Category: Azure

Azure Now Supports Backup Of Running Azure VMs

I recently blogged on Petri.com how you can configure backup of Azure virtual machines. This is a superb addition to Azure, making it ready, in my opinion, for production VM hosting.

The Way it Was

Previous to the addition to this feature, there was no way to backup a running Azure virtual machine in Azure as a complete VM. There were some bad hacks:

  • Storage snapshots: You could shut down a VM and snapshot the the storage account. This sucked. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t supported.
  • In-VM backup: You could deploy an agent into a VM and backup files and folders. This sucked too. Microsoft tried to push DPM sales with this, requiring one Datacenter SML for every 8 VMs.

What we needed was what we could do on-premises with Hyper-V or vSphere; we needed a per-VM mechanism for backing up an entire VM, with the ability to quickly restore that VM compete with OS, applications, and data.

And that’s what Azure Backup for VMs gives us.

The Way it is Now

Now we can:

  • Discover VMs
  • Register VMs
  • Protect VMs with policy, with up to 1 backup per day and up to 4 weeks retention.

The backup of Azure VMs is managed from the Azure portal. You get logs as well. There is no need to install or manage anything in the guest OS. A backup extension is automatically added to the VM when you protect it.

The entire VM is backed up and can be restored. Note that in terms of pricing:

  • Each VM is an instance
  • The size of the instance is the size of the virtual disk, not the size of the contents. So a 127 GB VM with 50 GB of contents is 127 GB, falling into the 50-500 GB instance bracket. This is different to Hyper-V, where it is the physical size that is counted (including checkpoints).

If you want granular backup then you can also deploy the Azure Backup agent into the guest OS. Note that this requires another instance and you will only be able to backup files and folders with this additional backup, which is managed from the MARS agent in the guest OS.

Note: I have talked to one of the Azure Backup PMs and he told me that there is no support for VM Generation ID. That means that you should not, ever, in any scenario, restore a virtual domain controller if there is more than one DC (the one you want to restore) in that forest.

My VM

I decided, after experimenting with Azure websites, that I wanted to retain 100% control over my website hosting. My site (WordPress) is hosted in an A2 VM and I run MySQL in the VM. This gives me the flexibility to add more sites to the VM and re-use MySQL. I don’t have any of the limitations that the ClearDB MySQL hosting has in Azure.

I configured a daily backup to run and to retain 4 weeks of data. The first backup ran last night with no issues:

I also have installed the Azure Backup agent into the guest OS. There I run a script to export MySQL to a file, and I backup this file and the IIS website folder. So in the event of a screw-up, I have the ability to restore:

  • Individual website files
  • The MySQL databases
  • The entire VM
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Moving An Azure VM To Different Virtual Network

It’s a simple enough operation (PowerShell) to move a virtual machine to a different subnet within a virtual network. But what if you want to move the virtual machine to a different virtual network? That’s a bit more complex to do because you cannot just lift the VM to another network.

Instead you will have to:

1: Delete the virtual machine, choosing to keep the attached disks. Doesn’t Azure Backup of Azure Virtual Machines sound like a good idea right now? Go do that first Smile

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2: Create a new virtual machine from the existing disks. The above deletion process keeps the original disks, and deletes the meta data of the VM. You are now going to create new meta data using the remaining disks. This is like moving the hard drives from one broken server to a replacement server. Go into the wizard and instead of selecting a template, choose your old disk. Make sure you know which one it is first – the name of the old VM (FS1 in this case) is usually in the file name.

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3: Complete the wizard and select the new virtual network. If this is a new network/application then you probably will have to create a new cloud service too.

4: Attach any data disks. If the old VM had any data disks then they’ll need to be reattached. Shutdown the VM and attach the disks.

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Your Azure Credentials Have Not Been Set Up Or Have Expired

I use the Azure “Ibiza” and management portals for most of my Azure admin, but there are times when PowerShell makes more sense:

  • The feature is only available via PowerShell
  • I need to do a lot and don’t want to be doing progress bar admin

Today, I had an issue where no matter what cmdlet I ran, I got this error:

Your Azure credentials have not been set up or have expired

Very annoying. Some googling lead me to a solution:

  1. Remove-AzureAccount –Name <my UPN>
  2. Add-AzureAccount

I logged back into Azure via that last cmdlet and everything was fixed.

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Microsoft Blogs About New Azure Backup Pricing

It’s April Fool’s Day, and the new pricing system for Azure Backup comes into force today. Make of that what you want 😀

I am not a fan of the new pricing system. I am all for costs coming down, but I can say from 8 months of selling Azure, complex pricing BLOCKS sales efforts by Microsoft partners. The new system isn’t just “price per GB” but it also includes the abstract notion of an “instance”.  A new blog post by Microsoft attempts to explain clearly what an instance is.

I’ve read it. I think I understand it. I know that no MSFT partner sales person will read it, our customers will call me, and when I explain it to them, I know that a sale will not happen. I’ve seen that trend with Azure too often (all but a handful of occasions) to know it’s not a once-off.

Anyway … enjoy the post by Microsoft.

Giving Feedback to Azure WORKS

I’ve voted on a number of feedback items in Azure, mainly in backup, and I’m delighted to see that feedback having an impact.

I was presenting last months on Azure to partners in Northern Ireland when I was able to talk about an email I had received that morning that announced new features (seeding backup by disk, increased retention, and complex retention policies) that had been based on feedback.

Today, I got an email to confirm that another voted item, the ability to backup running VMs in Azure using Azure Backup, had been announced – I’m actually playing with it right now.

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Feedback via this forum works. It is public and measured, and it’s much more effective than complaining to your local Microsoft reps (some of whom are less effective than others). So give Microsoft the feedback! Don’t just say “I want X”. Instead, say “I want X because it will allow Y and Z”; a full scenario description is what the program managers need to understand the request.

My tip: partners working with Open licensing need a centralized admin portal.

Guest on RunAs Radio Talking Azure RemoteApp

Richard Campbell, the host of the RunAs Radio podcast, saw a tweet from me talking about Azure AD, and thought he should ask me back on to have a chat. I had been working on developing training materials on RemoteApp. The use-case that caught my interest was the ability to use RemoteApp to remove the effect of latency. We talk for half an hour about this.

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The “design” I talk about in the podcast (recorded a few weeks ago) works, and I’ve presented using it. I’ve written some posts on Petri.com about my experiences:

In the design, virtual DCs, file server, and application servers run as VMs in an Azure network. RemoteApp publishes applications on another network. A VNET to VNET VPN connects the server and RA networks, enabling the RA session hosts to join the domain. Users log into RemoteApp, and then it’s all normal RDS at that point:

  • GPO applies
  • Log in script runs
  • Published applications have fast access to application servers
  • Users save data in the company’s Azure VMs

It’s a nice solution!

New Azure Backup Pricing Description – With Examples

Microsoft has corrected and changed the description of the new pricing for Azure Online Backup that comes into effect on April 1st. This is after the owners of the website royally screwed the pooch in February with a confusing and incorrect posting.

NOTE: I am redacting this post because no one is able to explain what a “protected instance” is. Until then, while Azure Backup is great technically, and could be cheap, I have no idea how much it will cost.

As with all posts regarding licensing or pricing on this site, I will not be answering questions. Ask your reseller, distributor or LSP – they’re the people you are paying so they are the people who can do the work.

With the new pricing you no longer pay (using North Europe pricing in Euros) €0.149 per GB stored in Azure per month. Instead the pricing is broken into 2 pieces:

Instances

Think of an instance as The block of data that has to be protected. I

The charge per instance depends on the size of the instance. Sigh!  This charge is based on the size of the protected instance. I do not know if this is based on data protected or the total amount of disk space in the instance. Another sigh!

  • Less than 50 GB:€3.7235 per instance
  • 50 GB to 500 GB: €7.447 per instance
  • Larger than 500 GB: Multiples of the 50-500 GB charge

Storage

Azure Online Backup will use Block Blob Storage. You can use either LRS (3 copies in 1 data center) or GRS (3 copies in 1 data center, and 3 async copies in another region) at a higher cost.

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Examples

The end result is that for most customers, the pricing will come way down.

1 File Server with 30 GB on LRS Storage

  • 1 instance: €3.7235
  • Storage: 30 GB * €0.0179 (LRS) = €0.54

Total = €4.26

4 Machines with 80 GB each on LRS Storage

  • 4 instances: €7.447 * 4 = €29.788
  • Storage: 30 GB * 4 * €0.0179 (LRS) = €5.73

Total = €35.52

1 Machine with 1400 GB on GRS Storage

  • 3 instances (3 * 50-500 GB): €7.447 * 3 = €22.341
  • Storage: 1400 GB * €0.0358 (GRS) = €50.12

Total = €97.52

Wrap-Up

As I have told some people in Redmond, the added complexity to Azure Online Backup pricing is indicative of everything that is wrong with Azure pricing. The only blocker I’m seeing in Azure sales is that sales people cannot get their heads around the wildly varied and complicated pricing. I really don’t care what AWS does – I don’t work with AWS and what they do to limit their own sales is their issue. Microsoft needs to fix the pricing structure of Azure to grow it the way they want, and need, to.

Video – Pricing Solutions With Azure Virtual Machines

One of the biggest blockers, in my personal opinion, to Azure IaaS adoption in the SME space is understanding how to price solutions. I don’t get questions about technology, features, cost, trust or any of that; instead, I get questions such as “how much will this cost me?”. Microsoft does not help themselves with a very complex pricing model – please don’t try to bring up AWS – Microsoft doesn’t sell AWS so I don’t get why they are relevant!

So I’ve started producing some videos for my employers. This one focuses on pricing solutions based on Azure virtual machines.

The Price Of Azure Online Backup is … I Don’t Know!

Microsoft sent out emails last night to inform Azure customers that the pricing of Azure Online Backup is changing.

Currently, you get 5 GB free and then pay €0.149/month (rounded to €0.15) in North Europe for each additional 1 GB.

On April 1st, the pricing structure changes:

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So, 5 GB free. Then for each machine you backup, you pay at least €7.447, with an additional charge of €7.447 for each additional 500 GB protected on that machine. And that DOES NOT COVER the cost of storage consumed in Azure. You have to pay for that too (GB/month and transactions).

So how much will that be? I have no frickin’ idea. There is no indication what kind of storage or what resiliency is required.

It might be Block Blobs running at €0.0179/GB (LRS) or €0.0358/GB (GRS). But who knows because Microsoft didn’t bother documenting it!

That leads me to an issue. The biggest blocker I’ve seen in the adoption of Azure in the SME space is not cost, technical complexity, or trust. The biggest issue is that few people understand how to price a solution in Azure. If you’re deploying a VM you need the VM/hour cost, storage space, storage transactions, egress data, and probably a gateway. Is there a single place that says all that on the Azure portal? No. What Microsoft has is isolated islands of incomplete information on the Azure website, and a blizzard of pricing in their Excel-based pricing “tools”.

If Microsoft is serious about Azure adoption, then they need to get real about helping customers understand how to price tools. Azure Online Backup was the tool I was starting to get traction with in the SME/partner space. I can see this new announcement introducing uncertainty. This change needs to be changed … fast … and not go through the Sinofskian feedback model.

Grade: F. Must try harder.

Video: Microsoft Azure For Small-Medium Businesses

Earlier today I produced a video for my employers to discuss the role of Microsoft Azure infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) in the SME/SMB market. In the video I talk a little about what Azure is, the economic sense of a service like Azure for these businesses, how the Open licensing scheme works, and then I talk about 3 of the core services and some of the scenarios that apply.