This post provides an overview of key technical considerations, actionable recommendations and common pitfalls related to migration of workloads from an on-premises datacenter to Microsoft Azure. The business related considerations were addressed within the Migrating Datacenter to Azure – Part 1. Migrating IT systems and infrastructure to a private or public cloud can be a challenge…
“Helping ARM” – Azure Resource Manager step-by-step training
Talking to service providers in CEE it seems that Azure Resource Manager – ARM – the JSON based template language is something everybody interested. Why? There are several reasons for that. ARM is the bridge between awaited Azure Stack and Azure, ARM helps you to create modern templates. Templates = your content to offer and ultimately sell to end users. Remember the Windows…
Migrating Datacenter to Azure – Part 1
Background Quite a while back a Managed Service Provider partner (hereafter referred to as “the MSP”) approached Microsoft regarding migrating one of their datacenter facilities to Azure. The MSP is an experienced managed service provider providing Dynamics ERP, ISV solutions focused on a few industries like automotive, retail and finance. Longer term they are looking…
Identity and Rights Management in CSP model – Part 2
The CSP program is currently rolling out at scale and many service providers are embarking on the journey to provide management infrastructure services for their customers. In addition to the first article about Identity in CSP, we will show more tricks from the field. While the scale is rapidly increasing the ask for operational optimization…
Azure Germany in CSP
Azure in Germany was launched in 2016, and if you’ve heard about that, you may already know, that Azure in Germany is different from other Azure regions. Azure in Germany is an isolated instance of Azure. It doesn’t connected to other Azure regions. Azure Portal URL is different – https://portal.microsoftazure.de. I recommend to read this article to…
StorSimple in CSP
In February a long-awaited Azure solution – virtual StorSimple – became available for all CSP partners. Azure StorSimple is a Hybrid Storage solution from Microsoft. It can be deployed as a physical device or as a virtual appliance, and it uses Azure Storage to store cool data. StorSimple storage is accessible through iSCSI or SMB protocol, so an existing…
OMS in CSP
A lot of CSP partners ask about OMS availability in CSP. In this article I’ll show what OMS components are available in CSP and how to use them. Microsoft Operations Management Suite (OMS) includes several management solutions for hybrid cloud. It was introduced in May 2015 as an evolution of System Center, and it’s capable…
Azure subscription rights challenge in CSP
Let’s imagine a situation when you are a CSP Partner and you provide Azure services to your customer. Customer purchases Office 365 licenses from another reseller (e.g. under Enterprise Agreement), and that reseller is a managing partner (delegated admin) for customer’s tenant. Customer wants you to manage Azure services only, and don’t manage Office 365. You’ve…
Quickly deploy RDS 2016 in Azure
In this post I’ll show how to deploy a minimal Windows Server 2016 Remote Desktop Services farm in Azure in 20 minutes using Azure Resource Manager template. Such farm will be enough to provide Desktop-as-a-Service (DaaS) for 5 to 100 end-users. It was designed as a single-tenant solution, then can be quickly deployed in Azure with minimal effort for every customer. My…
N-series – first Azure VMs with GPU
Great news – Azure N-series Virtual Machines are now available in public preview. N-Series instances are enabled with NVIDIA’s cutting edge GPUs to allow you to run GPU-accelerated workloads and visualize them. These powerful sizes come with the agility you have come to expect from Azure, paying per-minute of usage. N-Series VMs are split into…