastructure. NVIDIA Tesla GPUs in the cloud power high-performance simulation, rendering, and design.

WordPress on Windows Server 2016: WordPress is a free and open-source website management system for blogs, applications, business sites, portfolios, and more. It's written in the PHP programming language.

WordPress on Windows Server 2019: WordPress is a free and open-source website management system for blogs, applications, business sites, portfolios, and more. It's written in the PHP programming language.

Web applications

Avere vFXT for Azure ARM Template: The Avere vFXT provides scalability, flexibility, and easy access to cloud-based or file-based storage locations for users tasked with managing critical high-performance computing (HPC) workloads.

Cisco CSR 1000V DMVPN Transit VNET: A transit VNet is a common strategy to connect geographically dispersed VNets and remote networks. It simplifies network management and minimizes the number of connections required to connect VNets and remote networks.

Citrix SD-WAN Standard Edition 10.2: Citrix SD-WAN Standard Edition for Azure logically bonds network links into a single, secure, logical virtual path. Organizations can leverage broadband, MPLS, 4G/LTE, satellite, and other connections.

CloudMigrator: Use CloudMigrator to securely migrate email, contacts, calendars, and files from enterprise sources to Microsoft Office 365. CloudMigrator is highly configurable, allowing you to complete the most complex and demanding migrations with ease.

Customer-Facing Anti-Phishing: Segasec specializes in helping organizations mitigate the risk of their customers becoming victims of online fraud and phishing scams. Segasec's solution requires zero onboarding and no integration, so companies can start immediately.

Discovery Hub® with SQL MI and AAS: Discovery Hub Application Server for Azure is a high-performance data management platform that accelerates your time to data insights.

FortiWeb Web Application Firewall – HA: Whether to simply meet compliance standards or to protect mission-critical hosted applications, FortiWeb's web application firewalls (WAFs) provide advanced features and AI-based machine learning detection engines.

HPC Azure Cluster Management Service: This self-hosted service can help you manage your HPC clusters on Azure. The service provides cluster diagnostics (including benchmark and MPI diagnostics), monitoring, and management features.

JFrog Artifactory Enterprise ARM Template: JFrog Artifactory Enterprise delivers end-to-end automation and management of your binaries and artifacts. It is a scalable, universal binary repository manager that integrates with your DevOps tools and platforms.

MSPControl: The powerful MSPControl platform gives users simple multi-tenant point-and-click control over Windows Server applications, including Microsoft IIS, Microsoft SQL Server, and Microsoft Exchange.

TimeXtender Discovery Hub with Managed Instance: Discovery Hub supports core analytics, the modern data warehouse, artificial intelligence, and the internet of things (IoT). This offering deploys the Discovery Hub application server and Azure SQL Managed Instance.

Waves MultiNode: Waves MultiNode is a ready-to-use blockchain software solution for those who want to launch their own private blockchain network with a specific business logic, or to start development of a decentralized application.

Waves Node: Waves Node is a ready-to-use blockchain software solution for those who want to help maintain the Waves network without any hardware or specialist experience.

Container solutions

Entitystream Custodian: Custodian is a full-stack master data management solution that enables its users to connect data from different parts of their organization with the need for complex data management projects.

EntityStream Mars: Mars is a microservice that allows you to present it with two records and have it index, standardize, and compare them so you can understand how similar they are in real-life scenarios.

Jsonnet Container Image: Jsonnet is a data templating language for application and tool developers. It’s based on JSON.

Kubeapps AppRepository Controller Container Image: Kubeapps AppRepository Controller is one of the main components of Kubeapps, a web-based application deployment and management tool for Kubernetes clusters. This controller monitors resources.

Kubeapps Chart Repo Container Image: Kubeapps Chart Repo is one of the main components of Kubeapps, a web-based application deployment and management tool for Kubernetes clusters. It scans a chart repository and populates its metadata.

Kubeapps Chartsvc Container Image: Kubeapps Chartsvc is one of the main components of Kubeapps, a web-based application deployment and management tool for Kubernetes clusters. This service reads metadata about the repositories.

Kubeapps Tiller Proxy Container Image: Kubeapps Tiller Proxy is one of the main components of Kubeapps, a web-based application deployment and management tool for Kubernetes clusters. This proxy provides a secure way to authenticate users.

Redis Enterprise Software: With Redis Enterprise Software, a dataset can grow beyond the largest node in the cluster and be processed by any number of cores.

Scribendi Accelerator: The Scribendi Accelerator is an advanced grammatical error correction tool designed to support professional editors during the editing process and increase their productivity.

TensorFlow ResNet Container Image: TensorFlow ResNet is a client utility for use with TensorFlow Serving and ResNet models.

Consulting services

Accelerate Advanced Analytics: 4-week Assessment: This engagement by Applied Cloud Systems involves an assessment of your analytics capabilities, a period of incubation in Azure, and a path forward. This is a four-week assessment for small to medium-sized organizations.

Accelerate Advanced Analytics: 8-week Assessment: This engagement by Applied Cloud Systems involves an assessment of your analytics capabilities, a period of incubation in Azure, and a path forward. This is an eight-week assessment for small to medium-sized organizations.

Accelerate Azure: 4-week Assessment: Applied Cloud Systems will provide direction and velocity for Azure adoption, innovation, and operations in this four-week assessment intended for small to medium-sized organizations.

Accelerate Azure: 8-week Assessment: Applied Cloud Systems will provide direction and velocity for Azure adoption, innovation, and operations in this eight-week assessment intended for small to medium-sized organizations.

Accelerate DevOps: 4-week Assessment: This four-week assessment by Applied Cloud Systems will guide your organization through application modernization and delivery leveraging Azure DevOps.

Accelerate DevOps: 8-week Assessment: This eight-week assessment by Applied Cloud Systems will guide your organization through application modernization and delivery leveraging Azure DevOps.

AgileIdentity: Azure AD: 3-week Implementation: Easily manage identities across thousands of apps and platforms with Azure Active Directory and Azure AD Premium consulting by Agile IT.

Application Containerization: 3-wk Assessment: For enterprises looking to host their applications on Azure Container Services, DXC Technology uses tools and expertise to determine the technical feasibility, business suitability, and transformation path for each app.

Application Containerization Quickstart: 4-wk POC: For enterprises looking to improve the elasticity of their applications, DXC Technology provides this service to containerize applications and deploy them to Azure Container Services.

Application Services Quickstart: 4-wk POC: For enterprises looking to host their applications on Microsoft Azure, DXC Technology provides a comprehensive migration solution.

Azure4DevOps: 3 Day DevOps Maturity Assessment: This assessment by Testhouse will identify your DevOps maturity and provide a roadmap for moving your IT organization toward the highest level.

Azure DevOps4Dynamics: 3-Day Maturity Assessment: Assess your IT organization’s DevOps maturity and generate an improvement roadmap to ensure you can effectively manage the application lifecycle of your enterprise software investment on Azure.

Azure DevOps Migration: 10 Day Engagement: Readify’s Azure DevOps engagement offers you the opportunity to work with our experts to evaluate current barriers and begin to implement new tools, services, and practices in Azure DevOps.

Azure Disaster Recovery: 1-Day Workshop: In this session, one of InsITe’s skilled engineers will walk you through Azure Backup and Azure Site Recovery services, demonstrating how you can immediately begin leveraging active datacenter replication.

Azure Integration Services: 1-wk POC: This limited implementation by VNB Consulting is designed to evaluate if Azure Integration Services is right for your organization’s hybrid or cloud integration platform initiative.

Azure Migration: 1-day Assessment: CHISW Development LTD's assessment will cover an environment review, premigration requirements, migration, post-migration requirements and enhancements, and a security check.

Azure Security: 3-Day Workshop: This workshop by Catapult Systems is designed to help customers understand the basic security requirements and services available in Azure.

Azure Site Recovery-1 Server: 1-day Implementation: Forsyte will take the time to understand your disaster recovery needs, define an Azure Site Recovery strategy, configure a server, configure the target environment in Azure, create a replication, and initiate the server replication.

BizTalk Health Check/Upgrade Azure Assessment 1-Wk: The BizTalk Health Check by TwoConnect is the first step toward considering an Azure migration and achieving optimal performance for your BizTalk system.

BizTalk Support & Azure Managed Services 3-Day PoC: TwoConnect’s award-winning BizTalk support and Azure Managed Services team will focus on supporting, maintaining, and adapting your integration solutions to ensure the seamless continuity of your business operations.

BizTalk to Azure Migration: 2-day Assessment: This assessment by VNB Consulting will be held at your facility or conducted remotely, and it will involve an evaluation of your BizTalk environment that results in a detailed plan for a BizTalk-to-Azure migration.

Cloud Migration – Transformation: 1-Hour Briefing: Learn how Wintellisys Inc.'s capabilities, approach, and methodologies can help customers accelerate their journey to the cloud. Get an overview of the migration suite and a demonstration of a few of the key components.

Disaster Recovery: 2-Week Implementation: Catapult Systems will discover, assess, and define the architecture and recovery process for two on-premises workloads to Azure.

EDI on Azure LogicApps: 2-day POC: This limited implementation by VNB Consulting is designed to evaluate if Azure Integration Services (Azure Logic Apps and Integration Account) is right for your organization’s EDI-in-the-cloud initiative.

Govern Azure: 8-week Assessment: Applied Cloud Systems' assessment will include all aspects of the governance process, including architecture, acceptable usage, security, monitoring, and cost management.

TFS-Azure DevOps Migration: 4-week Implementation: Canarys will help you each step of the way on your journey, from acquiring the licenses required to use Azure DevOps to migrating projects from Team Foundation Server to Azure DevOps (formerly VSTS).

TIC Modernization 1-Hour Briefing: Practical Solutions Inc. will discuss how any federal agency can remove barriers to the cloud and modern technology adoption. We will also show how agencies can meet the OMB Trusted Internet Connections (TIC) initiative.

Website / App Migration: 3 Day Assessment: BUI will analyze your IIS/Linux installation and identify which sites can be migrated to Microsoft Azure, highlighting any elements that cannot be migrated or are unsupported on the platform.

Windows Server & SQL 2008 EOS Migration- 6 Wk Imp.: This implementation by ANS Group is a packaged migration service that combines assessing, planning, and transitioning stand-alone services into Microsoft Azure.

Quelle: Azure