We are currently running an Azure website within the West Europe region. Ideally we would like to create a copy running in a different region to fall back to in case the current region goes down. Is there a simple way to enable replication of the site data built into Azure (or a known service, code etc.)?
Thanks in advance
Scott Hanselman just blogged about exactly this. You can find it on his blog here: http://www.hanselman.com/blog/CloudPowerHowToScaleAzureWebsitesGloballyWithTrafficManager.aspx
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I believe that there's no easy way, but it doesn't hurt ask for you guys.
Is there a way to move services (websites, cloudaps, etc) between datacenters without re-create and re-deploy them?
For example: I have a website in West US and I want to move to Europe.
(by the way I suggest this to azure team and I hope you can vote for it http://feedback.windowsazure.com/forums/34192-general-feedback-/suggestions/5071811-move-services-from-datacenters)
As Gaurav suggested, you can try to put in a support ticket with Microsoft. I'm assuming you'll need a support plan though in order to get that through, since this isn't really a billing related issue.
Other than going that route, there is nothing today that will move services (websites, cloud services, etc.) from one datacenter to another.
Is it possible to change a Cloud Service region (i.e: move from East US to West US)?
I don't see an option from the management console to do it or maybe I did not dig deep enough.
I would like to do it since I have my database in one region different to my application's and I guess it could decrease performance.
Thanks,
No, there is no way to change Cloud Service region. You have to create new Cloud Service in desired region and redeploy there. It becomes more complicated when you also have Storage accounts with data which you have to move. For this you could probably use Red Gate's Cloud Services or other mature product.
And you are right about Database and performance. It is not only performance, but also costs savings. When your Database is in different geographic region all data that comes out of your database is basically Outbound (Egress) traffic, which is being charged per GB!
You can make your own script using Powershell that is a powerful tool and can help you a lot, including copying the data between regions directly (not passing by your computer). I am going to do that know.
I'm just learning about Azure so forgive me for my naivety. I work for a federal government that would be very hesitant to have their applications and data hosted in another country. Could a local company offer "Azure" services? i.e. could software developers in a government department build their applications and deploy them to the Azure cloud, ensuring that their data stays within the country? Or would they have to look at a non-Microsoft cloud provider?
Data and Compute will reside in the datacenter you specify. Blobs, Tables and Queues are also backed up automatically to a paired data center:
San Antonio <--> Chicago
Dublin <--> Amsterdam
Hong Kong <--> Singapore
You can opt-out of cross-datacenter data backup if data sovereignty becomes an issue. Once opted-out, data would only be in the specified data center, and you'd need to handle DR on your own (by possibly backing up data to on-premises storage).
Aside from those 6 datacenters, Fujitsu runs a Windows Azure data center in Japan. See this press release for more info.
Yes, when you create your Azure service you can specify what region (of the country) it runs in.
I'm not sure if you know this, but the Federal CIO (Vivek Kundra) is really pushing hard for Agencies to move to the cloud. You might want to check out Info.Apps.Gov for guidelines on the Federal Cloud initiative and resources for what you can and can't do.
To answer your immediate question: No. Only MS hosts Azure to my knowledge. I do know that Amazon is bending over backwards however to accommodate Government clients and you can control which datacenters are used on that service. MS appears to have a similar capability per the other answer to this question.
As far as I can tell, these are the only locations:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azure_Services_Platform#Datacenters
If they're that concerned about data security though, they should deal directly with Microsoft, not buy Azure services that same way a client usually would. Microsoft may be able to arrange something depending on budget (but probably not).
Edit: What I'm basically saying is, Microsoft is not going to arbitrarily do special licensing. Meaning you either need a large enough budget to convince MS to build a data center in your country, or you need some other way of convincing MS to allow Azure services hosted in your country. Also, I hate to sound paranoid, but if you're worried about America seeing your data, you likely should avoid Ameican companies.
If there isn't a Windows Azure Data Centre in the relevant country, but you still want to use Azure, you'll need to look at a hybrid cloud model where data remains resident in a private cloud. However, in-flight data can still present complications for some organisations and Azure may not be the right answer in all cases.
If you like, I can talk about it some more using Chat. The company I work for specialises in just these cases and has the only production Windows Azure data centre that isn't owned by Microsoft (and isn't in the US). Probably best not go into further specifics here, though, for fear of my answer looking like pure spam!
I'm working on a somewhat large project that will eventually be loaded on Azure. The idea is we will have multiple compute nodes all over the world as our customer base is potentially that large. The question I have is this:
If I have nodes in the US, Europe, Asia, etc. for DR and load balancing reasons how can I combine the idea of Geo-based DNS results with Azure since our application will simply be a CNAME for our URL?
I'm not sure I quite understand the deployment strategy for one application running out of multiple regions with Azure. Does anyone have any links or references to better understand the model?
Mod Note: Not sure if this should be ServerFault but I thought StackOverflow was a better location.
Thanks,
Brent
Look at the Windows Azure Traffic Manager it allows you to group deployments across regions as one logical service and automatically routes a request to the nearest region.
I've built my application in .net and SQL Server 2008.
Having looking for a hosting solution I stumbled upon windows azure.
I saw that currently its only available in the US.
Can I use the service if I live outside of the US?
If I upload my website up there and people try entering, will people from outside of the US be blocked?
Sorry for posting an unrelated program question. I am not receiving an answer anywhere else, and I can see that there are several questions regarding azure which are not program related here.
Windows Azure has a data center hosted in northern europe. Your users won't be blocked no matter where it is hosted. See this link for status and locations.
We have an Azure hosted application in the US. One of our developers is in Pakistan. He has no issues developing against our Azure Table Storage there or using the application. Also, he is impressed with the overall speed of the application compared to other web applications he uses which are hosted locally and in the US.
Obviously an app hosted in the same region would be quicker all things being equal. However, we have been really happy with the "quality" of the service from Azure and overall it probably offers better performance even outside the region than a poorly managed shared hosting environment. Also, you can change the region where your Azure app is hosted. So, over time, as new regions are added you can migrate your app to that region.
Nope it won't be blocked. But, it would be more sluggish due to latency compared to the locally hosted applications. Also, if you are in EU you might want to check the data protection act. It is illegal to store some private data concerning EU citizens on the US based servers.