Contents
Microsoft Azure FAQ (from Spiceworks LiveStream, May 2014)
Q1: Can Azure be used for virtualized apps (through Microsoft RemoteApp?)
Q2: Is there a white paper on how to do data backup and recovery using Azure?
Q3: How would the relationship work between migrating an On-site AD forest to Azure and operating in hybrid mode, or fully on Azure for typical users?
Q4: What kind of scalability is there with Azure?
Q5: We want to use Azure to integrate with our Office 365, SAP, and other applications to offer Single Sign-On (SSO) - how would this work with most of our users being remote?
Q6: How are backups handled for systems located on Microsoft Azure? (ex: If a file needs to be restored from a file server hosted on Microsoft Azure, how would it be done?)
Q7: How are backups and snapshots of VMs handled in Azure? What storage is used for these backups and snapshots?
Q8: Amazon's S3 offers 11 9s (99.999999999%) durability for data. How does Azure compare?
Q9: How does Azure tie in with Veeam?
Q10: How will Azure help game developers make great games for the Xbox platform?
Q11: When will replication be available for Windows Azure Virtual Machines (similar to the current Hyper-V replication model)?
Q12: What kind of SLA is bundled with Azure?
Q13: In the past I had heard that Azure wouldn't allow installation of an Exchange server, instead it recommended subscribing to Office365. Does it now allow for use of a private Exchange server?
Q14: Is it possible to replicate whole VMs from Hyper-V to Azure as a High Availability or Disaster Recovery strategy?
Q15: What happens if you get locked out of the systems? If a staff member moved on and didn’t tell you their passwords? Is there a way we can recover info and/or get new passwords?
Q16: What's the difference between Azure cloud services and straight up virtual machines.
Q17: Can we have worker roles in could services?
Q18: Where did the name Azure come from?
Q19: We have yet to venture into the Cloud environment, and my boss is NOT a fan of change. As a SMB, how would you present making the move to management?
Q20: James (James for Microsoft, Green Guy in the Spiceworks community) mentioned using Azure as a cheap disaster recovery service. What onsite or user setup would be required to access Azure if the on-premise servers were destroyed?
Q21: Azure tech spec says most programming languages are supported. Are there automated tools to convert sequential application code to parallel application code? And if so, what languages provide this support?
Q22: Can Azure support a RODC for remote authentication?
Q23: What type of load-balancing options are available with Azure?
Q24: As a British company who have ideas about selling software products to international countries, how does Azure handle individual countries data protection/SOX etc?
Q25: How secure is Azure?
Q26: How does Azure differ from PowerShell?
Q27: Can you get a fully functional Active Directory domain up and running in Windows Azure, and how does authentication and DNS work across a WAN Link?
Q28: Is there any WAN acceleration being done to sync the data between Azure and my on-site servers?
Q29: Is there a government cloud so that it's separate from commercial?
Q30: In what ways could Azure be beneficial for a small non-profit -- are features too large of a scale for our lightweight users? Can features be selected as they fill the need?
Q31: How does Azure interact with OneDrive? Is there any integration between them for users?
Microsoft Azure FAQ (from Spiceworks LiveStream, May 2014)
Q1: Can Azure be used for virtualized apps (through Microsoft RemoteApp?)
Yes. Also, this is a new feature that was recently released in preview so you will have to enable it on your Azure subscription to use it. Here is the landing page for RemoteApp.
Q2: Is there a white paper on how to do data backup and recovery using Azure?
Yes. Check out these resources on backup and recovery services.
Q3: How would the relationship work between migrating an On-site AD forest to Azure and operating in hybrid mode, or fully on Azure for typical users?
There are a few options here. You can extend your on-premise Windows Server Active Directory environment to Microsoft Azure Active Directory. When you do this, you can "Directory Sync" users from your on-premise directory to Azure AD. Using Directory Sync, you can extend this to use "Password Sync" whereby users will use the same credentials for services in Azure that they use on-premise. The distinction here is that a hash of the user's password is stored in Azure AD. You can also go with a full SSO solution, whereby the user always authenticates against your on-premise AD through ADFS. Each of these scenarios and implementation guidance for each are detailed here.
Q4: What kind of scalability is there with Azure?
zxchas decades of experience running services such as Bing, Office 365, and Outlook.com. Azure is available in 89 countries, including China, and supports 10 languages and 19 currencies, all backed by Microsoft's $15 billion investment in global datacenter infrastructure. Azure is continuously investing in the latest infrastructure technologies, with a focus on high reliability, operational excellence, cost-effectiveness, environmental sustainability, and a trustworthy online experience for customers and partners worldwide. More details around the Datacenters powering Microsoft Azure and other Microsoft Cloud Services are available here.
Q5: We want to use Azure to integrate with our Office 365, SAP, and other applications to offer Single Sign-On (SSO) - how would this work with most of our users being remote?
This is a perfect scenario for Azure Active Directory. With your Office 365 subscription, you already have an Azure Active Directory tenant. Through this directory, you can integrate with literally hundreds of SaaS applications available in the application gallery. When you integrate an application with your directory, your users will be able to access the application using their existing credentials. This blog from the Active Directory team covers this scenario in a little more detail. And this article addresses some of the best practices.
Q6: How are backups handled for systems located on Microsoft Azure? (ex: If a file needs to be restored from a file server hosted on Microsoft Azure, how would it be done?)
See answer to Q2. Additionally, when you store a file in Azure Storage, it is replicated 3 times in the data center immediately. When you create your storage accounts, you also have the option to geo-replicate the data to another data center 400+ miles away.
Q7: How are backups and snapshots of VMs handled in Azure? What storage is used for these backups and snapshots?
The storage used for VM's is the Azure Storage service. Your VHD is stored in Azure Storage as a blob. See answer to Q6 for more information on how Azure Storage persists the VHD.
The notion of snapshots as you're used to for on-premise environments doesn't exist. However, there have been some recent announcements regarding specialized images that take steps in that direction. Check out this blog and this blog for details.
Q8: Amazon's S3 offers 11 9s (99.999999999%) durability for data. How does Azure compare?
See answer to Q12 regarding the SLA for Azure Storage.
Q9: How does Azure tie in with Veeam?
This is a product specific question. However, according to the Veeam Product Page they do support backing up to Microsoft Azure Storage. Refer to Veeam for more information.
Q10: How will Azure help game developers make great games for the Xbox platform?
Great question. Have you ever heard of "Halo"? :) There are features in the Microsoft Azure Platform that can be used to create some very powerful gaming experiences. Check this out to see how the Halo team uses Microsoft Azure.Even third party game developers such as “Titanfall” uses Azure for low-latency computing. See this article from datacenter knowledge.
Q11: When will replication be available for Windows Azure Virtual Machines (similar to the current Hyper-V replication model)?
Azure Site Recovery allows customers to use Azure as a recovery site vs. investing in a secondary recovery site. If, however, you are looking to use Hyper-V replicas for Azure Virtual Machines this might not be an applicable scenario given the redundancy of Azure datacenters.
Q12: What kind of SLA is bundled with Azure?
Microsoft Azure includes a large number of services with different Service Level Agreements (SLA's). Refer to this page for specific SLA's for each service.
Q13: In the past I had heard that Azure wouldn't allow installation of an Exchange server, instead it recommended subscribing toOffice365. Does it now allow for use of a private Exchange server?
No. Here is the official KB article detailing server software support on Virtual Machines.
Q14: Is it possible to replicate whole VMs from Hyper-V to Azure as a High Availability or Disaster Recovery strategy?
Yes. Take a look at the Azure Site Recovery services earlier called Hyper-V Recovery Manager service. Additionally, this is a session that was delivered at TechED that explains this feature.
Q15: What happens if you get locked out of the systems? If a staff member moved on and didn’t tell you their passwords? Isthere a way we can recover info and/or get new passwords?
If you're referring to your Microsoft Azure Subscription, then you will have a Service Administrator and potentially Co-Administrators. At the top level is an Account Administrator. So, if you have staff that needs to provision Azure Services, then you can make them a Co-Administrator on the subscription. If/when they leave, you just remove them as a Co-Administrator.
Q16: What's the difference between Azure cloud services and straight up virtual machines.
Great question. It is very important to understand the different compute options available in Microsoft Azure. This page describes the differencesbetween the 3 main compute options - Virtual Machines, Cloud Services, and Web Sites. The main differences are that with Virtual Machines, you own maintenance of everything about the Virtual Machine except for the physical and virtualization layers which are managed by Microsoft. Cloud Services abstract away the maintenance of the OS (patching for example), but still give you some control to remote into the VM Instances and configure some network rules for the VM Instances.
Q17: Can we have worker roles in could services?
Yes. Cloud Services consist of Web Roles and/or Worker Roles.
Q18: Where did the name Azure come from?
It is Scott Guthrie's favorite color (just kidding!). :) Seriously though, I don't know.
Q19: We have yet to venture into the Cloud environment, and my boss is NOT a fan of change. As a SMB, how would you present makingthe move to management?
One thing that would be helpful in my opinion is to see how others are benefiting from cloud computing, in particular Microsoft Azure. This page provides case studies that you can review or reference.
Another resource that you may find helpful is this article from Microsoft describing The Future of the Datacenter.
Q20: James (James for Microsoft, Green Guy in the Spiceworks community) mentioned using Azure as a cheap disaster recovery service. What onsite or user setup would be required to access Azureif the on-premise servers were destroyed?
Check out the answers to Q2, Q6, Q7 and Q14.
Q21: Azure tech spec says most programming languages are supported. Are there automated tools to convert sequential applicationcode to parallel application code? And if so, what languages provide this support?
The question about converting code is not clear. To address the question about supported languages, Microsoft Azure has developer content and SDK's for .NET (VB, C#), Node.js, PHP, Python, Ruby, and Java. You can access this content from here.
Q22: Can Azure support a RODC for remote authentication?
Yes.
Q23: What type of load-balancing options are available with Azure?
Microsoft Azure provides a load-balancer for compute services (Virtual Machines, Cloud Services, and Web Sites). The implementation details for each service varies though. This blog will give you some insight into the load-balancing in Microsoft Azure.
Q24: As a British company who have ideas about selling software products to international countries, how does Azure handle individualcountries data protection/SOX etc?
See answer to question Q25. As for data stored in Azure Storage Account, these accounts are created in specific regions (East US, West Europe, etc.). When you create your storage account, you specify a region and your data stays in that region unless you specifically move it.
Q25: How secure is Azure?
The Microsoft Azure Platform is very secure. For details on security and compliance, please refer to the Azure Trust Center.
Q26: How does Azure differ from PowerShell?
Microsoft Azure is Microsoft's Cloud Platform. PowerShell is a scripting language. If you're familiar with PowerShell though, there are cmdlets that are specific to Azure. See this page for more information.
Q27: Can you get a fully functional Active Directory domain up and running in Windows Azure, and how does authentication and DNS workacross a WAN Link?
Yes, you can run Server Active Directory in Microsoft Azure on Virtual Machines. There are some specific guidelines and best practices you will want to be aware of that you can reference here.
Q28: Is there any WAN acceleration being done to sync the data between Azure and my on-site servers?
A lot of this comes down to how you deploy your applications and workloads in Azure. For example, if you deploy parts of your application to West US and other parts to East US, then this will certainly introduce some latency in your solution. As a general rule, you want to keep you workloads and applications they depend on in the same region for best performance.
Now, for hybrid scenarios, you can take advantage of things like StorSimple and network services such as ExpressRoute to optimize traffic between your on-premise environment and Microsoft Azure.
Q29: Is there a government cloud so that it's separate from commercial?
There are initiatives specifically forgovernment. Check out this resource and this resource for more information.
Q30: In what ways could Azure be beneficial for a small non-profit -- are features too large of a scale for our lightweight users? Canfeatures be selected as they fill the need?
For a small organization, Microsoft Azure would be very appealing because you don't have large capital expenses traditionally associated with getting an IT environment setup. You can use as little or as much of the platform you want. So, to specifically answer your question, yes, you can choose services to meet your needs today and grow your consumption of services as you need them. Try it out for free and get $200 to spend on any Azure Services for the first month. Details here.
Q31: How does Azure interact with OneDrive? Is there any integration between them for users?
OneDrive is in the Application Gallery as a SaaS application. You can configure your Azure Active Directory to integrate with OneDrive and then configure user’s access to it.