Windows Azure IaaS – Deep Dive

Shyam Narayan
Premier Field Engineer
Microsoft

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 Agenda
• Introduction to IaaS
• Core IaaS Concepts
• Deploying SharePoint on IaaS

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 Introduction to IaaS

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 Windows Azure Virtual Machines
IT Pro experience

Support for key server applications

Easy storage manageability and mobility

High availability features

Advanced networking

Integration with compute PaaS

If it requires a developer, it’s not IaaS

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 Core IaaS Concepts

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 Virtual Machines and
Cloud Services

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 Cloud Services, Roles and Instances
Cloud Service is a management, configuration, security, networking and service model boundary

CLOUD SERVICE
WEB ROLE

VM1 VM2 VM3

INSTANCES
ROLES

WORKER ROLE

VM4 VM5 VM…

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 Virtual Machines
Virtual Machines are roles with exactly one instance

IMPLICIT CLOUD SERVICE

VIRTUAL MACHINE

VM

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 Cloud Services with Virtual Machines
Multiple Virtual Machines can be hosted within the same cloud service

CLOUD SERVICE
VIRTUAL MACHINE VIRTUAL MACHINE

VM VM

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 Virtual Machine Images
and Disks

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 Images and Disks
OS Images

Microsoft
Partner
User Base OS image for new Virtual Machines
Sys-Prepped/Generalized/Read Only
Created by uploading or by capture

Disks

OS Disks
Data Disks

Writable Disks for Virtual Machines

Created during VM creation or during upload of existing VHDs.

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 Virtual Machine Sizes
VM Size CPU Cores Memory # Data Disks IOPS

Extra Small Shared 768 MB 1 500

Small 1 1.75 GB 2 2 x 500
Medium 2 3.5 GB 4 4 x 500
Large 4 7 GB 8 8 x 500
Extra Large 8 14 GB 16 16 x 500
A6 4 28 GB 8 8 x 500
A7 8 56 GB 16 16 x 500

Each Persistent Data Disk Can be up to 1 TB

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 Disk Caching
Disk Type Default Supported
OS Disk Read Write Read Only and Read Write

Data Disk None None, Read Only and Read

Write
Modify using Set-AzureOSDisk or Set-AzureDataDisk

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 Disk Storage
• Images and disks are stored as Windows Azure Storage Blobs
• Data is triplicated
• All existing storage tools just work

Windows Azure Storage

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 Virtual Machine
Availability

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 Service Level Agreements
99.95% for multiple role instances
4.38 hours of downtime per year

• 99.9% for single role instances

What’s included
8.75 hours of downtime per year


Compute Hardware failure (disk, CPU, memory)

Datacenter failures - Network failure, power failure
Hardware upgrades, Software maintenance – Host OS Updates

What is not included

VM Container crashes, Guest OS Updates

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 How Does this Relate to SLA?
Availability set

SQL Server SQL Server SQL Server

Primary Secondary

Virtual Machine Virtual Machine Virtual Machine

No SLA SLA 99.95

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 Fault and Update Domains
• Fault Domains
Represent groups of resources anticipated to fail together
i.e. Same rack, same server
Fabric spreads instances across fault at least 2 fault domains

• Update Domains
Represents groups of resources that will be updated together
Host OS updates honour service update domains
Specified in service definition
Default of 5 (up to 20)

• Fabric spreads role instances across

Update Domains and Fault Domains

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 High availability features

Physical Machines

Power Unit
Rack Switch

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 High availability features

Load
Load-Balanced Set Physical Machines
Balancer

Power Unit
Rack Switch
VM1 VM2 VM2

VM1

Availability Set Availability SLA: 99.95%

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 Virtual Machine Availability Sets
Update Domains are honored by host OS updates

Fault Domain Fault Domain

Rack Rack

Virtual Virtual
Machine Machine
Availability Set
IIS1 IIS2
UD #1 UD #2

Virtual Virtual
Machine Machine
Availability Set
SQL1 SQL2
UD #1 UD #2

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 Windows Azure
Networking

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 Azure Networking

Full control over machine names

Windows Azure provided DNS
Resolves VMs by name within the same cloud service
Machine names are modeled explicitly and registered in the DNS service

Bring your own DNS server

Use your on-premise DNS servers
Deploy a DNS server in Windows Azure
Use public DNS services

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 Protocols and Endpoints
UDP Traffic Supported in WA
Load-balanced incoming traffic and allows outbound traffic

Support for All IP-Based Protocols (VM to VM)

Instance-to-instance communication
TCP, UDP and ICMP, dynamic ports

Port Forwarded Endpoints

Direct communication to multiple VMs in the same cloud app

Custom Load Balancer Health Probes

Health check with probe timeouts
HTTP based probing, allowing granular control of health checks
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 Port Forwarding Input Endpoints
Endpoint Cloud App/Hosted Service
Public Port
Local Port
PORT PORT
Protocol (TCP/UDP) 5586 3389 VM1
Name
LB/IP

PORT PORT
5587 3389 VM2

Single Public IP Per Cloud Service

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 Load Balanced Sets
Endpoint Set Cloud App
Public Port
Local Port VM1
LBHTTP
Protocol (TCP/UDP) PORT 80

Name
LB VM2
LBHTTP

VM3
LBHTTP

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 Virtual Networks – Site-to-Site
Windows Azure
<subnet 1> <subnet 2> <subnet 3>
DNS
On-premises Site-to-Site VPN Server

WA
Gateway Virtual Network
Hardware VPN or
Windows RRAS

Your datacenter

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 Virtual Networks – Point-to-Site
Windows Azure
<subnet 1> <subnet 2> <subnet 3>
DNS
On-premises Site-to-Site VPN Server

WA
Gateway Virtual Network

Hardware VPN or
Windows RRAS

Your datacenter

Point-to-Site
VPN
Individual
computers behind
corporate firewall Remote workers

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 Deploying SharePoint

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 SharePoint Farm Configuration
LB WFE AppSvr SQL AD/DC/DNS

WFE
1 APP SQL AD AD AD
1 1 1 2 1
WFE
2 APP SQL
Cloud Svc
2 2
80/443 WFE
3
APPS
DATA
VPN Tunnel DATA

On-prem
Cloud Svc Network
Virtual Network
2013
Azure On-prem

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 Web Front End Tier
XL - 8 cores / 14GB
Distibuted Cache Front End Services

Availability Set #1
Workflow Manager Query Processing

XL - 8 cores / 14GB XL - 8 cores / 14GB XL - 8 cores / 14GB

Distibuted Cache Front End Services
Replica
Distibuted CacheFront End S ervices Distibuted Cache Front End S ervices

Workflow Manager Query Processing Workflow Manager Query Processing Workflow Manager Query Processing

Replica Index Partion #0 Replica Index Partion #0 Replica

C: (System) 127GB
C: (System) 127GB
D: (Page File, Blob Cache) 604GB D: (Page File, Blob
C: (System)
D: (Page File, Cache)
Blob Cache) 604GB 604GB
127GB C: (System) 127GB
D: (Page File, Blob Cache) 604GB

E: (Log) F: (Index) 40GB

E: (Log) 40GB E: (Log) 40GB E: (Log) 40GB
F: (Index) 500GB 500GB F: (Index) 500GB

F: (Index) 500GB
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 App Server Tier
XL - 8 cores / 14GB

Analytics Back End Services

Availability Set #2 Crawl Content Processing

XL - 8 cores / 14GB XL - 8 cores / 14GB

Analytics Admin
Back End Services Analytics Back End Services

Crawl Content Processing Crawl Content Processing

Admin Admin

C: (System)127GB
C: (System) 127GB
C: (System) 127GB

D: (Page File) 604GB

D: (Page File) 604GB D: (Page File) 604GB
E: (Log) 40GB E: (Log) 40GB
F: (Analytics) 300GB F: (Analytics) 300GB
E: (Log) 40GB
F: (Analytics) 300GB
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 Data Server Tier
XL - 8 cores / 14GB

Content Configuration
Availability Set #3
XL - 8 cores / 14GB XL - 8 cores / 14GB
Service Applications
Availability Group #1 Search

Content Content
Configuration
Availability Group #2
Service Applications
C: (System) 127GB
Content Availability Group #3
D: (Page File) 604GB
C: (System) E:, F:, G:, H: 127GB
(TempDB Files) 500GB C: (System) 127GB
D: (Page File) 604GB D: (Page File) 604GB
E:, F:, G:, H:I:(TempDB
(TempDB Logs)
Files) 500GB 500GB
E:, F:, G:, H: (TempDB Files) 500GB
I: (TempDB L:Logs)
(Transaction 500GBLogs) 500GB
I: (TempDB Logs) 500GB
L: (Transaction Logs) 500GB L: (Transaction Logs) 500GB
J:,(Content
J:, K:, M:, N: K:, M:, N:1024GB
Data) (Content Data) 1024GB J:, K:, M:, N: (Content Data) 1024GB
O: (Search 1024GB
O: (Search Databases)
Databases) 1024GB
O: (Search Databases) 1024GB

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 SharePoint 2013 Automation Scripts
• PowerShell Scripts that use Remote PowerShell for
automated deployment of Active Directory, SQL Server and
SharePoint 2013.
• Two Sample Configurations Available
• Highly Available and Single VMs

• Download from GitHub

• https://github.com/windowsazure/azure-sdk-tools-samples

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Recap
Overview of core concepts – VM, Storage, networking
and availability
SharePoint on IaaS
 Q and A

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