Category: Hybrid Cloud

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Satya’s Microsoft is making more friends, Hello Oracle !!!

Using ExpressRoute and FastConnect, customers can peer a virtual network in Azure with a virtual cloud network in Oracle Cloud infrastructure (OCI). This is probably pleasant and positive news I heard in this space. It is a game changer model they two Cloud Provider has done so far. It requires lot of courage at the leadership level to think about it and execute it. I have been thinking about such scenarios but was expecting a network provider to have this connectivity across the multiple clouds, but Azure has done it by themselves.

Azure AD synchronizes any changes in the directory with the corresponding Oracle directory and is used for single sign-on to cross-cloud Oracle solutions. I can only say ‘WOW’ here.

Oracle realized that we need more partners than enemies, I think leadership changes at the Oracle would have helped change their strategy. Under the leadership of Satya Microsoft is making more friends. It is like ‘an idea can change your like life, a leader can change a company’.

Oracle and azure connect

Looks at that picture above when you run the application tier in Azure and Database tier in Oracle Cloud. Good for the customer who is paying huge amount for Oracle license for running Azure VM. It must be cheaper in OCI. We still need to see how the network latency and cost behind this. This give Azure an advantage over AWS because Oracle lovers will opt for Azure and they connect to Oracle for those Oracle products feature like Real Application Cluster (RAC) which can not be run on Azure or AWS today. I am sure there will be challenges but would love to propose a design to our customers. It is too early to comments on the issues and challenges, but I am excited about it.

Oracle and azure connect3

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Old is not bad as you think…

I had a train ticket booked from Bangalore to Chennai after a training. I planned and started from office on time (3pm) to catch the Shatabdi train (4.25pm) and reached Cantonment by Uber taxi in 50 minutes ahead of the train time. I got a call from my wife by 3.58 pm and said that Shatabti won’t stop at Cantonment, Bang !!!.  Just over 25 minutes left, and I need to reach Bangalore City Railway station from Cantonment in the hectic Bangalore traffic, I literally gave up and told her to look for bus ticket.

Old vs New

However, I decided to give it a try, otherwise I wasn’t sure whether I would end up going back to the hotel and may have to delay my travel further, during the festival season.  My natural choice would have been booking Uber or Ola cab, but I decided to hire an auto which was right in front of me, that saved me minimum of 5 minutes of waiting time for OLA/Uber and also auto guys could beat the traffic better than taxi. I checked my google map and it showed me 4.30 pm as ETA but I wasn’t sure with the number of signal the auto should cross. However, auto guy managed to get me closer but nearly 1 KM away from the station. And then we were stuck at the signal with more than 300 meters long traffic. I got down and walked around 400 meter and got in another auto just for another 400 meters and reached railway station. Then I took the help of carriers(porter) to run with me with my travel bag and also to locate the train as I was not familiar with that station, finally I got in the train by 4.35 pm and the train started by 4.36pm. Thanks to Railways (train was late) and my luck J. I would have missed the train if I had opted for App taxi or stayed in the first auto or had not used those carrier guys for sure. Continue reading “Old is not bad as you think…”

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Don’t hurry up. Wait. Prepare first then make slow cloud move.

Most of the organizations are keen on moving their workload to cloud today for several reasons like their IT vision, reduce the spend on hardware refreshes, data center consolidations etc.

Are they ready move into the Cloud? It is an important question that every organization should ask again and again before taking the decision to move in with big bang. We see a trend with many customers to move their existing legacy applications ‘as is’ to the cloud.  Shouldn’t we move into the cloud and utilize those benefits, or we just move in and I don’t care about those cloud features?

Let me start with an example here. Let’s take a case of four webservers and two database servers clustered available 24/7 with environments like Dev, Test and Prod. And you wanted to move this workload to cloud ‘as is’.  My question is, what is the objectives are you trying to achieve? If the answer is, our organization wanted to move all the workload to cloud for cost saving, changing from Capex to Opex model etc.  Guys, hold on… Let’s calm down, think, look around and plan again.

Lift and shift should not be our strategy for cloud migration. We should make our application to live smartly in the cloud to utilize the cloud benefits and reduce the cost. Let’s use the above example to explore this further.

  • Can we make this application horizontally scalable?Cloudthink
  • Can we make this application to use cloud native authentication?
  • Can we make this application to work stateless?
  • Can we make the applications to use distributed data storage?

Continue reading “Don’t hurry up. Wait. Prepare first then make slow cloud move.”

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ExploreExplore the technology to Upskill, Reskill and CrossSkill the resources.

Yes, most of us work in Technology companies those advise many organizations globally for taking technological decision and encourage them to use the latest and advanced technologies to automate their operations. However, how many of those companies are using technology within their organizations and drive innovations for their internal requirements. Both the employees and employers are suffering because a proper system is not in place for solving the problems like Lack of effective appraisal system, identifying the right resources for the projects, unable to stop the talent leaving the organization etc. Let’s look at those and how we can try to solve using the technologies like Machine Learning(ML) and Artificial Intelligence(AI). Yes, we are in the world of Machine Learning(ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) and we must now start thinking about using them effectively.

upskill2

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Availability Zones for Azure, like in AWS.

Microsoft has now announced its long pending Availability Zones in each region. It is currently on preview and recommended only for non-critical workload as Micorsoft does not provide any SLA now. With this, you can now provision your workload from different data centers in the same regions for resilience as you will have options to select between minimum of 3 AZs in each region with GA. However, it is now available only on East US2 and West Europe for Preview.

AZ Fig01.png

AWS currently operate 44 AZs across 16 Regions and 14 more AZs are already planned (44+14 =58). Microsoft currently operate in 36 regions and 6 more to come. If you assume that Microsoft will bring 3 AZs minimums at each of these regions, Microsoft would have (36+6) *3= 126 which itself is more than double the size of AZs across the globe. I agree, it does not make much sense to just play with the numbers so Microsoft need to bring the services that would help customers to make use availability zones and add value to their workloads hosted in Azure services. AWS currently offers multiple PaaS services for their Multi-AZ deployment model so Microsoft still need do good job on making sure that more services are available for Multiple AZ deployments.

Continue reading “Availability Zones for Azure, like in AWS.”

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Bring Home Azure with Azure Stack

It is not just the public cloud today, but it is Hybrid Cloud.

Microsoft is working on making our hybrid life less difficult by introducing Azure stack. We all know the pain of getting Microsoft System Center integrated and working on-premises to enable private cloud. Yes, I agree with you SC is not a candidate for comparing it with Azure Stack. However, I believe Azure Stack will be solving these issues and bringing cloud to your data center with ‘Pay as You Use’ Pricing model.

What is Azure stack as per Microsoft?

Microsoft Azure Stack is a hybrid cloud platform that lets you deliver Azure services from your organization’s datacenter. Bring the agility and fast-paced innovation of cloud computing to your on-premises environment with Azure Stack. This extension of Azure allows you to modernize your applications across hybrid cloud environments, balancing flexibility and control. Plus, developers can build applications using a consistent set of Azure services and DevOps processes and tools, then collaborate with operations to deploy to the location that best meets your business, technical and regulatory requirements.

Azure Stack

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