On this blog post they announced "basic" pricing for azure vms. I'm currently using "extra small" for my cloud service web/worker roles in my project. For these types of vms, would this new basic tier be available? I'm not seeing it in the VS properties area for these roles, is it just not activated yet or needs a custom change in the config file?
So a few things with this thing:
As mentioned in the blog post, this will be available from 3rd of April (i.e. today). I'm guessing you should see it after Scott Guthrie's keynote during BUILD conference today.
More importantly, this is only applicable for Windows Azure Virtual Machines i.e. IaaS stuff and not for Windows Azure Cloud Services.
Related
This is regarding Microsoft's Azure DevOps(Formerly VSTS). Just wanted to clear things, can Azure DevOps be classified as a Platform as a Service. Since it is a cloud service it should be categorized into IaaS but it eliminates the middleware/OS in pipeline. If not then where does it go in the cloud services area? IaaS/SAAS?
Thanks.
Azure DevOps is SaaS for end users (Developers,PM,QA and other stakeholder). In the backend, all the services offer by "Azure DevOps" may run on VMs or Physical server. That mean Microsoft point of view, they may use combination of IaaS & PaaS solution for this platform. Ultimately all services running on VM or physical server.
Its a SaaS, since you are buying a service, not a platform, not virtual machines.
From learn.microsoft.com
Based on the on-premises capabilities, with additional cloud services, we manage your source code, work items, builds, and tests. Azure DevOps uses platform as a service (PaaS) infrastructure and many Azure services, including Azure SQL, to deliver a reliable, globally available service for your development projects.
So according to Microsoft it is PaaS.
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
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.
I have a Azure benefit from my Visual Studio with MSDN subscription.
Microsoft doesn't host MySQL servers in Azure, but I can create a DB from ClearDB through the Azure Portal.
Questions
Is this services included in my benefit?
Can I "Buy" a custom domain with my benefit?
You can provision a VM and deploy MYSQL, this would be included in your benefit but maybe expensive.
You can provision SAAS services like ClearDB via Azure Marketplace but generally billing is separate. When you provision a third party service there is normally a FREE TIER available. If moving to a PAID TIER generally this is billed separately from your Azure Payment methods I have found. Point being , depends on the service you are provisioning. Best bet is to ask the service provider sales channel.
I am trying to determine Azure portal provides any option to create an App Service Plan in a separate step (not while creating the website) and to modify them.
Currently I am creating App Service Plans in the WebSite creation step and modify them in WebSite's Scale option.
Is there any way to create them separately and see a list of available
App Service Plans?
Do websites created within an App Service Plan share the resources in it (CPU, Memory etc)?
What exactly happens when there is an auto scale up?
a.) Will it create a new instance of the App Service Plan and replicate all the websites within it?
b.) or will it create a new instance of the website and share the resources of same App Service Plan?
I am confused because, the App Service Settings (pricing tiers, scale-up option etc) are seen in websites scale option.
Please clarify my doubts.
Thanks in advance.
See page 8 of Developing Microsoft Azure Solutions Exam Reference for 70-532.
"Web hosting plans are created as part of website creation and are not created directly"
Even though this book was published in Feb 2015 some of the terminology is already out of date. It's an "application service plan", not "web hosting plan". And they call what is now known as a "web app" a "website".
Here is an awesome blog post about setting up azure web apps and deployment slots and hosting plans. It goes over what's shared and how to migrate between application service plans about halfway through.
Found this article which explains about App Service Plans in detail.