For Azure automation we used Management Libraries in order to provision Cloud Services & BLOB Storage along with SQL Database. This seem to be no longer maintained. Shall we stop using this in production?
Need to provision:
Azure Web APP
SQL Database
BLOB
Azure Search Index
Any authoritative information on the recommended approach now, would be much helpful. Thanks.
As you may already know Azure Management Library is a wrapper over Azure Service Management API (ASM) which provided a REST based interface to manage the underlying infrastructure. Old Azure Portal (https://management.azure.com) makes use of ASM API.
Azure Resource Manager API (ARM) is the new REST based intefface to manage underlying infrastructure. ARM is more robust, feature rich and will be used going forward. New Azure Portal (https://portal.azure.com) makes use of ARM API.
Eventually old portal will be removed and you should be able to do all the things on the new portal. When that will happen is not generally known (someone from Azure product team will be able to comment on that). Until then, both ASM and ARM will be supported and after that ASM will be removed (or not supported).
General recommendation would be to start using ARM API wherever possible. Only use ASM API for the features that have not been ported to ARM API. You mentioned that you are using Azure Web APP, SQL Database, BLOB, and Azure Search Index. To the best of my knowledge, all of these are supported in ARM so the recommendation would be to use that instead of ASM. In fact, I think Azure Search is only supported via ARM and not ASM.
I can't find any information on which the currently advised library to use is.
However, a few weeks ago Simpler Azure Management Libraries for .NET was released into preview. It might be worth checking it out and keeping an eye on it for the future.
At the moment it seems only capable of managing Azure Virtual Machines, Virtual Machine Scale Sets, Storage, Networking, Resource Manager, Key Vault and Batch. However, since this is a preview, MS is asking developers to provide feedback and what they would like to see support next.
Related
Team,
I have a complete running cloud service application upgraded to latest Azure SDK version and unfortunately need to dump this into a CSP subscription. But I came to know that Azure CSP supports only the Azure Resource Manager model, the cloud service is a classic deployment model. So we cannot create a cloud service within a CSP subscription.
Is there any other alternative within Azure CSP to using "cloud service" so that we can migrate with minimal changes. Please help
Firstly, here are some good reads on Microsoft Docs to help comparing the options available and make decisions based on your requirements:
(I mean requirements like Hosting features, Service Limits, 3rd party software installation and RDP access is required or not, Network isolation to a separate VNET is required or not, Cost considerations, minimum SLA, Regions available, instant deployment and auto-scaling, state management etc.):
Azure App Service, Virtual Machines, Service Fabric, and Cloud Services comparison
Decision tree for Azure compute services (This one covers a big spectrum.. simple virtual machines, Batch, Functions, Containers, AKS, ServiceFabric)
Criteria for choosing an Azure Compute Service
Also know that when looking for alternatives, it's not uncommon to make use of multiple compute or other Azure service options by breaking up an older solution into parts at the time of such migration (for e.g. A serverless compute option like Azure Function + Service Fabric + something else if needed).
Generally speaking (and without knowing much about your application from your question currently), Azure App Service and Service Fabric could be considerations IMHO when migrating from an existing Cloud Service, but this is exactly where detailed requirements help you in decision making.
On a side note, here is a list of Azure Services available in CSP - Available Azure services in Azure CSP
I have been looking into Workflow Foundation for a build we are currently undertaking.
I have a proof of concept and have been using IIS AppFabric for tracking, faults, and persistence to SQL which are key to our new build. We are now looking to Azure for the hosting of the workflow service, which i have working but cannot find any guides on how to set up the monitoring IIS AppFabric offers in terms of database setup.
I have read that AppFabric will no longer be supported as of this year, does this include Azure AppFabric. What is the best approach in Azure?
Windows Server AppFabric is retired since 11/04/2017: https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/appfabric/2015/04/02/microsoft-appfabric-1-1-for-windows-server-ends-support-422016/
My recommendation: You should write your workflow using Azure Logic Apps. It already offers tracking mechanisms that uses Azure Storage accounts.
In Azure there are 2 options available to create virtual machines.
A. normal VM
B. Classic VM
Does anybody know what is the difference between both option? When do we use one over other?
Short answer to your question is Normal VM or Virtual Machines is the new way of deploying your Virtual Machines whereas Classic VM or Virtual Machines (Classic) is the old way of deploying them. Azure is pushing towards the new way of deploying resources so the recommendation would be to use it instead of old way. However please keep in mind that there're some features which are available in the old way that have not been ported on to the new way so you just have to compare the features offered and only if something that you need is not available in new way, you use the old way.
Now comes the long answer :)
Essentially there's a REST API using which you interact with Azure Infrastructure.
When Azure started out, this API was called Service Management API (SMAPI) which served its purpose quite well at that time (and to some extent today). However as Azure grew, so does the requirements of users and that's where SMAPI was found limiting. A good example is access control. In SMAPI, there was access control but it was more like all-or-none kind of access control. It lacked the granularity asked by users.
Instead of patching SMAPI to meet user's requirement, Azure team decided to rewrite the entire API which was much simpler, more robust and feature rich. This API is called Azure Resource Manager API (ARM). ARM has many features that are not there in SMAPI (my personal favorite is Role-based access control - RBAC).
If you have noticed that there are two Azure portals today - https://manage.windowsazure.com (old) and https://portal.azure.com (new). Old portal supports SMAPI whereas new portal supports ARM. In order to surface resources created via old portal into new portal (so that you can have a unified experience), Azure team ended up creating a resource provider for old stuff and their names will always end with (Classic) so you will see Virtual Machines (Classic), Storage Accounts (Classic) etc. So the resources you create in old portal can be seen in the new portal (provided the new portal supports them) but any resources you create in the new portal using ARM are not shown in the old portal.
The Azure Virtual Machine (classic) is based on the old Azure Service Management Model (ASM). Which revolved around the concept of a cloud service. Everything was contained inside a cloud service, and that was the gateway to the internet. While it is still used (extensively) Azure is now moving over to the Azure Resource Management Model (ARM).
ARM uses the concept of declarative templates to configure an entire solution (rather than individual components) So you can create an entire Sharepoint stack, rather than just a singular machine.
ARM also has a much more logical approach to networking. Instead of having a monolithic VM in an obscure cloud service. You have a VM, that you attach a network card to. You can then put the Network card into a VNet and attach a public IP (if you need one)
Unless you have a compelling reason to use ASM (classic) You should create your solution using ARM. As this is the MS recommendation going forward (todo find a link to that) It also means that you can create templates for your deployments, so you can have a repeatable solution.
On the negative, the old portal manage.windowsazure.com can not manage anything that is deployed using ARM, and there are still parts of ASM that haven't been migrated over to ARM yet. For instance you cannot configure Azure VM backup, since Azure backup is ASM and it can't 'see' ARM VMs
It very largely depends on your circumstances though, what it is you are planning for, the method you are going to deploy with. If you are just looking to stand a machine up to do a single task, it makes very little difference. If you are looking to deploy into an environment that will have some concepts of DevOps going forward, then ARM is the way to go.
The one big differences is for resource management. For that new version is called Azure Resource Manager VM (ARM VM).
ARM VM is better in terms of;
Classic VM must be tied with Cloud Service, and Cloud Service consumes resource limitation and not-so-flexible network configuration.
ARM VM is managed under Azure Resource Manager (ARM) which can be organized with/without other Azure services. ARM is like a folder of Azure services, and it gives you more fine-grained resource management.
Classic VM can be migrated to ARM VM version, but you have to afford service downtime. To migrate from classic VM, read the official article: Considerations for Virtual Machines.
Azure provides two deploy models now: Azure Resource Manager(Normal) and Azure Service Management(Classic) and some important considerations you should care when working Virtual Machines.
Virtual machines deployed with the classic deployment model cannot be included in a virtual network deployed with Resource Manager.
Virtual machines deployed with the Resource Manager deployment model must be included in a virtual network.
Virtual machines deployed with the classic deployment model don't have to be included in a virtual network.
Can we create a sites that can:
showing available VMs;
deallocate VMs;
show pings.
I prefer using Node, but other language is accepted.
Currently, I'm monitoring using azure-cli. But, I'm asked to create a more user friendly UI.
Most of the operations that you can perform on the azure portal can be done using azure management api and powershell azure commandlets.
Azure management API are REST based and hence can be consumed from any platform that supports http.
Sample to start and stop VM - http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/windowsapps/How-to-start-deallocated-c23b7cbe
Likewise you can write your own program to do the required management activities.
I have received $200 credit to host my 2 Windows Azure Cloud projects on AWS. Just wondering what the quick and dirty process is to migrate my Visual studio projects to being published on the AWS cloud?
I could seem to find much documentation available, with the exception that apparently it's possible.
Are you using Cloud Services (web role), an Azure Web Site, or a VM? Depending on how the ASP.NET MVC code is written, you could provision whatever compute capability you need in AWS and deploy there.
The blob storage would likely be the problem. That is unless the code has an abstraction layer to isolate the app from storage implementation details. Azure blob storage and whatever you using in AWS have different platform APIs.