Microsoft sent out an announcement about feature changes/additions in Azure last night. Some news there that was much quicker than I expected …
Azure Container Service Generally Available
Azure Container Service helps customers manage container-based applications in production, at scale. Azure Container Service is fully integrated with the Azure portal, Azure Resource Manager, and our compute, storage, and networking resources. This supports Docker images, using familiar tools and either open-source DCOS or Docker Swarm as the underlying orchestration technology. The only cost for Azure Container Service is what you pay to use the underlying resources.
New Azure Storage Cool Tier Generally Available
Azure storage was cheap already, but it just got cheaper. Now we have a lower tier for blob storage, that can be used for services like backup, disaster recovery, or data archival. As a result, the storage pricing page has been updated to reflect the new options. Here is the pricing for block blobs (backup) in North Europe:
LRS, what we typically see being used for on-prem backup, costs (in North Europe):
- €0.0084 or $0.01 per GB in cool storage
- €0.0202 or $0.024 per GB in hot storage
Seriously, that is cheap. Microsoft has detailed the transaction pricing too (this really only affects huge deployments):
As you can infer from the above, cool storage really is for infrequently accessed data. Hot storage is where frequently accessed data should reside.
The SLA on cold storage is lower – at 99% which is still pretty damned good, especially for the price. You can bump that up with the RA-GRS redundancy option, where Microsoft provides a higher read SLA of 99.9% for the Cool access tier.
Note that I don’t yet see a way to use cool storage with Azure Backup, in either the old or the new portals. But a number of 3rd party backup tools can use it. Note that you have to create a new storage account type called BlobStorage in ARM to gain access to hot/cold, and you can convert from cold to hot, and vice versa (the above transaction costs will be charged for conversions starting on June 1st).
Azure Site Recovery Portal General Availability
The DR solution, ASR, now has support in the new Azure Portal. This adds support for ARM (CSP). Improvements include:
- Azure Resource Manager support for all scenarios
- First-class support for Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) subscriptions
- Streamlined Getting Started experience for all Site Recovery scenarios
- New Policy construct for flexible association and management
- Functionality of Backup and Azure Site Recovery in a single vault construct
Enhanced VMware to Azure:
- New Exclude Disk functionality when replicating VMware VMs to Azure
- Support for Premium Storage for high-churn workloads
I still don’t see ASR as being ready in ARM. Yes, I can replicate and failover VMs, but I see Azure AD and RemoteApp as essential pieces to the solution. What good are machines in the cloud if I cannot access them? Yes, I can use point-site VPN (don’t assume you’ll have site-site VPN option from your alternative office, e.g. a hotel meeting room) and the “fun” that will cause, but how will my legacy applications perform … after I’ve spent hours installing them on new laptops I just bought? Unfortunately, Service Manager (Azure V1) continues to be my recommendation for DR solutions in Azure, and the rumblings tell me that it’ll stay that way for another 6 or so months 🙁 It’s a pity because the new ASR UI is pretty nice.
So is this geared more towards SQL devs with database blobs? I had hoped that this was more for long-term data archiving (similar to Amazon Glacier).
I see on the Azure development roadmap page that the product I’m referring to will be called Azure Archive Storage. No idea why they feel the need to have a separate name for it.
Cool Storage is available right now – the system for deploying a storage account (in ARM only) has changed a wee bit – you have to choose between general storage and blob storage. If you go with the new blob storage option then you have a choice of hot or cold, and can switch between the two. The term “blob” is from the DB world, but it’s not specific to Azure SQL; that has it’s own storage Block Blobs in Azure are used for a number of things … think of it as file storage (not VHD storage, though). A number of the examples MSFT talked about in their launch posts included 3rd party backup tools using Cold storage for cheaper long term archival.