Tag: Azure

TechEd NA 2014 – Introduction To Microsoft Azure Automation

Speakers: Eamon O’Reilly (System Center automation) & Beth Cooper (same team)

What System Center has done has been extended into Azure. Both in preview. About half of the room are familiar with Orchestrator, the basis of what we will see this morning.

Pretty full room – pretty small room unfortunately.

Benefits

  • Optimize and extend existing investments: Based on POSH. Integrates existing systems.
  • Deliver flexible and reliable services: quicker. Reuse.
  • Lower costs and improve predictability: reduce manual errors.

Concepts

Same as SMA: runbooks, jobs, and assets.

Appears under Automation in the Azure portal.

Capabilities

All runbook management/authoring/testing can be done in the Azure portal. Has a HA engine. Also has suspend/resume/checkpoint features of SMA. All based on POSH workflows so if you have a cmdlet, you can do it.

Pricing

Free in preview. Pricing based on 3 points:

  • Job run time: time from start to complete. 500 minutes on free plan. $20/month (standard plan) gives you 10,000 minutes
  • Number of runbooks: 20 for free in free.
  • Integration module size: 5 MB on free plan.

You can register for the preview on the Azure preview site. This week is the time to do it. Preview is limited to East USA region.

Demo

Create a new automation account. Sample runbooks to be found on script centre. Tags are present to search/filter runbooks, like in SMA. Also has draft (what you are editing) and published runbook status. So you can have a published runbook and edit a new version.

Almost everyone in the room is using PowerShell. IT pros in Ireland are 5 years behind the USA, at least, and this is not a question of scale.

You can manually start a runbook or schedule on. Example: shut down idle VMs at end of workday and power them up at start of workday – save the runtime cost of VMs in Azure.

Automation Accounts

  • Organise automation by group of individual contributor
  • Accounts live in different regions.
  • Create up to 30 accounts

Automation Dashboard

  • For analysis and troubleshooting operations
  • Access problem jobs to get up and running quickly – focus on them instead of the lots of others that are OK

Authoring

  • Author: Create workflow runnbooks. Call existing runbooks in library
  • Manage & browse and insert assets in runbooks: Modules & activities, credentials, variables, connections, schedules
  • Test: Run and see results within authoring window.
  • Troubleshoot issues
  • Publish: Edit draft before publishing

Manage Runbooks & Jobs

  • Dashboard view: view jobs over time. Find jobs that need attention
  • Runbooks view: Filtering of jobs based on status and date. ID authoring state (new, in edit, published). Filter by tags to find runbooks.
  • Jobs view: Histor of jobs per runbook. Who last updated/when. Input parameters and output. Drill into each job to view streams generated to help troubleshooting. Stop/suspend/resume job.

Assets

  • Connections: Information to connect to a particular system. System specific settings.
  • Update to new versions of integration modules
  • Credentials
  • Variables
  • Schedules

Central set of resources that can be used by all runbooks, like in SMA.

Demo

WIN_20140514_090006

Has application insights enabled. If there’s an error on his site, The runbook triggers an action when an alert is created. A response is triggered whenever an alert is detected. All done using inline runbooks. Note: the alert detection method he used was to search for an alert email in GMail via an RSS feed.

Another demo.

WIN_20140514_091209

They’re using SharePoint to store and change control their runbook scripts. A runbook is monitoring the status of scripts in the SharePoint document library (list item), using a custom SharePoint module. This uses a connection asset. They see a script go into a “ready to test” status in SP and that triggers a child runbook. It appears that the action is that the runbook is updated in Azure and moved to “production” status in SharePoint – they don’t really explain but that’s not really the point anyway. The demo was connections to external resources.

Typical Scenarios

Azure automation is more than just about Azure resources. Posh offers huge extensibility via modules.

  • Monitoring & remediation: Alert on a VM. Monitor for new services to ensure management. Notify subscription owners of underutilized VMs that are wasting money.
  • Change control and provisioning: Deploy a VM, and enable monitoring. Deploy a new service and configure endpoints for alerts. Deploy from GIT and automate tests and swap to production if passes. Monitor SharePoint online for approval to update a service and do that once approved.
  • Patch/Update/Backup orchestration: Use traffic manager to patch IaaS VMs without downtime to services. Enable regeneration of storage account keys while avoiding downtime. SQL backup on a schedule. Backup and restore IaaS VMs.

Leave remote management of Azure VMs enabled and Azure Automation can reach into those VMs’ guest OSs.

Anything you do twice: Automate it.

Takes time to create automation, but the more you do it the quicker you do it. And the time you invest up front will save you time in the long term.

TechEd North America 204 Press Conference

James Well, Julia White, Mark Russinovich, and Brad Anderson are here for the keynote press conference, hosted by Joey Snow.

Key thing to take away: cloud can add value to everything you do – Brad Anderson. Enterprise mobility: integration across enterprise and Office 365. Cloud will manage Office on devices of all types, be that program, policy, or data. Azure Remote App will allow you to remote apps from the cloud to Windows, IOS, or Android.

Mark R: Talks about ExpressRoute for hybrid cloud. Azure Files brings consistency to hybrid cloud. Already  available in private cloud.  File sharing as a service (PaaS) in Azure so VMs can access shared files. Azure Site Recovery brings failover to the cloud for on-premise. Greatly reduces cost of DR & compliance. Manage anti-malware can deploy MSFT endpoint protection easily. Store logs in blobs. Symantec and Trend Micro have partnered with same portal and powershell. Trend Micro also allow encryption like BitLocker, with the key’s stored on your own site.

James Well: .Net stuff on cloud scale applications.

Julia: How do I secure data? New security and privacy stuff. Content categorization and security for data loss prevention. Files can be encrypted in OneDrive and SharePoint. New series of videos and blogs on the Office 365 Trust Center.

Brad: IT pros have concerns about their impact in the company. What has happend 6-2 months after adopting cloud? Their ability to contribute to the company has increased. MSFT has to help the world understand. Once a company embraces an element of cloud, the company and IT pros want to adopt more. These are “on ramps”.

Question: “Windows Server will fulfil the roles in your data center – 6 years ago. Has that changed to Azure?”. Brad – Azure is Windows Server. You deliver the best platform for your organization using a combination of on-premise and cloud. Do anything you need based on Windows Server and Azure. Mark – clarifies that it is Server and System Center. Brad – Azure is based on Hyper-V.

Question: Will Azure Site Recovery Manager require System Center? Brad – yes, it requires SCVMM.

NOTE – they lost the SME market.

Question: 3 differences between Azure RemoteApp and others. 75-80% of “VDI” is actually app remoting (session host) and not actually VDI. Reasons: costs. To build this for scale of users, you need lots of infrastructure. MSFT has that already, so you can use it with elastic demand/costs, without spending CAPEX.

Live Blogging From TechEd North America 2014 Keynote

Welcome to Houston where the keynote hall is full and they’re filling the overflow rooms for the Brad Anderson-led keynote at TechEd North America 2014. I am here with Petri IT Knowledgebase, sitting in the press section at the front of the hall.

I  live blogged as the event went on. Don’t expect much if anything in the way of Windows or System Center news. This will be a cloud year, where new features come out every 6 or so weeks, thanks to a cloud development cycle. I also do not expect Satya Nadella here.

Speaking of which; Nadella courted devs at a number of events in recent months, including Build. What will Microsoft do this week to convince influential IT pros that Azure won’t steal their jobs and that they are still important to Microsoft (they don’t feel that way lately)?

Right now a classical/electrical band called Flash Drive is playing pop muzak.

After a few songs they get a good reception. Now the 2 minute long teched countdown show kicks off with Joey Snow and Rick Claus.

Brad Anderson comes out sans-Aston Martin. He professes love for the new reign of Satya Nadella. As expected, Brad talks about devices and data of previously unimaginable growth. Cloud will be core to everything we do to manage devices (ever connected world) to derive insights from that data. There are no more devices than people on the planet.

On comes a video with some dude in black and white. It’s a new world, with low contrast film. It’s devices-devices-devices. No monkey boy dancing. Airy fairy stuff about storing data in trees. Yes; trees. I guess these guys are from MSFT Research.

Brad wants to talk about IT Pros. “IT pros are literally at the centre of cloud first and device first clouds”. “No longer think of public cloud as seperate; it is integral to your data center from this point forward”.

Three capabilities required when you consider a cloud. Choosing a cloud vendor wisely is critical for your future:

  • Hyper-V scale: able to grow fast than you. Only 3 companies operate at this scale. This scale drives innovation in infrastructure.
  • Enterprise capabilities and enterprise grade cloud. Financially backed SLA.
  • Hybrid: Works with on premise, partner hosted cloud, and public cloud all integrated. Only MSFT does this.

Right now, only MSFT meets all three requirements.

How could we change our industry if we had unlimited computing power. Here comes Respawn’s Titanfall, an Azure-powered online-only game. It had over 100,000 VMs on day 1, powered up around the world, with clients connected to the closest data centre. No worry about location or performance. They have solid and even compute capacity. They scale up and down as required to meet customer demand. They power lots of game functionality on the server, which they could not do on a console. 150 employees company has hundreds of thousands of VMs around the world.

16 regions. A new core is deployed every 5 seconds. 2 billion authentications a day being done by Azure Active Directory. They take this functionality and trickle it down to hosting partners (WAP, Hyper-V, and System Center). Windows Server Hyper-V is the common foundation across private, hosted, and public cloud. No lock in. Flexible expansion, shrink, and mobility.

IaaS new features:

  • Cloud app discovery Preview. This looks VERY cool.
  • Compute intensive VMs – more RAM and more VMs, with RDMA Infiniband at 40 Gbps.
  • Virtual networking enhancements
  • ExpressRoute is GA for MPLS networking. 2 circuits for every connecting for fault tolerance. Note that Telecity is now a partner.
  • Azure Files Preview: SMB 3.0 sharing of files for VMs.

Software-defined storage (Storage Spaces) is used by Azure.

On to SQL 2014. In memory gives 30x increase without re-writing application, just by adding RAM to existing h/w.

Azure Redis Cache is in preview. API AManagement Preview is in preview too.

Out comes Josh Twist to talk about API Management. Wellmark is an American insurance company and Azure customer. He talks about this feature without explaining what it is. I’m lost.

Back to Brad with more announcements:

  • Anti-malware is being added to Azure. Microsoft Endpoint protection. Partnering with Symantec and Trend Micro.
  • Encrypted storage for Office 365.
  • Azure Site Recovery: Hyper-V Replica to Azure. review in June. This is BIG. Use HRM for orchestration.

Here comes Matt McSpirit to talk about the latter. Azure Site Recovery can be your secondary site if you don’t have one. Can manage replication between sites and to Azure. Centralized management of the replica VMs. VMs can be encrypted while at rest.

Site recovery makes networking easy. Can map networks between primary and secondary site. Map on-premise networks with Azure virtual networks.

A recovery plan orchestrates failover, test, planned, or unplanned. It will cleanly shut down VMs and replicate final changes in the event of a planned failover ( a flood is coming).  You can inject manual tasks into the orchestration.

We move on to identity, another MSFT USP. SaaS is powered by identity. For example, Office 365. Discover how many they are using with Cloud App Discovery. Often some 250 unmanaged SaaS apps in a company. IT has no control. IT needs to take control and manage identity and security.

Office on the 3 mobile OSs will be brought under management. Protection of files: Azure Rights Management Services (ARMS). Part of the EMS bundle for EA customers. The protection travels with the files: only the right people can access the files, even with accidental leakage.

Azure RemoteApp is Mohoro. It’s a RDS session host system designed to run in Azure. You upload LOB apps into Azure and users access them from cross-platform devices. AWS desktop as a service is a square wheel compared to Azure RemoteApp.

Demo: User signs into SaaS app using AD ID via ID federation into Azure AD.  80% of employees admit using non-approved SaaS apps. Cloud App Discovery tool allows admins to discover what apps are being used and how. Now IT can bring these apps under company control. Azure AD has 1300 templates for SaaS single-sign on.

Azure Remote App preview is GA today – note it is not live yet in the Europe regions. Publish apps over the highly performing RemoteFX protocol to devices of different OSs – Windows, iOS, Mac OS X, and Android. A little nod to Citrix.

Now on to the dev audience. I sleep.

I wake up. Now Brad is talking about users. Sadly, people have lost interest in the dev content and are leaving.

“Work like a network”.

Humans can achieve if we focus. There is a flood of information that distracts. Need to move from information to action. Information is locked within boundaries inside organizations. BI stuff now. Yawn.

Demo on BI with old content from Barcelona promo video.

Back to Brad to talk about Office. Ugh, sounds like more BI.

Julia White to talk cloud productivity with Intune and Office 365. Basic demo of doc sharing in OneDrive for Business. Tell Me in Word Online is shown to help find how to do formatting. Can share from OneDrive for Business into Yammer. Yammer: IT managed social experience.

Back to Brad. More people leaving the hall. Not nearly as bad as Elop in 2009 (that was BAD) but a section of the audience has lost interest. This will be a talking point IMO.

Back to summarise. MSFT believes in cloud and getting us to embrace it.

Event: TechCamp 2014 On June 19/20 In Dublin

Another community event is coming on June 19th and 20th in Citywest in Dublin. This time, with TechCamp 2014, we’re switching to a more “here’s how to do it” style of presentation. Based on feedback, we’ll have 1 track per day, over 2 days. Day 1 (June 19th) will focus on Hybrid Cloud, mixing Windows Server, System Center, and Microsoft Azure content into one track. On day 2 (June 20th) the focus switches over to the public cloud, and products like Office 365 and Windows Intune.

Most of the speakers are MVPs sharing their knowledge and experience with these technologies, with keynotes by local Microsoft product-line managers.

You can choose to register for either or both days.

Please retweet, post on Facebook, LinkedIn, share with workmates, customers, etc.

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Microsoft News Summary – 9 May 2014

Another quiet 24 hours ahead of TechEd:

Microsoft News Summary – 7 May 2014

Between a bank holiday and some travel, I’ve been unable to post, but I’ve saved up the headlines from those days:

Presentation – Microsoft Azure And Hybrid Cloud

I recently presented in the MicroWarehouse and Microsoft Ireland road show to Irish Microsoft partners on the topic of the Cloud OS, comprised of Azure, Windows Server 2012 R2, Hyper-V, and System Center 2012 R2. You can find the slide deck below.

 

Microsoft News Summary-1 May 2014

Happy May Day, comrades! I was tied up with events the last couple of mornings so here is two days worth of news. Note the new beta for System Center Advisor. The security functionality looks very interesting!

Microsoft News Summary-29 April 2014

There is a lot of reading material this morning.

Microsoft News Summary–24 April 2014

Here’s some interesting bits from the last few days that I have not blogged: